'^^■"-^! 


J^f  /  ■.) 


GIFT    OF 
MICHAEL  REESE 


■v/ 


-  .,■"-.  ^'■ 


%.^ 


>r% 


*_^^  # 


X. 


■X'^-   *>, 


:  ^- 


A   HISTORY 


OF 


GREEK    LITERATURE 


BY 


THOMAS    SERGEANT    PERRY 

AUTHOR  OF   "  ENGLISH   LITERATURE   IN   THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY, 
OPITZ   TO   LESSING,"    "THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   SNOB." 


"FROM 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY    HOLT    AND   COMPANY 

1890 


Copyright,  1890, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY. 


Robert  Drummond, 

Frinter, 

Nkw  York. 


I    DEDICATE    THIS    BOOK, 


PREFACE. 


This  book  is  an  attempt  to  recount  the  history  of  Greek  litera- 
ture, not  so  much  to  classical  students  as  to  those  who  have  no 
direct  knowledge  of  the  subject.  Albert  Wolff's  "  Pantheon  des 
Classischen  Alterthums"  (Berlin;  Hempel,  1881),  a  volume  of  the 
excellent  series  of  the  "  Classiker  aller  Zeiten  und  Nationen,"  has 
served  as  a  model. 

Among  many  things  which  doubtless  demand  apology  is  the 
reference  (p.  442)  to  Windisch's  interesting  hypothesis  on  the  influ- 
ence of  the  New  Comedy  upon  the  Sanskrit  drama,  which  is  spoken 
of  as  if  it  were  a  fact.  Prof.  L.  von  Schroeder,  in  his  interesting 
'*  Indiens  Literatur  und  Cultur  in  historischer  Entwicklung "  (Leip- 
zig, 1887),  has  shown  that  the  hypothesis  is  untenable. 

It  has  been  thought  undesirable  to  mention  all  the  authorities 
used;  the  "general  reader"  does  not  care  for,  and  the  scholar  does 
not  need,  the  frequent  footnote  in  a  book  of  this  sort. 

The  author  tenders  his  warmest  thanks  to  Mr.  A.  P.  C.  Griffin, 
of  the  Boston  Public  Library,  who,  with  the  utmost  kindness,  saw 
about  four-fifths  of  the  book  through  the  press,  during  the  author's 
absence  from  the  country;  to  Mr.  Louis  Dyer  for  many  valuable 
suggestions  and  much  good  counsel,  as  well  as  for  permission  to  use 
his  manuscript  translations  of  Euripides;  to  Mr.  J.  G.  Croswell  for 
kind  aid  ;  and  to  the  many  writers  who  allowed  him  to  make  use  of 
their  published  translations  in  this  book.  He,  moreover,  desires  to 
express  his  indebtedness  to  Mr.  E.  E.  Treffry,  of  New  York,  who 
read  the  proofs,  not  only  with  untiring  patience,  but  also  with 
friendly  zeal. 

312,  Marlborough  Street,  Boston, 
Feb.  26,   1890. 


vu 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

PAGE 

The  Independence  of  the  Greek  Literature.— Its  Influence. — Its  Artistic  Quali- 
ties.— The  People;  their  EarHest  History. — The  Country;  its  Geography. — The 
Possible  Influence  of  Climate,  etc. — The  Language  -----       i 


BOOK  I.— THE  EPICS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

I. — The  Beginnings  of  Literature. — The  Influence  of  Religious  Feeling. — The 
Traces  of  Early  Song.  II. — The  Hexameter,  and  its  Possible  Growth.  III. — 
The  Homeric  Poems. — The  References  to  an  Earlier  Period. — The  Ionic  Origin  of 
the  Poems. — The  Existence  of  Homer.  IV. — The  Long  Discussion  of  this  Sub- 
ject :  Bentley,  Wolf,  etc.  Possible  Date  of  the  Compositions  of  these  Poems. — 
Archaeological  Illustrations       --        -        -        -        -        -         -         -         -12 

CHAPTER    n. 

THE  ILIAD. 

I. — The  Subject  of  the  Poem. — The  Admiration  felt  for  it. — Its  Fate  at  Dif- 
ferent Periods  of  Ancient  and  Modern  History. — Adaptations  and  Translations  : 
Chapman,  Pope,  etc.  II.  —  An  Analysis  of  the  Poem.  III. — Some  of  the  Quali- 
ties of  the  Heroes  :  their  Unconventional  Timidity ;  their  Relations  to  the  Gods. 
IV. — The  Greek  Epic  Treatment  compared  with  that  of  other  Races.  V. — The 
Illustrative  Extracts         - 30 

CHAPTER    III. 

THE  ODYSSEY. 

I. — The  Difference  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  and  the  Resultant 
Discussion.— An  Analysis  of  the  Latter  Poem.  II.— Some  of  the  Qualities  of  this 
Poem. — Its  Coherence  and  Simplicity. — -The  Naivete  of  the  Heroes — The  Explan- 
ation of  the  Poem  as  a  Solar  MytJi.     III.— Illustrative  Extracts  -         -         -     82 


VlU  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IV„ 

THE  EPICS  IN  GENERAL,  AND  THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS.  page 

I. — Extravagance  of  some  of  the  Praise  given  to  Homer  by  Over-enthusi- 
astic Admirers. — Some  of  the  Points  of  Resemblance  and  Difference  between  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  as  in  the  Relation  of  Gods  to  Men,  etc. ;  the  Different  Kinds 
of  Similes  in  the  two  Poems  ;  of  Epithets. — The  Moral  Law  as  it  is  Implied  and 
Stated.  II. — The  Other  Compositions  ascribed  to  Homer;  Hymns,  Parodies  and 
Minor  Poems. — The  Light  that  the  Hymns  throw  on  Early  Religious  Thought. — 
The  Myths  not  invented  as  Stories,  but  Attempted  Explanations  of  the  Universe. — 
The  Mock-Homeric  Poems.  III. — Illustrative  Extracts.  IV. — The  Later  Epics  : 
their  Subjects  ;  their  Relation  to  the  Homeric  Poems  ;  and  their  Merit      -     -    -  ii8 

CHAPTER  V. 

HESIOD. 

I. — All  our  Positive  Information  about  this  Poet  most  Vague. — His  Boeotian 
Origin ;  All  that  This  Implies  in  Comparison  with  the  Ionic  Civilization. — The 
Doric  Severity  and  Conservatism. — The  Devotion  to  Practical  Ends.  II. — The 
Story  of  Hesiod's  Life.— His  "  Works  and  Days  "  Described. — Its  Thrifty  Advice 
Combining  Folk-lore  and  Farming. — The  "  Theogony,"  a  Manual  of  Old  Mythol- 
ogy.^His  Other  Work  ;  its  General  Aridity. — Illustrative  Extracts        -       -        -  136 


BOOK  II.— THE   LYRIC   POETRY. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

The  Hexameter  as  an  Expression  Adapted  to  a  Feudal  Period,  when  Com- 
parative Uniformity  Prevailed.— Changing  Circumstances,  with  Added  Complexity 
of  Life,  Saw  New  Forms  of  Utterance  Introduced  into  Literature. — These,  how- 
ever, had  already  Enjoyed  a  Long,  if  Unrecognized,  Life  among  the  People: 
Such  were  Liturgical,  as  well  as  Popular,  in  their  Nature,  and  Run  Back  to 
Primeval  Savageness         -        -        -        -        -        -        -        -        -         --150 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  EARLIER  LYRIC  POETS. 

I. — The  Influence  of  Religion  on  the  Early  Growth  of  the  LjtIc  Poetry. — 
The  Traditional  Origins  :  Orpheus  and  Musasus.— The  Importance  of  Music— Its 
Condition  in  Early  Times.— Its  Use  as  an  Aid  to  Poetry.— The  Traditional  Olym- 
pus, the  Father  of  Music.  II.— Callinus  and  the  Elegy.— Its  Use  by  Archilochus, 
and  the  Growth  of  Individuality.— The  Value  of  the  New  Forms  as  Expressions 
of  the  Political  Changes  then  Appearing.  III.— Simonides  and  His  denuncia- 
tion of  Women. — His  Melancholy. — The  Meagreness  of  the  Lyrical  Fragments 
Impedes  our  Knowledge. — The  Extent  of  our  Loss  Conjectured  -         -         -  154 


CONTENTS.  IX 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  LYRIC  POETS— Continued.  PAGE 

I. — Tyrtceus,  and  his  Patriotic  Songs  in  Behalf  of  Sparta. — In  Contrast,  the 
Amorous  Wail  of  Mimnermus. — Solon  in  Athens,  as  a  Lawgiver,  and  as  a  Writer 
of  Elegies  mainly  of  Political  Import.  II. — The  Melic  Poetry,  and  its  Connection 
with  Music  and  Dance. — The  Growth  of  Music ;  the  Different  Divisions. — Alcman, 
Alcseus,  Sappho,  Erinna,  Stesichorus,  Ibycus.— Anacreon,  and  his  Vast  Popular- 
ity. III. — The  Elegiac  Poetry. — Phocylides  and  his  Inculcation  of  Reasonable- 
ness.— Xenophanes  and  his  Philosophical  Exposition. — Theognis  and  his  Politi- 
cal Teachmgs.— Simonides,  his  Longer  Poems  and  his  Epigrams. — Bacchylides, 
Lasus,  Myrtis,  and  the  Predecessors  of  Pindar. — Translations  of  some  Lyrical 
Poems -         -  165 

CHAPTER  III. 

PINDAR. 

The  General  Condition  of  the  Lyric  Poetry.  I.— Its  Flowering  in  Pindar. — 
His  Life. — His  Relations  with  the  Sicilian  Tyrants. — A  Comparison  between  him 
and  Milton. — The  Abundance  of  his  Work,  and  its  Various  Divisions.  II. — The 
Epinicion,  or  Song  in  Praise  of  a  Victor  at  the  Public  Games. — The  Games,  and 
their  Significance  to  the  Greeks. — The  Adulation  which  Pindar  Gave  to  the  Vic- 
tors ;  the  Serious  Nature  of  his  Work  ;  its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought ;  its 
Ethical  Importance,  all  being  Qualities  that  were  Outgrowing  the  Bonds  of  Mere 
Lyric  Verse.     III. — Illustrative  Extracts  -  - 196 


BOOK  III.— THE  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

\  

CHAPTER  I. 

ITS  GRO  WTH  AND  HI  STOP  Y. 

I. — The  Prominence  of  Athens  after  the  Wars  with  Persia. — The  Qualities  of 
the  Athenians  ;  their  Intellectual  Vivacity  ;  the  Aristocratic  Conditions  of  their 
Society. — The  Little  Influence  of  Women  and  Books. — Their  Political  Training.— 
Their  Literary  Enthusiasm.  II. — The  Drama  a  Growth,  not  a  Special  Creation. — 
The  Early  Condition  of  Dramatic  Performances. — The  Celebration  of  Festivals  ; 
the  Dithyramb ;  the  Rudimentary  Dialogues  ;  the  Worship  of  Dionysus. — The 
Drama  before  ^schylus,  and  the  Resemblance  between  its  Growth  and  that  of 
Modern  Times.  III.— The  Mechanical  Conditions. — The  Theatres  ;  the  Actors 
and  their  Equipment. — The  Stage. — The  Masks. — The  Absence  of  Minute  Detail, 
and  Unlikeness  to  Modern  Drama. — The  Chorus;  its  Composition  and  its  Share 
in  the  Performance  at  Different  Times.  IV. — The  Author's  Relation  to  his 
Play.— The  Tetralogy  and  its  Obscurities. — Further  Obscurities  Besetting  the  Sub- 
ject, such  as  the  Symmetry  of  the  Plays. — The  Plays  that  Survive. — The  General 
Development  of  the  Drama,  and  its  Dependence  on  the  Life  of  the  Time     -    -    -  217 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    II. 

jESCHYLUS.  pagk 

I. — The  Life  of  ^schylus  ;  his  Part  in  the  Persian  Wars  ;  his  Career  as  an 
Author ;  his  Death.  II. — The  Difficulties  in  the  Way  of  our  Comprehending  the 
Greek  Drama. — Its  Spectacular  Effect  with  the  Choral  Dances. — The  Simplicity 
of  the  Plot  compared  with  Shakspere's  Art. — The  Unities  in  the  Greek  Plays. — 
The  Absence  of  Love  as  a  Dramatic  Inspiration. — The  Flowering  of  the  Drama 
in  Athens,  Paris,  and  London  at  a  Moment  of  Victory.  III. — The  Earliest  Play, 
The  Persians. — Its  Presentation  of  Historical  Events. — An  Analysis  of  the  Play. — 
The  First  Appearance  of  the  Drama  in  Western  Literature. — The  Prominence  of 
the  Chorus,  and  Diminutive  Value  of  the  Actors,  and  the  Archaic  Quality  of  the 
Infant  Drama;  Tableaux  rather  than  Actions. — Solemnity  of  yEschylus.  IV. — 
The  Seven  Against  Thebes  Analyzed. — The  Mythical  Plot. — The  Slow  Growth  of 
Dramatic  Action.  V. — The  Suppliants. — The  Predominance  of  the  Lyrical  Ele- 
ment, the  Crudity  of  the  Dialogue.  VI. — The  Prometheus  Bound. — The  Possible 
Significance  of  the  Myth. — The  Dramatic  Treatment. — Its  Apparent  Irreverence — 
Our  Meagre  Comprehension  of  it.  VII. — The  Oresteian  Trilogy,  the  Agamem- 
non, the  Libation  Poems,  and  the  Furies,  Analyzed. — The  Significance  of  the 
Dramatic  Treatment  of  Alleged  Legendary  History. — The  Ethical  Principle. — The 
Simplicity  of  ^Eschylus. — The  Changes  wrought  by  Time  in  the  Drama     -        -  239 

CHAPTER    III. 

SOPHOCLES. 

I. — The  Life  of  Sophocles;  his  Relation  to  the  Persian  Wars. — The  Position 
he  Held. — His  Relation  to  the  Time  of  Pericles ;  the  Main  Qualities  of  that  Bril- 
liant Period. — His  Work  Compared  with  that  of  ^schylus.  II. — The  Electra. 
Compared  with  the  Treatment  of  the  Oresteian  Myth  by  .^schylus. — The  Play 
Described. — Importance  of  Oratory  among  the  Greeks  Illustrated  by  the  Plays. — 
Fullness  of  the  Art  of  Sophocles.  III. — The  Antigone;  its  Adaptability  to 
Modern  Tastes. — The  Modification  in  the  Treatment  of  the  Chorus.  IV. — The 
King  CEdipus. — Its  Vividness  and  Impressiveness.  V. — The  CEdipus  at  CoIodus. — 
Its  Praise  of  Athens.  VI. — The  Ajax. — Its  Treatment  of  a  Bit  of  Homeric 
Story. — The  Interference  of  a  Deity. — The  Growth  of  Individuality.  VII. — The 
Philoctetes  ;  Again  Homeric  Characters. — The  Individual  Traits  Strongly  Brought 
out.  VIII. — The  Maidens  of  Trachis. — General  View  of  the  Art  of  Sophocles, 
with  its  Rounded  Perfection        -        -        -        -        -        -        -        -        -        -301 

CHAPTER   IV. 

EURIPIDES. 

I. — The  Changes  in  Greek  Literature  and  in  the  Body  Politic. — An  Illustra- 
tive Quotation  from  Mr.  J.  A.  Symonds.  II.— The  Life  of  Euripides,  and  an 
Attempt  to  Explain  his  Relation  to  his  Predecessors. — His  Movement  toward 
Individuality  not  a  Personal  Trait,  but  Part  of  a  General  Change.  The  Religious 
Decadence ;  Political  Enfeeblement.  III. — The  Work  of  Euripides ;  its  Abun- 
dance.— The  Hecuba. — The  Prologue  as  Employed  by  this  Writer.  IV. — The 
Orestes  and  its  Treatment. — The  New  Treatment  of  the  Heroes  as  Human 
Beings. — The  Phenician  Virgins. — The  Medea;  its  Intensity. — Extracts.  V. — 
The  Crowned  Hippolytus. — Realism  in  the  Treatment  of  the  Characters. — The 
Further  Change  in  the  Importance  of  the  Chorus        ------  352 


CONTENTS.  XI 

CHAPTER    V. 

EURIPIDES  II.  PAGE 

I. — The  Alcestis  of  Euripides. — His  Humanity  Offensive  to  His  Contempo- 
raries.— The  Andromache  ;  the  Conversational  Duels.  H. — The  Suppliants  ;  the 
Heracleidae ;  their  Political  Allusions. — The  Helen,  with  its  Romantic  Interest  in 
Place  of  the  Earlier  Solemnity,  and  Its  Enforcement  of  Unheroic  Misfortune. — 
Its  Lack  of  the  Modern  Dramatic  Spirit.  III. — The  Troades,  a  Curious  Treat- 
ment of  the  Old  Myths. — The  Mad  Heracles ;  its  Representation  of  the  Gods  in 
Accordance  with  the  New  Spirit. — The  Electra ;  its  Importance  as  a  Bit  of 
Literary  Controversy. — Its  Inferiority  to  the  Plays  of  ^schylus  and  Sophocles  on 
the  Same  Subject. — The  Ion  ;  a  Drama,  not  a  Tragedy,  and  a  Marked  Specimen 
of  the  Change  in  Thought. — A  Comparison  between  its  Complexity  and  the 
Earlier  Simplicity. — Condemnation  of  the  Old  Mythology.  IV. — The  Two  Iphi- 
geneias. — The  deus  ex  machina.  V. — The  Bacchae,  and  its  Importance  in  the 
Study  of  Greek  Religious  Thought. ^The  Feeling  of  Euripides  for  Natural 
Scenery;  His  Modern  Spirit. — The  Satyric  Play,  the  Cyclops. — The  Rhesus.  VI. — 
The  Successors  of  Euripides. — The  Extended  Influence  of  the  Greek  Drama,  and 
especially  of  Euripides  as  the  Most  Modern  of  the  Ancients        -         .         .        .  398 

CHAPTER    VI. 

THE  COMEDY. 

I. — Obscurity  of  its  Early  History ;  its  Alleged  Origins,  in  the  Dionysiac 
Festivals,  and  in  Various  Places,  as  in  Sicily,  among  the  Megarians,  etc. — The 
Earlier  Writers  of  Comedy.  II. — Aristophanes. — Comedy  as  he  Found  it ;  its 
Technical  Laws ;  the  Chorus,  etc. — The  Acharnians. — The  Seriousness  of  all 
the  Comedies;  their  Conservatism. — The  Horse-play.  III. — The  Knights;  its 
Attack  on  Cleon,  and  General  Political  Fervor.  IV. — The  Clouds,  with  its 
Derision  of  Socrates  and  of  Modern  Tendencies.  V. — The  Wasps,  and  its 
Denunciation  of  Civic  Decay,  V^t — The  Peace,  and  its  Political  Implications. — 
The  Poetical  Side  of  Aristophanes.  VII.^The  Birds.  VIII, — The  Lysistrata, 
and  the  Thesmophoriazusae. — The  Attack  on  Euripides  directly,  and  indirectly 
on  Current  Affairs. — Hopelessness  of  the  Position  held  by  Aristophanes.  IX. — 
The  Frogs  ;  Euripides  again  Assaulted,  and  ^Eschylus  Exalted.  X. — The  Eccle- 
siazusae,  and  the  Plutus. — The  Altered  Conditions, — The  Unliterary  Quality  of 
Attic  Comedy  in  its  Early  Days. — Importance  of  Aristophanes  as  a  Mouth-piece 
of  the  Athenian  People.  XI. — The  Later  Development  of  Comedy. — Philemon 
and  Menander;  the  Contrast  between  their  Work  and  that  of  Aristophanes. — 
Its  Relation  to  the  Later  Times  __----._-  444 


BOOK    IV,— THE    HISTORIANS. 


CHAPTER    I. 

HERODOTUS. 

I. — The  Origin  of  Prose. — The  Predecessors  of  Herodotus.  II. — Herodotus, 
his  Life,  his  Travels. — His  Methods,  his  Object. — The  Criticisms  of  his  Work. — 
His  Stories. — His  Authorities.     III.— Extracts  -------  508 


XU  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    II. 

THUCYDIDES.  page 

I. — The  Vast  Difference  between  Herodotus  and  Thucydides. — The  Life  of 
Thucydides. — His  Conception  of  the  Historian's  Duty. — His  Modernness. — His 
Language.  H. — His  Use  of  Speeches. — His  Self-control.  HL — The  Fame  of  his 
History. — Its  Presentation  of  Political  Principles.     IV. — The  Sicilian  Expedition,  533 

CHAPTER    III. 

XENOPHON. 

I. — Xenophon's  Relation  to  Thucydides. — His  Life. — The  Anabasis.  II. — 
The  Hellenica. — Qualities  of  Xenophon's  Style. — The  Memorabilia.  III. — The 
Cyropasdia,  an  Historical  Novel.  IV. — Xenophon's  Minor  Writings. — The  Possi- 
ble Reasons  for  his  Great  Fame. — His  General,  but  Safe,  Mediocrity.  V. — 
Extracts     --_------.__.-  571 


BOOK   v.— THE    ORATORS. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE  EARL  V  ORA  TORS  AND  ISOCRA  TES. 

I. — The  Difference  between  Ancient  and  Modern  Notions  of  the  Function  of 
Eloquence. — Our  Theories  mainly  Derived  from  Roman  Declamation. — The 
Greek  Methods  Different.  II. — Development  of  Oratory  among  the  Greeks. — 
The  Influence  of  the  Sophists  ;  the  Varying  Opinions  concerning  these  Teachers. 
— Their  Instruction  in  Philosophy,  Rhetoric,  and  Physics.  III. — The  Growth  of 
Dialectic  in  Sicily. — The  Early  Teachers,  and  their  Modification  of  the  Greek 
Prose  Style.  Its  Imitation  of  Poetical  Models,  Compared  with  Euphuism.  IV. — 
Antiphon,  Andokides,  Lysias ;  Isocrates  and  his  Artificial  Style.  His  Political 
Yearnings. — Isseos. — The  Diversity  of  Athenian  Politics  Expressed  in  the  Oratory 
of  Isocrates  and  in  his  Cunning  Art. — Its  Literary  Qualities        -        -        -        _  598 

CHAPTER    II. 

DEMOSTHENES. 

I. — The  Life  of  Demosthenes. — His  Early  Speeches.  II. — His  Opposition 
to  Philip  of  Macedon. — The  Divided  Condition  of  the  Greeks.  III. — 'The  Position 
of  Demosthenes. — His  Various  Efforts  to  Arouse  his  Fellow-Countrymen. — The 
Olynthiac  Struggle  between  Athens  and  Philip  ;  the  King's  Success.  IV. — Last 
Years  of  Demosthenes.  V. — Qualities  of  his  Eloquence. — Hopelessness  of  his 
Position. — Contemporary  Orators,  Phocion,  Hypereides,  etc. — The  Later  History 
of  Oratory.     VI. — Extracts  _.___-----  622 


CONTENTS.  XIU 


BOOK  VI.— THE  PHILOSOPHERS. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES.  page 

I. — The  Originality  of  Greek  Philosophical  Thought. — The  Earliest  Philoso- 
phers and  their  Views,  Physical  and  Metaphysical. — The  lonians ;  Pythagoras, 
and  the  Vague  Report  of  His  Life  and  Teachings. — Xenophanes,  Heraclitus, 
Empedocles,  etc.  II. — The  Atomists. — Our  Dependence  on  Aristotle  for  Infor- 
mation, so  that  we  Get  but  Glimpses  of  the  Past,  yet  these  Glimpses  Attract  Stu- 
dents.— Anaxagoras  in  his  Relation  to  the  Athenian  Public. — The  Sophists  in 
Athens. — Their  Evil  Repute.— The  Growth  of  Individualism  in  Philosophy  Going 
on  All  Fours  with  its  Spread  in  Literature.  Ill — Protagoras,  his  Ethical  Teach- 
ings.— Conservative  Opposition  to  New  Thought. — The  Cosmopolitanism  of  Phil- 
osophy Distasteful  to  Patriotic  Greeks. — Philosophy  an  Aristocratic  Attribute,  like 
Modern  Letters,  unlike  Modern  Science.  IV. — The  Fine  Promises  of  the  Soph- 
ists ;  Rhetoric  as  a  Cure  for  Life's  Woes. — Contempt  for  Science.  V. — Socrates ; 
his  Life. — His  Novel  Aim,  and  Method  of  Instruction. — His  Ethical  Teaching. — 
His  Practical  Side.— His  Cross-examination  of  Civilization. — The  Story  of  his 
Death. — His  Following. — The  Cynic  and  Cyrenaic  Schools         _        _        -        -  656 

CHAPTER    II. 

PLA  TO. 

I. — The  Vast  Importance  of  Plato  to  Modern  Thought. — Mr.  Benn  on  his 
Inconsistencies. — Platonism  not  to  be  Defined  by  one  Word  or  Phrase.  11. — The 
Life  of  Plato. — His  Aristocratic  Theories. — His  Political  Efforts  for  the  Regenera- 
tion of  Mankind. — His  Journeys,  etc. — His  Work ;  the  Nature  of  the  Dialogues. 
III. — His  Accounts  of  Socrates;  the  Apology  and  the  Crito. — Extracts.  IV. — 
The  General  Dialogues:  their  Literary  Charm. — Various  Ones  Analyzed:  the 
Charmides,  Lysis,  Protagoras,  Ion,  Lesser  Hippias,  Meno.  V. — The  Symposium 
and  the  Phsedrus. — The  Gorgias. — The  Cratylus. — The  Timaeus,  etc.  VI. — The 
RepubHc,  its  Utopianism  and  Aristocratic  Longings. — The  Generally  Accepted 
Notion  of  Platonism.— His  Theorj'of  Ideas.  VII.— His  Followers  and  his  Influ- 
ence, and  his  New  Foundation  for  Ethics.     VIII. — Extracts       -        -        -        -  686 

CHAPTER    III, 

ARISTOTLE. 

I. — Aristotle's  Unfortunate  Rivalry  with  Plato. — His  Life. — His  Influence, 
Especially  in  the  Middle  Ages. — The  Consequences  of  Exaggerated  Praise  not 
Unknown  to  Aristotle's  Fame.  II. — His  Relations  to  his  Predecessors. — His  Inter- 
est in  Scientific  Study. — His  Writings;  their  Lack  of  Literary  Charm. — The  Manner 
of  their  Preservation.  III. — His  Conception  of  Philosophy,  and  his  Division  of  its 
Functions. — The  Breadth  of  its  Interests. — The  Politics,  etc. — His  Repellant  Style 
Compared  with  the  Charm  of  Plato's. — The  Safe  Middle  Path  which  he  Follows. 
— His  Cool  Wisdom.  IV. — The  Poetics  ;  its  Importance  to  Modern  Literature. 
V. — Extracts.  VI. — The  Peripatetics,  and  the  Latest  Course  of  Philosophy. — 
Epicureans  and  Stoics  -         -        -         -        -        -         -         -         -        -         -71S 


XIV  CONTENTS. 


BOOK  VII.— HELLENISM. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ALEXANDRIA,  THEOCRITUS.  pags 

I. — The  Succession  of  Alexandria  to  Athens. — The  Intimate  Relation  of 
Alexandrinism  to  Modern  Literature,  through  the  Roman. — The  Survival  of  Greek 
Intellectual  Influence  after  Political  Decay. — The  Gradualness  of  the  Change. 
II. — The  Importance  of  Alexandria  for  the  Cosmopolitan  Sway  of  Greek  Influ- 
ence.— Its  Generous  Equipment  for  its  New^  Duties. — The  Beginnings  of  Scholar- 
ship. III. — The  Learning  Influences  the  Literature. — Theocritus,  and  his  Work. 
— Its  Relation  to  Contemporary  Art. — Bion  and  Moschus.    IV. — Extracts  -     -  741 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  POETRY— Continued. 

I. — The  Relation  of  the  New  Movement  to  the  Later  Condition  of  Athens. — 
Changed  Treatment  of  Women,  and  their  Influence. — The  Pastorals  and  Elegies. 
— Antimachus. — The  Growth  of  Literary  Art,  and  Various  Writers  of  Forgotten 
Fame.  II. — Callimachus. — The  Lyric  Poetry. — The  Drama.  III. — The  Epic 
Writers. — ApoUonius  Rhodius,  and  his  Argonautics ;  its  Influence  on  Roman 
Writers. — The  Didactic  Poets:  Aratus,  Nicander,  etc. — Some  Minor  Writers 
of  Verse.  IV. — Nonnus,  and  his  Learned  Epic. — Musaeus.  V. — Quintus  Smyr- 
naeus,  and  his  Unexpected  Vigor. — The  Gradual  Dwindling  of  Poetry.  VI. — 
The  Anthology. — Its  Gradual  Formation. — Its  Abundance. — The  Epigram. 
VII. — Extracts  from  the  Anthology  ________  762 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  PROSE. 

I  —The  Wide  Circle  of  Hellenistic  Culture. — The  Abundance  of  Intellectual 
Interests  in  Alexandria  and  Elsewhere. — The  Growth  of  Scholarship. — The 
Spread  of  Scientific  Study.  —  Euclid.  —  Archimedes.  —  Astronomy.  —  Ptolem.y. 
II. — The  Importance  of  this  Greek  Scientific  Work. — The  Study  of  Medicine. — 
Galen. — His  Vast  Influence,  like  that  of  Ptolemy  and  Aristotle. —Its  Long  Life 
and  Final  Overthrow,  possibly  Portending  an  Altered  View  of  All  Things  Greek. 
III. — The  Grecian  Influence  in  Rome.— The  Difference  between  the  Greek  and 
Roman  Ideals.  IV. — Polybius  ;  his  History  and  its  Importance. — Extracts. 
V. — Other  Historians  :  Diodorus  Siculus,  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  Strabo, 
Flavius  Josephus         --.___.--..-  799 

CHAPTER  IV. 

PLUTARCH. 

I.— Plutarch. — His  Life  and  Work. — His  Method.— His  Attractive  Simplicity. 
— His  Influence.  II. — His  Naturalness  and  Impartiality.  III. — Extracts.  IV. — 
His  Morals. — Extracts        ------ 818 


CONTENTS.  XV 

CHAPTER  V. 

LUCIAN.  PACK 

I. — Lucian,  the  Satirist. — The  First  of  the  Moderns. — More  Greek  than  the 
Greeks  of  his  Time. — His  Life.  II. — His  Onslaughts  upon  the  Moribund  Religion. 
— His  Dialogues.  III. — The  Broad  Burlesque  which  he  sometimes  Employs 
against  Gods,  Philosophers,  and  Men  of  Letters.  IV. — His  Later  Fame. — His 
Notion  of  Hades. — His  Treatment  of  Gross  Superstitions. — Alexander  the 
Medium. — Various  Writings  of  his.  V. — His  Wit,  Comparison  between  it  and 
the  Same  Quality  as  Exhibited  by  Others. — His  Denunciation  of  Science. — His 
Exhibition  of  the  General  Condition  of  the  Greek  Man  of  Letters  in  those  Times  830 

CHAPTER  VI. 

PROSE   WRITERS— Continued. 

I. — Literary  Trifles  not  the  Only  Interests. — The  New  View  of  Moral  Great- 
ness.— The  Life  of  Epictetus.  ^11. — Marcus  Aurelius. — His  Work  as  a  Writer. 
III. — Philostratus,  ancf  his  Discussion  of  Literary  and  Artistic  Subjects.  IV. — 
Thei  Final  Gatherings  from  Antiquity. —  Athenaeus,  and  his  Collection  of  Anec- 
dotes.— ^lian. — Some  Historians.  V. — Pausanias. — Longinus,  and  his  Literary 
Criticism. — The  Later  Philosophy.  VI. —  In  529,  the  Closing  of  the  University  of 
Athens,  and  the-  Conversion  of  the  Temple  of  Hermes  into  a  Monastery.  VII. — 
Further  Fragments. — The  Threshing  of  Threshed  Straw  -         _         -         -  845 

CHAPTER  Vn. 

THE  GREEK  ROMANCES. 

I. — This  Confusion,  Great  as  it  was.  Led  to  an  Attempted  Reorganization  of 
Literary  Work  in  the  Romances. — The  Method  of  Composition  :  Prominence  of 
Love,  Wildness  of  Incident,  etc.  II. — lamblichus  Xenophon  of  Ephesus. — Apol- 
lonius  of  Tyre. — Heliodorus. — The  Modern  Descendants  of  these  Romances. 
III. — Achilles  Tatius. — Chariton.     IV. — Longus  and  his  Pastoral. — The  End      -  860 


GREEK  LITERATURE. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

The  Independence  of  the  Greek  Literature — Its  Influence — Its  Artistic  Qualities.  The 
People ;  their  Earliest  History.  The  Country ;  its  Geography — The  Possible 
Influence  of  Climate,  etc.     The  Language. 


ONE  of  the  most  striking  qualities  of  Greek  literature  is  its  originality ; 
it  sprang,  so  to  speak,  from  the  soil,  without  marked  traces  of 
foreign  admixture,  adopting,  to  be  sure,  the  forms  which  are  employed 
independently  by  every  other  race  that  makes  use  of  letters  as  a  method 
of  expression,  but  developing  them  more  completely  than  has  been 
done  elsewhere.  Starting  in  this  way  free  in  the  main  from  outside 
influences,  it  grew  under  the  hands  of  the  most  wonderful  people  that 
the  world  has  ever  known,  to  be  the  model  for  succeeding  civilizations. 
In  literature,  as  everywhere,  the  best  wins  ;  and  in  studying  the  litera- 
ture of  Greece  we  are  really  studying  not  merely  forms  of  expression, 
rich  thought,  wise  comment  and  explanation  that  are  unfailing  sources 
of  delight  and  instruction,  but  also  the  foundations  of  nearly  all  the 
work  that  has  been  done  since  in  every  civilized  country.  The  lines 
that  the  Greeks  drew  without   rule   or  precedent    have  acquired    an 


•y,'  r  ,*'  f  '^  r  ""  ^    ?  , "''  .    •'  INTRODUCTOR  Y. 

authority  which  has  given  them  the  force  of  literary  canons  to  inspire 
and  direct  subsequent  work  of  the  world.  The  quality  that  character- 
izes their  literature  has  proved  a  model  for  their  successors  ;  it  has  been 
absorbed,  at  times,  with  much  conscious  effort  that  has  blurred  the 
force  of  its  influence,  and  the  ultimate  consequenceof  the  whole  ripen- 
ing of  modern  civilization  has  been  to  bring  men  back  to  wonder  and 
admiration  of  their  unparalleled  performance.  Naturally,  Greek  litera- 
ture is  not  a  unit ;  when  we  speak  of  some  of  its  most  brilliant  successes 
we  should  properly  define  it  as  Athenian  literature;  and, too,  the  later 
work  of  the  Alexandrians,  which  was  the  only  instance  of  the  Greeks 
imitating  instead  of  directly  producing,  has  been  the  main  source  of 
modern  inspiration  ;  yet  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  even  then  they 
were  Greeks  copying  themselves,  and  not  outside  barbarians  laying  on 
an  artificial  polish.  And,  too,  it  is  towards  the  best  of  the  native  Greek 
literature  that  men  have  gradually  made  their  way  with  ever  growing 
respect.  They  have  at  times  lost  the  way  and  have  given  their  devotion 
to  what  was  second-best,  but  with  a  wider  knowledge  has  come  frank 
reverence  for  only  the  most  characteristic  of  their  productions.  As 
the  tracks  where  the  first  settlers  strayed  become  the  streets  of  the 
established  city,  so  have  the  different  paths  of  the  Greeks  become  high- 
ways on  which  alone  modern  men  have  been  free  to  move.  Their  epics, 
their  lyrics,  their  drama,  their  histories,  their  philosophy,  have  left 
their  mark  on  the  taste  of  later  generations.  They  imposed  the  laws 
which  have  ruled  since  their  day,  not  so  much  by  legislation,  however, 
as  by  doing  naturally  what  has  been  afterwards  attempted  by  earnest 
effort.  Their  unconscious  ease  has  been  succeeded  by  the  more  or  less 
deliberate  attempts  of  those  who  have  seen  in  the  beauty  of  Greek 
work  an  ideal  as  well  as  a  model.  This,  then,  marks  the  important 
difference  between  the  literatures  of  Greece  on  the  one  hand  and  on 
the  other  that  of  Rome  and  modern  civilizations,  that  the  first  grew  up 
untrammeled,  as  the  natural  expression  of  direct  vision,  while  ever 
since  men  have  seldom  felt  themselves  free  from  the  necessity  of  refer- 
ring to  the  foundations  of  literary  art. 

Yet  the  general  resemblance  in  the  growth  of  different  literatures 
can  not  be  always  explained  as  imitation.  The  path  in  which  the 
Greeks  trod  has  been  followed  independently  by  different  races,  among 
which  we  find  that  uniformly  poetry  precedes  prose,  and  that  the  epic 
appears  before  the  drama,  so  that  we  may  safely  conclude  that  the 
course  of  the  Greek  letters  was  in  accordance  with  a  form  of  develop- 
ment that  marks  all  literature,  that  there  is  a  uniformity  in  the  actions 
of  different  races  as  there  is  between  individuals,  and  that  in  both  the 
difference  is  in  the  accomplishment  rather  than  in  the  ends  aimed  at. 
To  what  extent  this  hypothesis  is  true,  will  be  seen  in  the  further  study 


THE    ORIGIN   OF    THE    GREEKS.  3 

of  Greek  writings,  but,  granting  a  general  analogy,  we  shall  nowhere 
find  the  same  brilliant  performance  that  we  find  in  Greece.  Its  whole 
literature  is  distinguished  by  a  keen  artistic  sense  that  is  made  up  of 
freshness  and  truth  to  nature.  Everywhere  the  Greek  shunned  ex- 
aggeration. Unlike  the  Sanskrit  writers  he  was  impressive  without 
being  grandiose ;  unlike  the  Chinese,  he  was  simple  without  being 
puerile,  and  when  we  compare  the  Greek  with  more  familiar  literatures 
that  have  been  built  upon  it,  the  difference  becomes  even  plainer.  As 
Taine  has  well  said  in  his  Philosophie  de  Vart  en  Grece,  "  A  glance  at 
their  literature  in  comparison  with  that  of  the  East,  of  the  middle  ages, 
and  of  modern  times ;  a  perusal  of  Homer  compared  with  the  Divina 
Commedia,  Faust,  or  the  Indian  epics  ;  a  study  of  their  prose  in  com- 
parison with  any  other  prose  of  any  other  age  or  any  other  country, 
would  be  convincing.  By  the  side  of  their  literary  style,  every  style 
is  emphatic,  heavy,  inexact  and  unnatural ;  by  the  side  of  their  weird 
types,  every  type  is  excessive,  gloomy,  and  morbid  ;  by  the  side  of  their 
poetic  and  oratorical  forms,  every  form  not  based  on  theirs  is  out  of 
all  proportion,  ill  devised,  and  misshapen."  Possibly  this  statement 
exemplifies  the  faults  it  names  with  profusion,  but  it  also  conveys  the 
truth  that  the  Greek  work  is  distinguished  by  proportion,  by  modera- 
tion. 

This  moderation  was  a  quality  that  it  possessed  from  the  beginning, 
in,  say,  the  tenth  century  before  Christ,  until  the  classic  Greek  literature 
faded  out  of  existence  in  the  sixth  century  of  our  era,  for  so  long  was 
its  life.  What  then  were  the  conditions  in  which  we  find  it  appearing  ? 
The  Greeks  belonged  to  the  Aryan  family,  the  great  branch  of  the 
human  race  that  included  Kelts,  Slavs,  Teutons,  Lithuanians,  Iranians, 
Indians,  Latins  and  Greeks,  or,  possibly,  more  exactly,  the  races  that 
first  spoke  these  languages.  The  early  home  of  the  Aryans  was  long 
held  to  be  the  high  plateau,  north  of  the  Himalayas,  in  Central  Asia, 
but  of  late  this  hypothesis,  which  rested  rather  on  ignorance  of  the  facts 
than  on  definite  knowledge,  has  been  much  shaken,  and  it  has  been 
held  with  plausibility  that  the  once  heretical  notion  that  it  had  its  home 
in  Europe  has  some  interesting  arguments  in  its  favor.  Together 
with  this  hypothesis,  which  seems  to  have  owed  its  origin  to  the  general 
impression  that  Asia,  with  its  historical  antiquity,  must  have  been  the 
mother  of  nations,  there  has  also  succumbed  any  wide  confidence  in  a 
remote  special  connection  between  the  Italians  and  the  Greeks.  In 
the  absence  of  definite  knowledge  this  theory  has  flourished,  as  a  bit 
of  inheritance  from  the  loftier  repute,  doubtless, of  Greek  and  Roman 
antiquity,  but  it  is  only  a  hypothesis  by  no  means  firmly  established. 
It  has  been  maintained  that  the  two  races,  besides  their  common  inheri- 
tance, owned  reminiscences  of  a  union  merely  between  themselves  sub- 


IN  TROD  UCTOR  Y. 


sequent  to  their  separation  from  the  main  stock,  reminiscences,  to  be 
sure,  of  a  very  vague  and  shadowy  kind,  yet  sufificient  to  prove  their 
early  union.  But  this  is  mere  conjecture,  built  on  a  very  slight  founda- 
tion, and  unable  to  present  convincing  proofs.  The  differences  between 
the  two  races  are  too  great  to  warrant  any  assertion  of  their  original 
identity.  At  the  first  dawnings  of  history  we  find  the  Greeks  settled 
in  the  land  which  is  still  the  home  of  their  descendants. 

Undoubtedly  the  early  founders  of  this  illustrious  people  formed  a 
race  that  had  risen  but  little  above  absolute  savagery.  Just  as  mathe- 
maticians are  able  to  ascertain  the  height  of  a  mountain  without  climb- 
ing it,  so  modern  science  has  been  enabled  to  collect  from  detached 
testimony  a  dim  picture  of  the  life  of  the  pre-historic  Aryan  races. 

But  the  dimness  of  the  pic- 
ture is  still  its  most  striking 
quality,  although  very  vivid 
accounts  have  been  made  of 
the  idyllic  condition  of  society 
before  the  separation  of  the 
different  component  parts. 
Thus,  they  have  been  repre- 
sented as  forming  a  peaceful 
collection  of  simple  minded 
men,  interested  in  pastoral 
pursuits,  and  enjoying  all  the 
pleasures  which  poets  have  set 
in  the  Golden  Age.  The 
family  life  of  the  early  Aryans 
has  been  an  especial  object 
of  enthusiastic  praise ;  the 
father,  we  have  been  told,  was 
the  protector  and  guardian ; 
the  mother  was  a  worthy 
housewife,  who  addressed  her 
husband  as  "Master";  the 
daughter,  or  "milker,"  as  she 
was  named  after  her  occupa- 
tion in  the  dairy,  flattered 
her  hard-working  brother  by  calling  him  the  "  supporter,"  and  all  these 
words  were  yet  new  enough  to  carry  with  them  full  significance.  These 
happy  people  did  not  live  by  agriculture  alone  ;  they  dwelt  in  houses 
in  walled  towns,  built  wagons,  and  boats  with  rudders,  understood  the 
art  of  weaving ;  they  painted  pictures  and  composed  poems  ;  indeed, 
modern  civilization  seems  to  have  had  a  formidable  rival  in  its  remote 


A   WOMAN  (KORA)  WITH  A  PLOW. 


TRACES  OF   THEIR    ORIGINAL    SAVAGENESS. 


ancestors.  In  fact,  however,  enthusiasm  has  probably  overreached 
itself  in  building  from  words  alone  this  idyllic  vision  of  the  past,  for  it 
seems  more  likely  that  men  had  not  yet  acquired  the  use  of  metals,  and 
enjoyed  the  meager  civilization  of  the  stone-age.  Some  memorials  of 
this  antiquity  we  see  in  the  discovery  of  the  lake-dwellings  in  the  lake 
of  Geneva,  which  are  curiously  like  similar  constructions  in  New  Guinea. 
Even  if  these  were  the  dwellings  of  an  earlier  race,  the  invading  Aryans 
were  but  more  slightly  civilized,  if  indeed  they  enjoyed  any  superiority 
in  this  respect.  It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  earliest  poetical 
memorials  that  have  reach- 


ed us,  there  are  abundant 
traces  of  a  wild  and  savage 
past,  as  when,  for  example, 
in  the  Iliad,  Achilles  drags 
the  body  of  Hector  around 
the  walls  of  Troy,  and  bur- 
ies twelve  captured  Tro- 
jans at  the  grave  of  his 
friend  Patroclus ;  and  in 
the  mythology  we  find 
further  instances  of  other 
barbarities  of  the  gods.  All 
these  things  go  to  show  the 
existence  of  an  earlier 
period  of  rank  savagery. 
In  prehistoric  times  they  had  risen, if  not  to  such  considerable  civiliza- 
tion as  has  at  times  been  described,  yet  to  a  great  advance  upon  actual 
wildness.  The  stone  and  jade  weapons  had  been  wonderfully  improved 
and  adapted  to  many  useful  practical  ends,  agriculture  had  been  prac- 
ticed, some  animals  had  been  tamed,  the  arts  of  tanning  hides,  braiding, 
spinning,  and  probably  weaving  were  known,  the  rudiments  at  least  of 
civilization  had  been  painfully  attained.  The  examination  of  their  old 
ash-heaps  and  a  host  of  other  bits  of  evidence  lead  us  to  the  opinion 
that  for  instance  the  first  Aryan  settlers  in  Italy  were  probably  rather 
lower  than  the  Celts  and  Germans  when  these  were  first  mentioned  in 
history.  If  we  remember  that  the  use  of  metals  is  one  of  the  most 
important  steps  in  the  civilization  of  a  race,  and  that  this  had 
not  been  learned  by  the  Aryans  until  after  their  separation,  it  is  easy 
and  probably  accurate  to  estimate  the  degree  of  their  culture  as  some- 
thing yet  extremely  crude.  The  determining  of  dates  in  this  misty 
period  is  obviously  impossible. 

When  and  why  the  separation  of  the  difTerent  races  took  place  can  not 
be  determined.     The  Greeks,  like  almost  all  the  Aryans  at  the  begin- 


PENELOPE    AT    THE    LOOM. 


INTRODUCTOR  V. 


ning  of  their  history,  imagined  themselves  the  native,  autochthonous 
inhabitants  of  the  regions  where  they  found  themselves  settled  from 
time  immemorial.  There  we  find  them  at  the  first  dawning  of  history, 
and  there  they  had  been  for  many  years, 

Greece  itself  is  a  triangular  shaped  peninsula,  with  its  northern  base 
resting  on  what  is  now  Turkey  in  Europe,  extending  southeasterly  into 
the  eastern  part  of  the  Mediterranean.  Near  the  southeasterly  part  of 
this  peninsula,  another  peninsula  is  attached  to  the  northern  portion, 

by  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth,  that  pro- 
jects into  the  sea  south  of  the  main- 
land with  something  of  the  shape  of 
an  ivy-leaf.  This  part  was  called  the 
Peloponnesus.  In  addition  there  was 
a  fringe  of  islands  in  the  sea,  and  a 
small  part  of  the  coast  of  Asia.  The 
whole  country  lies  between  the  for- 
tieth and  thirty-sixth  degrees  of  lati- 
tude ;  its  greatest  length  is  not  more 
than  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles ;  its 
greatest  breadth,  about  one  hundred 
and  eighty.  The  total  area  of  the 
mainland  is  only  a  little  more  than 
twenty  thousand  miles  or  about  one 
third  of  that  of  New  England.  This 
scanty  region  was  sub-divided  into 
many  small  states ;  Attica,  for  in- 
stance, containing  only  about 
seven  hundred  and  twenty  miles, 
being  thus  a  little  more  than  half  as  large  as  the  State  of 
Rhode  Island.  What  the  country  lacked  in  size  it  made  up  in 
variety.  The  outline  was  very  large,  greater  than  that  of  both 
Spain  and  Portugal,  and  the  mountainous  formations  helped  to  secure 
the  country  from  foreign  invasion.  These  last  had  another,  possibly 
less  advantageous  effect  on  the  political  history  of  the  country  in 
augmenting  the  sense  of  seclusion  and  diversity  of  the  various  states 
Another  direct  effect  was  to  give  variety  of  climate ;  in  the  highlands 
the  snow  lay  deep  till  late  in  the  spring,  while  at  a  lower  level  snow 
was  never  known.  In  the  north,  on  the  shore  of  the  ^gean  Sea,  the 
climate  was  harsh  like  that  of  central  Europe ;  on  the  southern  slopes 
grew  olives  and  grapes,  and  in  the  warmer  regions  figs,  dates,  and 
oranges.  Athens  especially  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  tropical  land, 
being  saved  from  intense  heat,  however,  by  cooling  sea  breezes.  This 
variety  in  the  productions  protected  the    country  from    a  monoton. 


DORIAN   WARRIOR. 


THE   GEOGRAPHICAL   CONDITIONS.  7 

ous  existence  as  a  mere  granary,  and  helped  to  make  it  an  inde- 
pendent, self-supporting  land,  free  from  any  one  engrossing  interest. 
Greece  was  not  strong  or  simple-hearted  enough  to  become  a  conquering 
nation  ;  it  was  defended  by  its  position  from  its  most  powerful  enemies  ; 
and  the  comparative  barrenness  of  its  soil  kept  it  a  country  in  which, 
while  life  was  easily  supported,  there  was  no  temptation  to  seek  for 
great  gain.  The  compact  seclusion  of  the  various  regions  was  doubt- 
less of  very  great  influence  in  preventing  the  unification  of  the  different 
divisions  into  one  whole.  The  political  system  of  Greece  rested  on  the 
idea  of  the  entire  independence  of  each  separate  city,  and  its  history 
is  made  up  of  the  records  of  the  wars  which  this  condition  of  things 
called  forth  until  its  final  termination  in  anarchy.  Possibly  the  Greek 
mind,  with  its  aversion  to  abstractions,  could  never  have  been  tolerant 
of  an  arrangement  which  substituted  a  theoretical  term  for  the  form  of 
rule  which  was  open  to  daily  inspection,  and  moreover  gave  to  the  citi- 
zens a  lively  sense  of  responsibility  which  knit  politics  with  literature 
in  a  way  to  preserve  both  from  remoteness  of  life.  Yet  a  less  doubtful 
reason  was  the  geographical  one,  the  natural  limits  of  the  separate  divi- 
sions, the  local  importance  of  the  leading  city.  Yet  even  this  political 
unit  was  unknown  in  the  earliest  times ;  the  city  grew  up  only  by  the 
amalgamation  of  separate  villages,  and  even  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Peloponnesian  war,  the  remote  parts  of  Greece,  as  in  the  northwest, 
consisted  of  detached  hamlets.  How  far  the  existence  of  various 
boundaries  and  the  great  variety  and  unextravagant  beauty  of  the 
scenery  contributed  to  the  formation  of  the  Greek  taste  can  not  be 
definitely  stated.  We  can  now  only  mention  the  coincidence,  and  the  task 
of  science  is  simply  removing  inexplicability  from  observed  coincidences. 
Although  the  question  is  a  complicated  one,  it  may  yet  be  possible  to 
recognize  in  the  conditions  of  the  Greek  life  some  of  the  causes  that 
led  to  the  moderation  of  their  taste  and  to  their  aversion  to  all  forms 
of  extravagance.  In  the  land  that  they  inhabited  they  saw  no  inac- 
cessible mountains  ;  there  were  no  vast  expanses  of  plain,  no  gloomy 
masses  of  forest  ;  the  water  that  washed  their  shores  did  not  present 
an  unbroken  vast  expanse ;  its  surface  was  covered  with  numerous 
islands,  there  was  no  great  sweep  of  a  mysterious  sea  to  overawe  the 
imagination :  every  thing  was  limited  and  open  to  approach.  These 
facts  perhaps  saved  the  Greeks  from  a  perception  of  their  own  insig- 
nificance ;  they  were  not  overborne  by  the  terrible  relentlessness  of 
nature  and  the  impossibility  of  taming  it.  They  escaped  the  depres- 
sion that  other  races  knew  in  less  gracious  surroundings,  just  as  a 
person  brought  up  in  comfort  or  luxury  is  unconscious  of  the  huge 
store  of  misery  that  infolds  the  world.  They  had  not  ever  present 
before  them  any  terrible  symbol  of  the  cruelty  of  nature,  and  thus  their 


o  IN  TROD  UCTOR  Y. 

pictures  of  life  were  always  marked  by  grace  and  freedom  from  exag- 
geration. 

Obviously,  any  such  explanation  can  be  no  more  than  a  mere  hypoth- 
esis, but  there  were  other  causes  which  affected  less  obscurely  the 
formation  of  the  Greek  character.  The  extent  of  their  influence  may 
be  readily  estimated  by  those  who  remember  that  the  Greeks  and 
Italians  were  equally  descendants  of  one  race,  and  that  at  their  first 
appearance  in  history  they  were  already  marked  by  sharply  distinct 
traits.  The  abundant  coastline  of  Greece,  the  barrenness  of  its  soil, 
the  number  of  fertile  islands  within  easy  sailing  distance,  contributed 
to  the  formation  of  the  many-sidedness  of  this  people,  by  facilitating 
commerce  and  exploration,  and  by  adapting  them  to  a  varied,  unmonoto- 
nous  existence.  They  were,  moreover,  thus  brought  into  early  contact 
with  other  races  of  advanced  civilization,  whose  arts  and  sciences  they 
swiftly  absorbed  and  made  their  own  ;  what  was  thus  acquired  they  at 
once  elevated  into  something  beyond  what  had  satisfied  its  original 
owners.  Nature  thus  marked  out  Greece  as  a  spot  where  an  intelli- 
gent race,  exceptionally  preserved  from  anxious  care  on  the  one  hand, 
and  from  no  less  fatal  prosperity  on  the  other,  might  be  free  to 
develop  itself  under  the  impulse,  but  not  under  the  shadow,  of  riper 
civilizations.  It  was  an  aristocratic  immunity  from  sordidness  and 
materialism,  as  well  as  from  the  tiresome  sameness  of  an  agricultural 
life, that  the  whole  race  enjoyed,  and  with  the  advantage  that  the  race 
was  one  in  which  subtlety,  delicacy,  and  intelligence  were  the  common 
property  of  the  whole  people  and  not  a  costly  exotic  that  was  to  be 
acquired  by  only  a  few.  The  struggle  for  mere  existence  was  not  so 
severe  that  half  the  men  were  turned  into  machines  while  the  other  half 
found  their  chief  delight  in  physical  comfort  ;  but  life  was  easy  for  all 
who  were  free,  and  the  higher  interests  were  never  crushed  out  of  the 
majority,  as  generally  happens  in  our  modern  civilizations. 

The  Greeks  had  other  qualities  of  an  aristocracy  :  they  were  few  in 
numbers,  and  they  were  not  marked  by  monotonous  similarity.  The 
two  main  families  into  which  they  were  divided  were  the  ^Eolian  and 
the  Ionic,  to  which  must  be  added  the  Dorian  and  Athenian,  who  in 
time  acquired  the  greatest  prominence  in  the  political  and  literary 
history  of  their  country.  The  ^olian  branch  never  attained  equal 
importance  ;  their  qualities  were'  less  peculiarly  Greek  than  those  of 
their  fellow  countrymen,  who  were  later  never  tired  of  casting  their 
faults  in  their  teeth.  The  Boeotians,  for  instance,  were  despised  as  a 
coarse,  sordid  people,  without  interest  in  intellectual  matters,  who 
shared  the  qualities  of  their  heavy  air  and  thick  soil.  The  Dorians, 
originally  a  single  people,  soon  grew  to  be  a  large  branch.  They 
were  a  genuine  mountain-race,  who  after  the  Trojan  war  invaded  the 


THE    SUBDIVISIONS  OF  THE   RACE. 


Peloponnesus  where  they  gradually  established  themselves  and  acquired 
new  power.  The  Dorians  possessed  sturdy,  energetic,  conservative 
traits  which  preserved  and  extended  a  certain  rugged  virtue,  but  paid 
for  it  the  usual  price  of  harshness  and  a  latent  hostility  to  high  civil- 
ization. The  lonians,  on  the  other  hand,  who  settled  on  the  coast  of 
Asia  Minor,  soon  ripened  into 
an  accomplished  and  brilliant 
race,  whose  charm  and  flexibil- 
ity stand  in  marked  contrast 
with  the  severity  of  the  Dorians. 
They  founded  colonies  and  dis- 
seminated their  curiosity  about 
life  by  their  early  attention  to 
literature,  and  not  to  the  poeti- 
cal side  alone  but  also  to  history 
and  geography,  as  well  as  to 
philosophy  and  science.  The 
Athenians  were  most  closely 
allied  with  the  lonians,  and  they 
carried  out  most  fully  what 
these  had  begun.  In  all  that 
they  did  they  left  the  mark 
of  grace  and  that  highest  art 
which  is  simplicity.  Their 
glories  will  become  sufficiently 
clear  in  the  progress  of  th,is 
book,  and  it  will  be  seen  how 
much  splendor  they  threw  on 
the  whole  country.  For,  after 
all,  distinct  as  were  the  various 
qualities  of  the  different  Greek 
races,  they  all  combined  to 
form  a  national  character  which 
stands  in  sharp  contrast  with 
that  of  other  peoples.  They 
shared,  though  in  unequal 
measure,  certain  common  properties,  the  love  of  freedom,  keen  interest^ 
in  public  affairs,  poetical  fancy,  and  a  disposition  for  eloquence  ;  they 
all  possessed  a  sensitiveness  to  beauty  and  a  delicacy  of  perception, 
which  made  them  a  unit  in  the  face  of  foreign  nations,  although  they 
were  alive  to  their  several  family  differences.  Similar  differences  in' 
what  yet  formed  a  separate  entity,  were  those  of  the  various  dialects 
of  the  one  Greek  language,  which   belonged  to  the  different  branches 


DORIAN  GIRL. — {Victor  in  the  races.') 


lO  INTROD  UCTOR  V. 

of  the  nation.  And  just  as  the  Attic  division  became  the  most  im- 
portant, the  language  as  they  spoke  it  became  the  most  authoritative 
and  finally  the  only  prevalent  one.  The  wealth  of  the  Greek  tongue 
in  its  earliest  traces  proves  that  it  was  the  product  of  a  long  prehistoric 
development.  What  the  language  was  in  the  Homeric  poems  it  sub- 
stantially remained  throughout  the  whole  period  in  which  Greek 
literature  flourished  :  a  rich,  copious  means  of  expression,  abounding 
in  words  that  readily  lent  themselves  to  the  formation  of  compounds, 
and  with  a  flexible  syntax  that  well  represented  the  Greek  subtlety 
and  ingenuity.     Of  course  it  was  not  a  mere   chance  that  gave  this 


ATHENIAN     COSTUMES. 


race  so  marvelous  an  instrument  ;  they  created  it  rather  by  the  need 
which  they  felt  for  expressing  their  own  thoughts.  As  has  been  said, 
its  ripe  form  indicated  a  long  past  ;  a  language  like  the  Greek  does 
not  grow  in  a  day,  and  other  proofs  of  its  antiquity  are  not  lacking. 
In  their  earliest  work  that  has  come  down  to  us  in  a  state  of  comple- 
tion, that  is  to  say  in  the  Homeric  poems,  we  find  a  degree  of  poetic 
excellence  that  bears  indubitable  evidence  of  a  long  line  of  predeces- 
sors. Every  successful  work  implies  a  host  of  failures  ;  the  opinion 
that  the  facility  and  grace  of  the  Homeric  hexameter  were  a  special 
creation  out  of  nothing  by  a  gifted  man,  is  one  that  has  long 
held  sway  over  men's  minds,  fostering  mistaken  views  concerning  the 
miraculous  qualities  of  genius ;  yet  the  examination  of  every  case  can 
but  confirm  the  opposite  view.     Wherever  we  have  all  the  testimony, 


THEIR   GENIUS  NOT  MIRACULOUS.  II 

we  see  failures  preceding  the  final  success,  and  the  slow  growth  of 
victory,  as  inevitably  as  we  see  the  growth  of  all  phenomena.  What 
has  at  first  seemed  to  be  the  product  of  some  one  half-inspired  person 
has,  when  closely  studied,  turned  out  to  be  only  the  full  development 
of  a  crude  past.  Such  is  uniformly  the  case  in  modern  literatures,  in 
which  alone  we  have  all  the  evidence,  while  of  the  classic  literatures 
we  have  in  general  scarcely  any  thing  but  the  best  performance.  Only 
their  most  famous  work  remains  in  sight  above  the  flood  of  oblivion, 
and  from  the  existence  of  two  literatures,  consisting  mainly  of  master- 
pieces, it  was  easy  to  imagine  that  the  ancients  possessed  the  art,  since 
lost,  of  producing  great  work  without  an  apprenticeship.  The  indis- 
criminating  fervor,  too,  of  praise  poured  out  on  Greek  literature 
has  at  times  given  to  the  difficult  task  of  examining  its  growth  the 
appearance  of  irreverence  and  iconoclasticism.  To  be  sure,  this  evil 
spirit  of  analysis  has  met  no  more  formidable  opposition  than  the  asser- 
tion that  the  great  writers,  being  creative,  are  hence  superior  to  mole- 
eyed  criticism,  but  this  assertion  is  itself  open  to  doubt,  and  within  the 
last  hundred  years  the  whole  point  of  view  has  been  in  process  of 
change. 


BOOK  I.— THE  EPICS. 


CHAPTER  I.— THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

I. — The  Beginnings  of  Literature — Tiie  Influence  of  Religious  Feeling — The  Traces  of 
Early  Song.  II. — The  Hexameter,  and  its  Possible  Growth.  Ill, — The  Homeric 
Poems — The  References  to  an  Earlier  Period — The  Ionic  Origin  of  the  Poems— 
The  Existence  of  Homer.  IV. —The  Long  Discussion  of  this  Subject:  Bentley, 
Wolf,  etc.  Possible  Date  of  the  Compositions  of  these  Poems — Archaeological 
Illustrations. 

I. 

IN  time  the  notion  of  what  literature  is,  has  undergone  serious 
modification,  and  it  has  been  gradually  becoming  plain  that  it  is 
unwise  to  speak  of  it  as  a  separate  concrete  thing  which  may  be  detached 
from  life  and,  as  it  were,  be  put  on  a  shelf  to  be  taken  down  at  odd 
moments  for  examination  like  a  bundle  of  dry  bones.  Yet  so  readily 
are  unknown  coins  used  as  counters,  and  words  employed  as  a  substitute 
for  thought,  that  literature  and  art  have  been,  and  for  that  matter  still 
are,  spoken  of  as  if  they  were  separate  and  remote  exercises  in  com- 
position rather  than  the  utterances  of  human  beings,  the  representation 
of  men's  thoughts  and  feelings,  the  fixed  shadows  of  generations  of 
men.  Of  no  people  is  it  truer  than  of  the  Greeks,  that  their  litera- 
ture is  not  an  artificial  product,  but  the  race  speaking.  The  most  im- 
portant thing  to  remember  in  studying  their  writings  is  that  these  are 
the  direct  expression  of  a  free  people,  leading  its  own  life,  untrammeled 
by  inherited  rules  or  authoritative  convention.  This  is  the  keynote  to 
the  comprehension  of  Greek  literature,  and  one  that  it  is  not  perfectly 
easy  for  us  to  understand,  trained  as  we  are  to  look  at  life  not  directly, 
but  through  the  eyes  of  some  one  else,  and  accustomed  to  learn  methods 
rather  than  to  exercise  direct  vision.  Only  within  the  last  hun- 
dred years,  and  in  some  part  under  the  inspiration  of  the  Greeks,  have 
we  begun  again  to  see  that  life  itself  is  something  greater,  vaster,  and 
more  solemn  than  any  literary  method. 

While  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  are  the  earliest  Greek  poems  that 
have  come  down  to  us,  it  has  become  plain  that  they  mark,  as  all  the 
best  work  does,  the  end  rather  than  the  beginning  of  a  great  movement. 
Yet  everywhere  the  earliest  songs  are  those  of  a  religious  nature,  and 


THE  GREEK  GODS. 


13 


before  men  begin  to  draw  pictures  of  society,  indeed  before  there  is 
any  society  for  them  to  draw,  their  attention  is  called  to  their  relations 
with  the  world  about  and  above  them  with  all  its  mysteries  and  terrors. 
From  the  earliest  times  men  grope  for  some  religious  explanation  of 
the  various  phenomena  that  they  observe,  and  their  first  utterances  are 
the  expression  of  their  ready  wonder  and  equally  ready  explanations. 
From  fancied  or  observed  coincidences,  through  thousands  of  imagined 
explanations,  there  grows  up  a  mass  of  myths  about  the  impressive 
order  and  apparent  willfulness  of  nature,  such  as  we  find  to  have  been 
the  common  property  of  the  whole  Aryan  family,  which  developed 
into  the  adoration  and  personification  of  natural  forces  and  phenomena. 
This  underlies  the  Greek  religion,  but  yet  it  is  not  a  sufficient  explana- 
tion to  call  this  simply  a  nature  wor- 
ship. Zeus  did  not  rule  as  a  mere 
vast  natural  force  ;  Poseidon  was 
more  than  the  mighty  spirit  of  the 
deep  ;  the  gods  were,  rather,  exalted 
beings  who  retained  as  their  appurte- 
nances these  qualities  of  the  forces 
of  nature,  but  they  had  developed  in 
the  clear  sunlight  of  the  Greek  mind 
into  something  like  civilized  human 
beings,  devoid  of  cruel  and  mon- 
strous qualities,  and  subject  to  the 
higher  rule  of  ethical  law.  Inasmuch 
as  the  first  thing  that  strikes  us  in 
examining  the  Greek  mythology  is 
the  absence  of  what  we  may  call 
municipal  law  in  Olympus,  and  the 
social  laxity  of  the  divine  beings,  the 
mention  of  their  subjection  seems 
absurd.  Their  frequent  infractions 
of  the  moral  law  seem  to  con- 
tradict the  notion  of  their  subordi- 
nation to  ethical  control,  and  since  it 
is  man  and  not  nature  that  is  moral, 
it  has  been  held  that  the  Greek  religion  was  purely  a  worship  of  nature. 
But  other  testimony  destroys  the  absolute  sway  of  this  theory.  In 
the  Homeric  poems  we  find  the  gods  but  little  removed  from  the  con- 
dition of  extraordinary  people.  Even  before  Homer  the  deities  seem 
to  have  met  more  than  half  way  the  men  who  were  promoted  to  their 
company  ;  the  relics  of  nature-worship  survived,  but  as  attributes  of  a 
worshiped  deity,  not  as  themselves  objects  of  adoration.    Thus  Apollo 


OLYMPIAN  ZEUS. 


14  THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

was  the  sun-god,  but  it  was  the  god  and  not  the  sun  that  received  the 
prayers  and  thanks  of  men. 

Nothing  again,  to  consider  the  ethical  control  of  the  gods,  is  remoter 
from  the  Greek  mind  than  the  notion  of  lawlessness.  It  would  espe- 
cially ill  become  such  half-human  deities  as  those  who  filled  its  Olympus, 
and  in  the  most  frequent  as  well  as  the  most  solemn  expressions  of 
this  literature  we  find  continual  reference  to  the  existence  of  a  higher 
law  that  rules  over  gods  as  well  as  men,  and  the  belief  in  this  equable 
justice  was  the  core  of  their  religion.  In  Homer,  Herodotus,  yEschylus, 
Pindar,  Simonides,  Sophocles,  we  find  the  statement  of  this  principle 
which  also  animated  the  philosophers  and  the  populace.  What  is  most 
striking  about  this  faith  is  its  coherence  with  the  general  attitude  of 
the  Greek  mind  towards  the  universe  with  its  abhorrence  of  inexplica- 
ble and  willful  forces.  Harmony  was  the  law  of  its  being,  in  art  and 
literature  as  well  as  in  religion,  and  above  and  beyond  the  gods  with  an 
incrustation  of  bafiflLng  and  discordant  myths  lay  a  wise  fate  that  ruled 
mysteriously  but  with  justice.  This  was  their  solution,  a  harmonious 
omnipotence  directing  gods  and  men. 

How  it  grew  up  we  can  not  affirm  any  more  than  we  can  affirm  in 
what  manner  the  principles  that  we  find  in  their  earliest  work  grew  up. 
It  is  hard  enough  to  show  that  they  are  there,  but  it  may  yet  be  said  that 
its  existence  at  the  remotest  times  is  another  proof  of  the  existence  of 
a  very  long  past  of  which  only  meager  traces  survive.  In  the  Homeric 
poems  we  find  reference  to  this  venerable  antiquity  in  the  mention  of 
the  poems  sung  to  propitiate  Apollo  at  the  time  of  the  plague  that 
visited  the  camp  of  the  Achaians,  and  as  a  hymn  of  victory  for  Hector's 
death.  Battle-songs,  dance-songs,  and  military  dances  had  a  remote 
religious  origin,  for  the  solemnity  of  religious  exercises  preserves  the 
oldest  customs  unchanged,  and  many  of  these  found  their  way  into 
the  subsequent  development  of  profane  poetry.  Thus  when  men  called 
on  the  gods  by  many  names  under  the  belief  that  one  of  these  might 
be  more  acceptable  to  him  than  another,  and  attempted  to  conciliate 
him  by  recounting  his  exploits,  they  were,  in  a  way,  laying  some  of 
the  foundations  of  profane  poetry,  as  they  were  doing  when  they  sang 
the  bold  deeds  of  some  great  leader;  thus  we  see  the  language  and 
measures  acquiring  the  use  which  was  afterwards  of  profit  to  literature. 
The  oracles,  too,  were  of  another  ancient  religious  form. 

In  all  these  ways  the  use  of  songs  was  frequent :  the  deeds  of  heroes, 
for  instance,  were  perpetuated  by  minstrels  from  an  early  date,  and 
traces  of  their  existence  are  to  be  found  in  the  Homeric  poems.  Thus 
Homer — to  adopt  for  convenience  the  name  of  the  alleged  author  of 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey — calls  Achilles  swift-footed,  but  nothing  in  the 
Iliad  justifies  the  use  of  this  name,  which  was  apparently  inherited  from 


THE    POPULAR   SONGS— THE  HEXAMETER.  15 

the  poets  who  sang  other  incidents  of  the  hero's  career.  They  had  an 
abundance  of  subjects  to  choose  from,  and  Homer  frequently  refers  to 
myths  and  legends  that  could  scarcely  have  been  overlooked  by  the 
wandering  bards,  like  those  whom  he  mentions  in  the  Odyssey.  Of 
other  forms  of  popular  poetry  there  are  abundant  traces,  such  as  the 
wedding  and  funeral  chants  and  the  many  little  songs  of  daily  life  ;  for 
farmers,  mechanics,  workmen  of  all  sorts  had  their  special  favorite 
poems,  from  which  grew  the  familiarity  of  the  people  with  poetical 
melody  and  that  general  interest  in  song  without  which  poetry  is  but  a 
cold,  artificial  thing.  In  the  numerous  riddles,  fables,  catches,  proverbs, 
and  local  legends,  we  see  other  familiar  forms  of  verse.  Names 
of  the  authors  of  these  various  songs  and  sayings  are  naturally  enough 
lost  in  the  same  obscurity  that  always  accompanies  the  beginnings  of 
popular  literature.  In  later  times  the  effort  was  made  to  relieve  this 
ignorance  of  the  past  by  the  invention  of  a  number  of  bards  who  were 
thrust  into  the  dark  period  somewhat  indiscriminately.  Orpheus  is  a 
pure  invention,  as  mythical  as  his  Sanskrit  compeer,  the  ideal  poet 
Rithu.  Musaeus,  the  Servant  of  the  Muses,  and  Eumolpus,  the  Good 
Singer,  show  by  their  names  that  they  sprang  from  the  brains  of  some 
grammarian,  and  the  rest  are  similar  shadows.  While  the  names  of 
the  earliest  singers  are  lost  as  hopelessly  as  those  of  the  private  soldiers 
in  the  Trojan  war,  their  existence  is  proved  by  the  excellence  of  the 
Homeric  epics,  and  by  the  fixed  formulas  that  are  among  the  un- 
mistakable reminiscences  of  those  poems. 

II. 

Another  strong  proof  of  a  long  growth  is  the  smoothness  of  the 
hexameter,  one  of  the  most  wonderful  products  of  the  Hellenic  intelli- 
gence. Yet  it  is  not  to  be  understood  that  the  Greeks  created  this 
amazing  instrument  out  of  hand.  Far  from  it ;  in  the  first  place  no 
such  complicated  mechanism  is  ever  suddenly  created  by  any  man,  or 
set  of  men,  however  brilliant  ;  and  moreover,  even  if  such  creation  were 
possible,  it  was  unnecessary,  for  the  Greeks  already  possessed,  in  com- 
mon with  the  rest  of  the  Aryan  family,  a  rudimentary  measure  out  of 
which  they  developed  this  favorite  form.  This  common  property  of 
the  whole  family,  or  at  least  of  the  Indian  and  Iranian  division,  the 
Germanic,  and  the  Greco-Italic,  consisted  of  averse,  formed  of  two  dis- 
tinctly separate  parts,  each  of  which  contained  four  ictuses  and  four 
unaccented  syllables  ;  each  part  beginning  with  an  unaccented  syllable 
and  ending  with  an  ictus.  This  four-timed  half-verse  underlies  the 
oldest  songs  of  the  Germanic  races  as  well  as  the  early  Vedic  hymns,  the 
crude  Saturnian  verse  of  Italian  races,  and  formed  the  basis  of  the 


1 6  THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

Greek  hexameter  in  the  hands  of  the  race  that  touched  it  only  to  bring 
it  to  perfection.  The  measure,  still  familiar  to  children  beginning  their 
lessons  at  the  dancing-school, — the  left  foot  forward  three  times,  then 
right  and  left,  in  four  time,  was  the  basis  of  the  mingled  song  and 
dance,  forward  and  back,  or  to  the  right  or  left  and  back,  practiced  at 
the  earliest  sacrifices  of  our  remote  ancestors,  thus  forming  another 
instance  of  the  way  in  which,  as  Sir  John  Lubbock  says,  the  sports  or 
lessons  of  children  reproduce  early  stages  in  the  history  of  mankind. 
Possessed  by  all  before  this  separation,  in  the  hands  of  the  Greeks  it 
grew  to  the  condition  in  which  we  find  it  in  the  early  epic,  the  fitting 
instrument  for  those  wonderful  poems.  That  they  brought  it  to  its 
perfection  is  but  one,  and  not  the  least  important,  of  their  many 
accomplishments. 


III. 


Such  are  some  of  the  reminiscences  of  the  forgotten  past  that  survive 
in  the  work  of  Homer,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  they  are  not  the  only  ones. 
The  development  of  the  language  into  the  rich,  copious,  and  flexible 
instrument  which  we  find  there,  belongs  also  to  the  indirect  proofs  of 
the  already  great  age  of  the  race.  More  than  this,  it  is  to  be  noticed 
that  Homer  mentions  the  minstrels  who  sang  the  past  glories  of  admired 
heroes.  The  repose  which  followed  the  period  of  migrations  gave  an 
opportunity  for  fuller  literary  development  by  securing  the  perspective 
which  is  as  essential  for  a  poem  as  a  picture.  It  was  in  the  colonies 
established  on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  and  especially  in  the  central 
region,  Ionia,  that  civilization  first  appeared.  Doubtless,  intercourse 
with  older  foreign  countries  contributed,  if  not  a  model,  at  least  many 
valuable  influences  and  suggestions  of  custom,  which  were  soon  modified 
by  the  ingenious  spirit  of  the  Greeks.  The  colonies  also  preserved 
distinct  memories  of  their  mother-country  ;  the  emigrants  had  carried 
with  them  their  old  legends  and  traditions,  yet  it  is  only  natural  that 
the  subject  which  had  most  interest  for  them  was  the  description  of 
the  victory  of  the  Greeks  over  the  Asiatics  in  the  Trojan  war.  For 
this  they  would  have  a  feeling  which  they  could  not  have  for  the  legends 
that  referred  to  events  that  took  place  on  Greek  soil.  Both  their 
inherited  patriotism  and  that  which  their  new  home  inspired,  would 
lend  to  this  story  a  fascination  which  the  many  other  tales  of  Greece 
would  have  been  unable  to  arouse.  It  was  the  same  interest  that  the 
Spaniards  felt  for  the  Cid ;  or  that  the  writers  of  later  epics  have  pre- 
sumed to  exist  with  regard  to  their  heroes. 


THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION.  1/ 

So  much  is  probable,  or,  to  be  safer,  so  much  is  possible,  that 
the  Homeric  poems  were  of  Ionic  origin.  Any  one,  however,  who  feels 
emboldened  to  make  any  further  statements  about  their  composition, 
finds  his  path  a  thorny  one,  for  the  Trojan  war  is  not  yet  over,  and  any 
definite  affirmation  that  may  be  made  about  it  is  likely  to  call  forth 
serious  opposition.  In  regard  to  so  unsettled  a  matter  it  may  be  best 
simply  to  state  some  of  the  conditions  that  render  certainty  about 
Homer  and  the  Homeric  poems  extremely  difficult.  In  the  first  place 
the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  Homer,  the  author  of  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey,  ever  lived,  is  one  that  finds  waiting  it  two  widely  distinct 
answers.  Until  towards  the  end  of  the  last  century,  the  existence  of 
Homer  was  no  more  generally  doubted  than  that  of  Virgil.  Yet  even 
the  many  birthplaces  that  were  assigned  him  by  popular  tradition  could 
not  save  him  from  modern  criticism,  and  while  the  superfluous  claim- 
ants for  the  honor  of  fellow-citizenship  with  Homer  could  never  come 
to  agreement,  their  unusual  number  was  held  to  corroborate  the  opinion 
that  he  certainly  must  have  lived  at  some  time  and  at  some  place. 
Under  the  impression  that  there  was  a  Homer,  his  bust  was  made, 
evidently  at  a  time  when  sculpture  was  in  a  flourishing  condition,  but 
its  existence  no  more  proves  that  the  poet  ever  lived  than  does  the 
famous  statue  in  the  Belvedere  of  the  Vatican  prove  that  Apollo  ever 
actually  appeared  in  human  form.  Both  do  but  attest  what  most  of 
the  Greeks  generally  believed. 


IV. 

Already  in  antiquity  a  few  writers  held  that  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
were  probably  written  by  diff"erent  men,  but  this  view  met  with  no 
wide  acceptance  and  was  commonly  regarded  as  a  mere  paradox. 
During  the  tutelage  of  modern  civilization  the  views  of  the  ancients 
prevailed,  especially  with  regard  to  their  own  writings,  and  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  last  century  the  traditions  of  Homer  who  composed 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  remained  almost  unquestioned.  A  century 
earlier,  indeed,  F^nelon  in  his  De  r Existence  de  Dieu,  brought  forward 
the  writings  of  these  poems  by  a  man  of  genius  as  an  argument  in 
favor  of  the  analogous  creation  of  the  world  by  an  all-wise  ruler  of  the 
universe  ;  yet  at  about  the  same  time,  the  Abbe  d'Aubignac,  who  is 
only  known  now  for  his  unfaltering  allegiance  to  the  three  unities, 
affirmed  that  it  was  impossible  that  a  Homer  ever  lived,  and  gave 
utterances  to  skeptical  views  concerning  the  origin  of  the  Homeric 
poems.  But  this  was  a  mere  vague  statement  by  an  unlearned  man 
who  expressed  an  opinion  without  t4ie  capacity  to  support  and  defend 


i8 


THE   HOMERIC   QUESTION. 


it  by  any  other  argument  than  mere  abuse  of  all  Greek  literature, 
which  he  set  much  lower  than  that  of  Rome.  This  view  of  the 
superiority  of  Latin  literature  was  one  that  belonged  to  the  whole  age 
between  the  expiration  of  Humanism  in  the  seventeenth  century  and 
the  beginning  of  the  Romantic  movement  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth, 
a  period  of  benumbing  reaction  in  literature,  art,  and  politics,  against 
individuality  and  independence.  The  tamer  merits  of  the  Latin 
writers  found  sympathizing  admirers  in  men  who  felt  disgust  with  the 
extravagances  of  the  later  writers  who  drew  their  inspiration  from  the 
Renaissance.  The  Roman  hterature  was  the  readiest  model  of  cor- 
rectness and  of  what  could  be  done 
by  training,  and  the  study  of  the  less 
formal  Greek  consequently  lan- 
guished, surviving  mainly  because  it 
was  the  language  in  which  the  New 
Testament  was  written.  Through- 
out Europe  the  tepid  excellence  and 
echoing  rhetoric  of  the  Latin  writers 
prevailed  almost  without  opposi- 
tion ;  Statius,  Lucan,  and  Virgil 
were  the  admired  models.  If  we 
consider  England  alone,  we  shall 
recall  Pope's  ignorance  of  Greek, 
Addison's  very  moderate  command 
of  the  tongue.  Dr.  Johnson's  supe- 
rior knowledge  of  Latin ;  and  the 
history  of  education  there  and  on 
the  continent  makes  it  clear  that 
when  men  spoke  of  the  classics  they 
meant  the  Latin  writers,  and  that 
the  influence  of  the  Greek  was  almost 

n  \^  i»i  cj  i\, . 

nothing. 
The  quarrel  between  the  ancients  and  the  moderns,  as  it  is  called, 
which  broke  out  in  England,  France,  and  Italy  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  was  full  of  unexpected  results  for  both  ancient 
and  modern  literature,  for  it  rendered  necessary  a  general  overhauling 
of  men's  opinions  concerning  both.  The  most  modern  of  the  moderns 
agreed  in  giving  Homer  an  inferior  place ;  at  this  the  scholars  took  fire 
and  began  to  sing  the  praises  of  the  old  poet.  They  were  further 
driven  to  amending  their  rusty  scholarship.  In  England  the  discus- 
sion called  forth  from  Bentley  (1662-1742)  his  exposure  of  the  ungen- 
uineness  of  the  so-called  letters  of  Phalaris,  which  was  a  serious  attack 
on   the   previous  rhetorical,  uncritical  reading  of  the  ancients.     The 


THE  HISTORY  OF  GREEK  STUDIES.  1 9 

work  which  Bentley  began  in  this  way,  he  carried  further  in  his 
later  investigations,  and  he  thus  deserves  the  credit  of  establishing  mod- 
ern scholarship  on  the  lines  which  it  has  since  followed.  He  gave  only 
incidental  attention  to  what  afterwards  became  the  still  unsettled 
Homeric  question,  yet  in  171 3  we  find  him  denying  the  current  notion 
that  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  were  fables  ingeniously  devised  by  a 
moral  teacher  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  allegorical  instruction  to 
mankind.  Thus  Pope,  in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  the  Iliad, 
speaks  of  the  allegorical  fable  as  one  of  the  many  causes  of  admiration, 
and  treats  the  poem  throughout  as  a  bit  of  literary  composition,  an 
artificial  product.  Anthony  Collins,  in  his  Discourse  of  Free  Think- 
ing, had  said  that  Homer  "  designed  his  poem  for  eternity,  to  please 
and  instruct  mankind."  "  Take  my  word  for  it,"  said  Bentley,  "  poor 
Homer,  in  those  circumstances  and  early  times,  had  never  such  aspiring 
thoughts.  He  wrote  a  sequel  of  songs  and  rhapsodies,  to  be  sung  by 
himself  for  small  earnings  and  good  cheer  at  festivals  and  other  days 
of  merriment ;  the  Iliad  he  made  for  men,  and  the  Odyssey  for  the 
other  sex.  These  loose  poems  were  not  collected  together  in  the  form 
of  an  epic  poem  till  Pisistratus'  time."  This  again  was  but  a  side  asser- 
tion, thrown  out  without  the  proof  that  only  longer  and  more  careful 
study  could  supply.  The  same  opinion,  however,  found  frequent 
expression  in  the  books  of  separate  authors,  for  every  important  mod- 
ification of  the  generally  accepted  views  on  any  given  subject  is  com- 
monly preceded  by  a  running  fire  that  shows  that  many  men  are 
working  in  the  same  direction.  Thus  Vico  in  Italy,  and  a  Professor 
Blackwell  of  Aberdeen,  made  very  similar  statements  on  this  question. 
Robert  Wood's  Essay  on  the  Original  Genius  of  Homer,  published  in 
1775,  was  another  important  contribution  to  the  general  discussion. 
On  the  one  hand  it  disposed  of  the  moribund  notion  that  Homer  had 
composed  his  poems  with  a  didactic  intention  and  substituted  for  it 
the  representation  of  a  man  of  vast  native  genius,  therein,  it  will  be 
noticed,  agreeing  with  the  then  new  and  now  vanishing  idea  of  genius 
as  an  inspirer  of  literary  composition ;  on  the  other,  it  proposed  a  pos- 
sibly more  useful  novelty,  for  it  contained  an  account  of  his  visit  to 
Troy  and  an  attempt  to  test  Homer's  descriptions  by  an  examination 
of  the  sites  mentioned  in  the  Iliad. 

All  these  instances,  as  well  as  the  increasing  number  of  translations, 
attest  the  growth  of  general  interest  in  Homer.  The  whole  course  of 
men's  thoughts  was  in  process  of  change,  a  new  generation  was  turn- 
ing from  outworn  traditional  authority  to  the  study  of  nature  and 
original  literatures,  and  the  investigation  of  the  earliest  Greek  poems 
gave  men  the  same  delight  that  they  received  from  the  study  of  their 
own   national   beginnings  ;  for  in   fact  they  were  going  back   to  the 


20  THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

beginning  of  all  modern  civilization.  What  had  before  seemed  harsh 
and  violent  in  Homer  no  longer  needed  to  be  apologized  for,  as  Pope 
had  done  for  "the  vicious  and  imperfect  manners"  of  his  heroes. 
Wider  knowledge  brought  its  reward  in  the  greater  tolerance  of  what 
had  shocked  those  men  who  drew  their  notions  of  what  a  hero  should 
be,  and  do,  and  say,  from  what  we  may  call  the  secondary  literatures. 
With  this  tolerance  there  came,  however,  a  certain  intolerance  of 
artifice  and  literary  conventions.  This,  however,  is  not  only  remote 
from  ancient  literature,  it  is  anticipating  the  changes  in  modern  taste. 
Only  very  gradually  did  the  Latin  literature  lose  its  former  superiority, 
and  did  aesthetic  criticism  give  way  to  modern  criticism,  which  consists 
rather  of  scientific  examination  of  the  historical  growth  than  of  mere 
enforcement  of  conventional  taste.  Along  with  this  change  appeared 
the  decay  of  imitation  as  the  groundwork  of  literature.  By  the  direct 
application  of  the  altered  views  concerning  the  classics,  Lessing  and 
Winckelmann  led  the  way  to  the  purer  and  remoter  Greek  classicism, 
and  to  the  general  overhauling  of  long  accepted  dogmas.  The  new 
study  of  modern  literature,  the  exhumation  of  old  ballads  and  popular 
poems,  threw  unexpected  light  on  Greek  antiquity,  and  in  1795,  F.  A. 
Wolf,  who  is  rightly  called  the  father  of  modern  philology,  published 
his  Prolegomena.  The  effect  of  this  book  on  the  studies  of  the  classics 
has  been  really  incalculable  ;  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  its 
appearance  clearly  marked  the  period  when  the  modern  mind,  which 
had  hitherto  been  trained  under  the  influence  of  Roman  literature, 
attained  its  majority,  and  became  able  to  instruct  and  correct  its  old 
classical  teachers.  Modern  science  overthrew  the  old  classical  tradi- 
tion, but  in  so  doing,  while  it  revised,  it  renewed,  our  connections  with 
antiquity  by  proving  the  historical  rather  than  the  purely  pedagogical 
relation  of  the  past  to  the  present.  The  aim  of  Wolf's  book  was  to  show 
that  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  were  not  composed  by  a  single  poet, 
Homer,  but  that  each  of  them,  and  more  particularly  the  Iliad,  was  made 
up  of  a  number  of  separate  songs  by  different  authors.  For  a  long  time, 
for  hundreds  of  years,  these  heroic  songs  describing  incidents  of  the 
siege  of  Troy  had  circulated  among  the  Greek  tribes ;  each  one  nar- 
rated but  a  single  incident  of  the  war,  and  had  been  composed  for 
singing,  with  the  accompaniment  of  the  lyre,  at  banquets  and  festivals. 
In  time,  these  songs  were  combined  into  orderly  groups  and  then  into 
complete  wholes,  very  much  as  we  now  have  them,  and  were  finally 
written  down  in  permanent  form  by  the  command  of  Pisistratus  in  the 
sixth  century  before  Christ. 

These  views  of  Wolf's  at  once  made  a  great  stir,  and  received  from 
many  persons  warm  welcome.  Others  again  were  pained  by  what 
seemed  to  them  the  irreverence  of  Wolf's  propositions,  for  at  no  time 


WOLF'S  PROLEGOMENA.  21 

in  the  history  of  modern  literature  was  the  impression  stronger  that 
sheer  genius  could  accomplish  any  thing  it  undertook.  In  Germany, 
however,  there  was  also  growing  the  principle  which  has  given  that 
country  the  lead  it  now  holds  in  most  matters  of  scholarship,  namely, 
that  what  had  previously  seemed  the  work  of  creation  proved  on  closer 
examination  to  be  the  product  of  growth.  This  view,  which  was  first 
clearly  uttered  by  Herder,  underlies  the  modern  opinion  regarding 
Homer.  Even  at  the  present  day,  however,  although  in  Germany 
the  disbelief  in  Homer's  personality  may  be  said  to  be  the  prevailing 
opinion,  there  are  still  men  of  great  learning  and  keen  intelligence, 
who  refuse  to  accept  Wolf's  views.  In  France  and  England  there  are 
still  more,  for  often  scholarship  is  influenced  by  national  pride,  and  the 
fact  that  the  Germans  hold  an  opinion  has  been  known  to  delay  its 
acceptance  among  its  morbidly  patriotic  neighbors.  Long  after 
Wolf's  views  were  current  in  Germany,  and  had  made  over  classical 
scholarship,  they  were  without  influence  in  France  and  England. 
Since  the  war  of  1870,  however,  France  has  assimilated  more 
German  thought  and  learning  than  it  had  done  in  fifty  years  before; 
and  if  England  lags  behind,  we  must  remember  that  a  great  deal  of 
valuable  material  reaches  its  shores  only  as  wreckage. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  give  a  detailed  account  of  all  the  modifications 
of  the  original  heresy  that  have  been  suggested  by  German  scholars. 
The  vagueness  of  every  explanation  of  the  way  in  which  the  poems 
grew  into  their  present  shape  has  given  them  all  perfect  freedom  to 
arrange  the  particulars  as  might  seem  best.  Lachmann,  to  mention 
one  of  the  most  important,  in  his  examination  of  the  Iliad,  imagined 
that  he  found  sixteen  (or,  counting  the  last  two  books,  eighteen)  dis- 
tinct lays  by  different  authors  and  without  connection.  Each  lay,  he 
held,  was  at  first  complete  in  itself,  but  was  afterwards  expanded, 
and  was  finally  brought  into  its  present  shape  by  the  recension  of 
Pisistratus.  Grote,  again,  in  the  History  of  Greece,  suggested  that 
the  Iliad  consisted  of  an  earlier  Achilles  (to  which  belong  bks.  i,  8, 
1 1-22  ;  the  23d  and  24th  being  later),  and  an  Iliad  proper,  composed 
of  bks.  2-7,  and  10.  The  ninth  book,  he  holds,  was  composed  later. 
Those  who  have  defended  the  Iliad  as  the  work  of  a  creative  genius 
have  maintained  equally  diverse  views.  They  agree,  however,  in 
opposing  Wolf's  statement  with  an  unbroken  negative.  When  he 
argued  that  the  poems  are  too  long  to  have  been  composed  and  handed 
down  to  us  without  the  use  of  writing,  which  only  came  into  vogue 
later,  they  afifirm  that  there  were  many  persons  in  classic  times  who 
knew  them  all  by  heart  ;  and  that  in  other  countries,  as  in  Iceland  and 
India,  long  and  important  poems  have  been  handed  down  by  oral 
transmission.     To  Wolf's  argument  that  such  extensive  works  would 


22  THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

never  have  been  composed  unless  for  readers  as  well  as  hearers,  they 
reply  that  the  poems  themselves  were  of  sufficient  popularity  to  bring 
and  keep  together  delighted  and  unwearied  listeners.  This  affirmation 
that  the  poems  did  not  exist  as  a  whole  until  the  time  of  Pisistratus, 
they  directly  deny  ;  and  the  numerous  contradictions  and  inaccuracies 
they  match  with  instances  from  the  works  of  later  poets.  Yet  the  extent 
to  which  what  we  may  call  the  attack  has  been  carried  on  since  by  Wolf's 
followers,  has  had  the  effect  of  introducing  many  modifications  in 
the  defense,  and  almost  every  writer  in  behalf  of  Homer  has  found 
himself  compelled  to  accept  some  of  the  statements  of  his  adversaries. 
The  original  Homer  survives,  but  often  in  an  unrecognizable  shape,  and 
frequently  his  best  friends  strip  him  of  much  of  his  ancient  glory. 
Bergk,  for  instance,  acknowledges  that  the  original  work  of  Homer 
was  much  modified  and  enlarged  by  his  successors.  Their  main  argu- 
ment, however,  is  the  unanimous  voice  of  antiquity  in  behalf  of  single 
authorship  and  the  general  consistency  of  the  Iliad.  Only  genius,  it  is 
affirmed,  could  make  use  of  the  abundant  material  that  undeniably 
existed  and  weave  it  into  a  harmonious  and  generally  consistent  whole. 
The  discussion,  if  it  has  left  Homer  still  to  be  wrangled  over,  has  yet 
been  of  service  in  accustoming  scholars  to  apply  to  the  investigation 
of  classical  subjects  a  method  of  examination  which  rests  rather  on 
science  than  on  prepossession.  Modern  scholarship  may  be  said  to 
have  begun  with  this  controversy,  which  has  seriously  shaken  the  blind 
confidence  in  the  power  of  genius  to  accomplish  whatever  it  may  wish  ; 
even  Homer's  most  earnest  supporters  have  ceased  to  regard  him  as  a 
man  who  thought  suddenly  of  an  epic  poem  as  one  thinks  of  the 
answer  to  a  riddle.  Then,  too,  the  fact  that  the  question  is  really 
insoluble  has  given  it  an  eternal  freshness  and  made  its  discussion  an 
important  part  of  education,  for  scarcely  any  training  is  more 
valuable  than  the  weighing  of  evidence,  which  is,  after  all,  the  main 
business  of  life.  And  even  those  who  still  cling  to  the  belief  that 
Homer  created  these  two  poems  out  of  his  own  head  by  sheer  genius, 
may  perhaps  be  willing  to  acknowledge  that  the  long  discussion,  which 
they  hold  to  be  unconvincing,  has  at  least  helped  men  to  sounder  views 
on  general  questions  of  literature  ;  and  it  is  hard  to  doubt  that  its 
influence  will  not  continue  to  promote  wider  study.  In  oneway,  how- 
ever, they  will  perhaps  object  to  a  possible  result,  for  the  examination  of 
the  early  literature  of  remote  races  can  not  fail  in  time,  by  the  mere 
accumulation  of  evidence,  to  enlarge  men's  sympathies  beyond  the 
limits  of  Greece  and  Rome.  To  some  this  will  seem  an  irreverent 
misuse  of  study,  for  to  scholars  of  a  certain  sort  the  real  Holy  Land  is 
Greece,  and  any  thing  which  exposes  its  literature  to  comparison  with 
what  has  been  done  in  outside  regions  will  meet  as  much  opposition 


THE  MODERN  METHODS  OF  STUDY.  23 

as  did  the  science  of  philology,  when  it  began  to  assert  its  claims,  and 
to  show  the  relation  between  Greek  and  Latin  and  all  the  members  of 
the  Indo-European  family.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  only  in  this 
way  can  literature  be  profitably  studied,  and  that  it  will  tend  to 
diminish  delight  can  not  be  shown  by  analogy  from  the  other  sciences. 
Interest  in  geology  has  not  been  proved  to  have  diminished  men's 
love  of  natural  scenery,  nor  are  botanists  conspicuous  for  their  indif- 
ference to  the  beauty  of  flowers.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be 
fairer  to  say  that  their  enthusiasm  only  increases  with  their  knowledge, 
that  their  notions  of  beauty  are  enlarged  by  study,  that  the  man  who 
knows  the  most  about  any  given  subject  loves  it  most.  The  much 
commended  system  of  learning  any  thing  about  literature  solely  by 
studying  beautiful  extracts,  is  necessarily  one-sided  and  insufficient. 
We  should  laugh  at  those  who  read  Shakspere  only  in  this  way,  and 
what  is  true  of  him  is  true  of  Greek  literature  or  of  any  other  litera- 
ture, that  only  when  taken  as  a  whole  can  the  full  secret  of  its  beauty 
be  intelligently  perceived.  The  connotations  of  wit,  eloquence, 
grace,  simplicity  are  only  fully  appreciated  when  we  can  understand 
the  general  condition  of  interest  in  these  matters  and  the  degree 
of  accomplishment  already  attained.  Of  this  absolute  value  we 
know  practically  nothing,  and  our  efforts  to  define  it  only  define 
ourselves. 

I  We  may  say  indeed  with  perfect  truth  that  we  also  know  nothing 
(or  next  to  nothing  about  the  conditions  in  which  the  poems  were  pro- 
duced. We  know  only  that  the  Greeks  were  settled  in  Greece  and  on 
the  eastern  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  and  we  have  a  certain  number  of 
baffling  legends  and  myths  regarding  their  hopelessly  obscure  past,  as 
well  as  a  few  equally  puzzling  memorials  of  an  uncertain  antiquity, 
and  suddenly  we  are  confronted  by  these  two  poems  which  stand 
unrivaled  in  their  wonderful  portrayal  of  human  nature.  Achilles, 
Patroclus,  Hector,  Andromache  and  Penelope — and  the  list  does  not 
end  with  them — remain  now,  as  they  appeared  in  the  dawn  of  history, 
full  of  noble  feelings,  accurately  portrayed,  living  people  in  fact,  so 
wonderful  is  the  poet's  skill,  and  their  various  fates  are  recounted  with 
a  perfection  of  form  that  delights  every  reader  and  inspires  questions 
which  in  spite  of  a  multitude  of  voices  yet  await  an  answer.  The 
Ionian  Greeks  were  settled  in  a  region  that  was  already  the  home  of 
older  and  riper  culture,  and  traces  of  its  influence  may  be  found  in 
some  of  the  arts,  though  there  is  no  sign  of  it  to  be  found  in  this 
early  poetry.  There,  at  least,  there  is  no  reason  for  doubting,  we  have 
an  original  outgrowth  of  the  Greek  intelligence,  and  especially  of 
that  part  of  the  race,  J^oYxz  and  Ionic,  which  had  made  its  home 
in  Asia.     But   more  than  this,  as   to   which  of   these  two  elements 


24 


THE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 


was  the  more  prominent,  assertion  is  difficult,  indeed  impossible,  and 


when  we  ask  who    wrote  the  poems, 


we  get  no  convmcmg  answer. 
Whether  or  not  a  Homer 
wrote  the  Iliad  is  but  one  of  the 
questions  that  divide  scholars. 
The  calm  security  with  which 
students  used  to  read  in  the 
chronological  tables  that  the 
Trojan  war  began  1 198  B.  c. 
and  ended  with  the  fall  of  Troy 
in  1 187,  is  wholly  gone,  and  in 
its  place  has  arisen  uncertainty 
whether  there  was  any  war  at 
all,  while  if  there  was  one,  its 
date  is  anything  but  fixed.  The 
main  authority  for  the  war  is 
the  poem  itself,  although  the 
account  is  in  good  part  made 
up  of  unhistoric  incidents.  Yet 
when  we  remember  that  scien- 
tific statement  was  a  thing  as 
impossible  at  that  time  as  the 
power  to  write  an  epic  poem  is 
now,  we  shall  not  be  intimi- 
dated by  the  inexactness  with 
which  the  story  is  told.  Still, 
even  with  the  best  will  in  the 
world,  it  is  not  possible  to  go 
further  than  to  affirm,  at  the 
most,  more  than  the  probability 
of  some  historic  foundation  for 
the  poet's  invention,  and  his- 
tory is  not  a  record  of  prob- 
abilities. The  war,  if  it  was 
ever  waged,  was  one  of  the 
earliest  of  the  long  line  of  con- 
flicts between  the  East  and 
Europe,  and  it  is  possibly  not 
a  mere  coincidence  that  the 
editing  of  the  poems  by  order 
of  Pisistratus,  if  it  ever  hap- 
pened, should  have  taken  place 
shortly  before  the  great  Persian 


THE  HOMERIC   QUESTION.  ^5 

war,  when  the  Homeric  poems  helped  to  encourage  the  patriotism  of  the 
Greeks  by  recounting  the  glories  of  their  ancestors.  Some  few  writers 
indeed  hold  that  only  at  this  time  were  these  epic  poems  brought  into 
their  present  condition,  that  before  then  what  was  known  to  the 
ancients  as  Homer  was  very  different  from  our  Homer,  and  included 
all  the  abundant  epic  literature.  This  view  is  supported  by  the  refer- 
ences of  the  older  poets  to  Homer  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  our 
present  texts.  Yet  this  interesting  suggestion  obviously  does  not 
touch  the  question  before  us,  the  possible  historical  basis  of  the 
poems.  The  only  real  principle  to  guide  the  student  here  is  this,  that 
sooner  or  later,  as  Grote  says,  "  the  lesson  must  be  learnt,  hard  and 
painful  though  it  be,  that  no  imaginable  reach  of  critical  acumen  will 
of  itself  enable  us  to  discriminate  fancy  from  reality,  in  the  absence  of 
a  tolerable  stock  of  evidence."  In  other  words,  history  is  a  science, 
which  must  be  confined  within  the  limits  of  observation.  On  the  one 
hand,  Dr.  Schliemann,  who  is  absolutely  convinced  that  there  is  a 
fixed  historical  basis  for  the  Iliad,  is  hard  at  work  digging  up  what  he 
asserts  are  the  remains  of  that  city  over  which  scholars  and  archaeol- 
ogists are  contending  as  warriors  contended  in  the  mythical  past.  As 
in  much  of  the  poem,  the  war  is  one  of  words,  and  ironical  compli- 
ments and  expressions  not  veiled  in  irony,  are  interchanged  after  a 
fashion  that  the  Greek  and  Trojan  heroes  knew  well.  Besides  these 
combatants  there  are  other  men  who  have  distinctly  shown  that 
about  the  Trojan  war  there  collected  a  number  of  Aryan  myths,  which 
appear  elsewhere  in  other  forms.  Thus,  Achilles,  Paris,  and  Helen, 
are  found  in  the  Rig  Veda  as  well  as  in  the  Iliad,  and  thus  belong  to 
a  period  preceding  the  separation  of  the  Aryan  nations.  The  whole 
story  of  the  wrath  of  Achilles  is  told  over  again  as  well  in  the  Nibe- 
lungenlied,  and  in  its  origin  was  a  solar  myth,  a  tale  of  the  eternal  con- 
flict between  night  and  day,  which  formed  the  basis  of  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean mythology.  Yet  even  by  the  time  when  the  Homeric  poems  were 
composed,  these  old  myths  had  wholly  lost  their  original  significance 
for  the  poet ;  they  were  mere  bits  of  legend  no  more  conveying  a  no- 
tion of  their  remote  beginning  than  do  Grimm's  Household  Stories 
unfold  their  history  to  the  children  that  read  them.  They  were  wholly 
obscure  tales  which  clustered  about  the  story  of  the  Trojan  war,  in  possi- 
bly much  the  same  way  that  in  the  middle  ages  the  Carlovingian 
romance  gathered  floating  traditions  which  were  ascribed  to  Char- 
lemagne, who  was  represented,  for  instance,  as  a  crusader,  although 
the  crusades  only  began  long  after  his  death.  Here  again  the  solar 
myth  reappeared,  and  about  a  man  whose  life  and  deeds  are  well 
known  to  us.  If  our  only  data  about  Charlemagne  were  the  romances 
of  which  he  is  the  hero,  it  is  evident  that  the  process  of  reconstructing 


26 


THE   HOMERIC  QUESTION. 


the  historical  basis  would  be  a  hopeless  one,  and  in  describing  the  cam- 
paigns of  the  Trojan  war  we  are  equally  far  afield.     Yet,  as  the  myths 

with   which  Charlemagne    is    in- 
crusted  do  not  disprove  his  exist- 
ence, those  that  surround  Achilles 
do  not  terrify  the  investigators  of 
Troy.     While  it  is  very  likely  that 
the     questions     that    the   poems 
bring  up  will    outweigh    the   an- 
swers  that     archaeology   and    lin- 
guistics can  give,  it  is  yet  true  that 
the  rapidly  growing  supply  of  evi- 
dence    is    greatly    widening   our 
knowledge  of  the  past.      This  ad- 
ditional   information  is   gathered 
from  the  humblest  and  most  varied 
sources ;    stray    epithets    already 
CO      petrified  before  Homer  used  them, 
£  ^  bits  of  pottery  and  all  the  miscel- 
"  I  laneous  collections  of  ornaments, 
o  I  arms    and    cooking    utensils  that 

as    «  ° 

'^  h  have  been  dug  up  by  energetic 
g  :^  excavators,  the  lines  of  Homer 
§  and  the  relics  of  the  ash  heaps — 
^  combine  to  set  before  us  a  tolera- 
bly complete  picture  of  a  rude 
period  just  emerging  from  barbar- 
ism, and  curiously  compounded 
of  squalor  and  splendor.  Thus, 
the  walls  of  the  houses  were 
adorned  with  sheets  of  metal, 
leather  and  carved  ivory ;  the  in- 
ner woodwork  was  cut  into  some 
ornamental  shape,  and  polished ; 
and  while  at  an  early  period  the 
floors  of  temples  or  of  the  richest 
buildings  at  least  were  inlaid  with 
gold  and  silver,  as  was  common 
in  the  East,  most  of  the  dwellings 
we  may  take  to  have  had  no  floors 
at  all,  not  even  of  wood,  but  to 
have  left  the  bare  earth  uncov- 
ered.    Moreover,  on  the    ground 


2  «;. 


THE  ARCH^OLOGICAL    TESTIMONY. 


27 


GOLD     RINGS    FROM    MYCEN^. 


of  the  hall  where  the  wooers  of  Penelope  used  to  gather,  there  lay- 
all  sorts  of  remnants  of  recently  slaughtered  beasts.  The  other  parts 
were  cooked  in  the  same  room,  which  had  no  special  provision  for  the 
escape  of  the  smoke,  and  "  the  sweet  savor  of  the  fat  "  was  a  most 
admired  odor  in  the  estimation  of  all.  In  front  of  this  unsanitary 
but  gorgeous  house  lay  a  dungheap  ;  such  at  least  was  the  condition 
of  things  near  the  house  of  Odysseus,  and  in  the  court-yard  of  Priam's 
palace. 

What  was  gorgeous  in  this  style  of  living  came  from  the  East ;  and 
the  dress,  the  deco- 
ration,  the  treat- 
ment of  the  hair  and 
beard  were  all  mod- 
i  fi  e  d  by  oriental 
fashions.  The  rich 
robes  and  drinking 
vessels  came  from 
Phoenician  sources, 
as  did  the  decora- 
tions of  the  arms 
and  many  of  the 
ways  of  using  them  ; 
for  example,  the  de- 
pendence laid  on 
chariots.  Not  all, 
however,  were  thus 
armed  ;  the  remote 
Locrians  wore  no 
helmets,  and  car- 
ried no  shields  or 
spears,  but  were 
equipped  with  bows 
and  arrows.  Only 
their  leader  Aias, 
the  son  of  Oileus, 
was  fully  armed  for 
close  combat.   From 

the  East,  too,  came  the  use  of  perfumes  and  cosmetics,  the  necessity 
of  which  was  greater,  because  the  habit  of  bathing  had  not  been 
acquired.  The  practice  was  reserved  for  extraordinary  occasions, 
after  fighting  or  returning  from  a  long  journey.  Further  traces  of 
prehistoric  savageness  are  to  be  seen  in  the  account  that  is  given  of 
the  sacrifices   offered    up    by   Achilles    at  the    funeral    of    Patroclus, 


GOLD    SEAL    RING    FROM    MYCEN^. 


28  7'HE  HOMERIC  QUESTION. 

when  he  slaughtered  twelve  Trojan  captives,  four  horses  and  two 
dogs. 

Yet  amid  all  this  crudity  and  confusion,  abundant  forerunners  of 
the  peculiar  qualities  that  distinguish  the  Hellenic  spirit  at  the  time 
of  its  classical  perfection  are  yet  clearly  marked.  Not  only,  as  we 
have  said,  do  the  rich  and  harmonious  language,  and  the  varied  charms 
of  the  hexameter  indicate  this,  but  we  notice  already  the  aversion  to 
exaggeration,  and  the  sensitiveness  to  physical  beauty  which  always 
characterized  the  Greeks.  The  immortal  description  of  Helen  is  one 
familiar  instance ;  but  it  is  not  merely  the  sight  of  a  beautiful  woman 
that  awakens  this  feeling:  Achilles  is  filled  with  wonder  at  the  aspect 
of  Priam ;  all  the  Greeks  crowd  about  the  dead  Hector  and  express 
their  admiration  of  his  beauty.  There  are  a  few  descriptions  of  mon- 
sters, such  as  Briareus  with  his  hundred  arms,  the  giants  Otus  and 
Ephialtes,  who  at  the  age  of  nine  were  nine  cubits  broad  and  nine 
fathoms  high,  Scylla  with  her  twelve  feet  and  six  heads,  each  with 
three  rows  of  teeth  "  set  thick  and  close,  full  of  black  breath,"  but 
these  misshapen  beings  are  for  the  most  part  not  only  outlying 
remote  creatures,  but  possibly  merely  Oriental  inventions  that  had 
found  their  way  into  Greek  folk-lore.  At  any  rate,  they  did  not  belong 
to  the  customary  objects,  and  their  number  is  small  in  comparison 
with  the  normal  creations  of  Greek  fancy,  whose  aspects  and  qualities 
indicated  the  same  grace  and  beauty  that  was  in  later  centuries  to 
form  the  inimitable  glory  of  Greek  sculpture. 

The  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  then  have  other  qualities  than  those  that 
fit  them  for  a  tilting-field  for  angry  and  derisive  scholars,  some  of 
whom  dig  up  forgotten  facts  with  an  eye  solely  to  their  value  as  mis- 
siles;  and  the  reader  of  the  Iliad  can  follow  the  varying  fortunes  of  the 
war  without  being  distracted  by  doubts  concerning  the  historical  foun- 
dation of  the  incidents  narrated,  or  their  possible  importance  as  solar 
myths.  Whatever  our  conclusions  may  be — and  a  vast  number  invite 
our  acceptance — the  poet  or  poets  who  sang,  and  the  people  who 
listened  to  the  story  of  the  wrath  of  Achilles  and  of  the  wanderings  of 
Ulysses,  believed  in  the  truth  of  the  immortal  poems.  The  wealth  of 
legend  was  to  them  at  least  history  in  the  bud,  and  they  gave  to  the 
singers  the  same  confidence  that  all  early  nations  give  to  those  who 
celebrate  their  past  glories;  and  indeed  in  civilized  time  it  is  not  those 
who  praise  us  most  whom  we  are  accustomed  to  doubt  first. 

The  composition  of  these  poems  is  the  subject  of  an  endless  contro- 
versy; whether  they  were  composed  piecemeal  and  afterwards  strung 
together,  small  bits  being  sung  at  any  one  time,  or  whether  the  whole 
long  poems  were  by  any  chance  recited  at  any  great  festival,  we  may 
not  know  with  certainty ;  possibly  the  one  custom  followed  the  other. 


THE   HOMERIC   QUESTION    UNANSWERED. 


29 


What  seems  tolerably  certain  is  that  they  were  composed  for  recitation 
and  not  for  reading.  We  are  safe  too  in  conjecturing  that  whatever  its 
original  form,  the  Iliad,  for  instance,  grew  into  its  present  shape  by 
enlargement,  development  and  the  bringing  together  of  separate  lays. 
The  points  of  junction  are  not  to  be  readily  distinguished,  and  the 
broad  swell  of  harmonious  measure  lifts  the  reader — and  how  much 
more  readily  a  listener — over  the  incongruities  and  contradictions  that 
have  been  discovered  since  the  text  has  been  put  through  the  fine 
sieve  of  modern  criticism.  The  inconsistencies  are  too  many  and  too 
serious  to  be  accounted  for  by  any  plea  of  natural  oversight,  and 
throughout  it  is  the  vividness  of  the  separate  scenes  that  command 
the  highest  admiration.  Yet  the  separate  strands  are  woven  into 
a  tolerably  complete  whole ;  the  general  reader  is  carried  on  without  a 
chance  to  notice  the  puzzling  questions  that  can  be  answered  only  by 
denying  the  single  composition  of  the  poem.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  sup- 
pose that  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  were  the  sole  epics,  for  we  know 
how  a  striking  success  clearly  indicates  abundant  competition,  and  it 
is  easily  to  be  believed  that  Homer  surpassed  the  others  and  monopol- 
ized the  praise,  when  we  think  of  the  prominence  of  Shakspere  in 
comparison  with  the  other  Elizabethan  dramatists.  Men  have  little 
interest  in  those  who  take  the  second  prize. 


POMPEIIAN   BRACELET. 


CHAPTER  II.— THE  ILIAD. 

I.  The  Subject  of  the  Poem — The  Admiration  felt  for  it — Its  Fate  at  different  Periods 
of  Ancient  and  Modern  History — Adaptations  and  Translations  :  Chapman,  Pope 
Etc  II. — An  Analysis  of  the  Poem.  III. — Some  of  the  Qualities  of  the  Heroes  : 
their  Unconventional  Timidity ;  their  Relations  to  the  Gods.  IV.— The  Greek 
Epic  Treatment  compared  with  that  of  other  Races.  V. — The  Illustrative 
Extracts. 

I. 

WHATEVER  may  have  been  the  origin  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odys- 
sey, these  two  poems  stand  unrivaled  in  the  world.  The  reputa- 
tion that  they  won  in  Greece  has  extended  itself  among  all  the  races 
whose  civilization  rests  remotely  on  this  prehistoric  past.  At  the  very- 
dawn  these  two  poems  stand,  in  their  ancient  glory  unapproached,  as 
if  to  justify  those  men  who  look  back  to  the  past  as  a  golden  age. 
What  then  are  the  qualities  of  these  epics?  The  Iliad  recounts  some 
incidents  of  the  siege  of  Troy,  not  the  capture  of  the  city,  though  that 
is  clearly  foreshadowed  in  the  poem,  but  the  story  of  the  wrath  of 
Achilles  in  the  tenth  and  last  year  of  the  siege.  So  much  may  be 
said,  without  discussing  the  inconsistencies  that  are  clearly  manifest. 
This  siege  of  Troy  had  been  undertaken  by  the  Greeks  in  order  to 
bring  back  Helen,  the  wife  of  Menelaus,  King  of  Sparta,  who  had 
been  carried  off  by  Paris,  son  of  Priam,  King  of  Troy.  The  love  of 
Helen  had  been  promised  him  by  Aphrodite,  when  she,  Here,  the  wife  of 
Zeus,  and  Athene,  had  chosen  him  to  decide  which  was  the  most  beauti- 
ful of  the  three.  Paris  at  that  time  was  a  shepherd,  although  a  son  of 
Priam  ;  at  his  birth  the  oracles  had  announced  future  perils  that  he 
would  bring  to  his  people ;  his  mother,  Hecuba,  had  dreamed  before 
his  birth  that  she  brought  forth  a  flaming  hand.  In  consequence 
he  was  exposed  on  Mount  Ida;  but  the  oracles  were  not  to  be  disap- 
pointed in  that  way,  and  when  Aphrodite  bribed  him  to  assign  the 
palm  of  perfect  beauty  to  her — Here  ofTered  him  future  power; 
Athene,  wisdom — by  promising  him  the  love  of  the  most  beautiful 
woman  in  the  world,  he  readily  made  his  decision  in  her  favor.  This 
most  beautiful  woman  was  Helen,  and  after  being  acknowledged  by 
his  father,  he  set  sail  for  Greece,  where  he  was  received  at  the  court 
of  Menelaus,  and  here  he  verified  the  evil  omens  by  running  off  with 
Helen.     Priam  received  the  guilty  pair,  and  Greece  joined  its  forces 


MAGIC  SWORDS— THE    GREEK  HEROES. 


31 


to  punish  the  foreigner's  insult.  For  ten  years  preparations  were 
made;  Menelaus  appealed  at  once  to  his  brother  Agamemnon,  King 
of  Argos  and  Mycenae,  and  these  two  sons  of  Atreus  incited  their 
neighbors  to  seek  revenge.  While  at  Mycenae  recent  excavations 
have  brought  to  light  many  proofs  of  a  powerful  civilization  that 
belong  to  prehistoric  times,  we  find  in  the  Iliad  a  curious  instance  of 
the  existence  of  an  old  and  wide-spread  legend  in  the  scepter  which 
Agamemnon  carried,  having  inherited  it  from  the  king  of  the  gods, 
for  whom  it  had  been 
made  by  Hephaistos. 
Zeus  had  given  it  to 
Hermes,  Hermes  to 
Pelops,  the  house  to 
which  Agamemnon  be- 
longed. This  scepter, 
with  its  divine  origin, 
reminds  us  of  the 
sword  Durandal  which 
Charlemagne  gave  to 
Roland  ;  of  Arthur's 
Excalibur,  which  were 
similar  magic  insignia. 

Not  all  the  Greek 
heroes  were  anxious  to 
go  to  the  wars,  and  their 
efforts  to  avoid  the  un- 
pleasant duty  are  recon- 
ciled with  the  simpli- 
city of  the  race.  They 
tried  to  bribe  Agamem- 
non to  exempt  them  ; 
Odysseus  feigned  mad- 
ness, but  his  device  was  detected  and  he  joined  the  army.  There 
was  no  lack  of  heroes  here,  and  their  bravery  seems  incontestable 
when  the  reluctance  of  the  others  has  been  frankly  admitted. 
Of  these  heroes  was  Achilles,  the  son  of  the  sea-goddess,  Thetis, 
by  Peleus,  a  mortal,  the  son  of  ^Eacus.  Around  him  are  gathered 
all  the  admirable  qualities  of  the  ideals  of  the  time  when  the 
poems  were  composed.  He  is  strong  and  brave,  beautiful  in  person, 
generous,  proud,  a  true  friend,  and  a  relentless  enemy.  .  His  fierceness 
in  war  is  tempered  by  his  love  for  his  friends,  and  the  mere  raw  thirst 
for  the  conflict  is  elevated  by  eloquence,  for  even  in  this  remote 
antiquity  the  Greek  possessed   the  ready  tongue  for  which  he   was 


THE  JUDGMENT  OF  PARIS. 


32 


THE  ILIAD. 


afterwards  famous.  There  is  a  pathetic  side  to  Achilles  as  well, 
because  his  early  death  in  the  war  has  been  previously  announced, 
and  he  has  chosen  it  in  preference  to  a  life  of  inglorious  ease,  which 
had  been  offered  to  him.  This  latent  fate  that  awaits  him  lends  dignity 
to  the  whole  poem. 

The  heroes,  after  ten  years  of  preparation,  met  at  Aulis,  on  the 
coast  of  Boeotia,  to  sail  together  to  Troy.  The  first  time  that  they 
put  forth,  they  lost  their  way  and  were  obliged  to  return,  and 
before  they  could  start  again  it  was  necessary  that  Agamemnon  should 
placate  Artemis,  whom  he  had  offended.  This  story,  however,  does 
not  belong  here,  but  to  the  discussion  of  the  later  tragedies.  Once 
more  the  armament  started ;  and  when  it  had  reached  Tenedos, 
Menelaus  and  Odysseus  proceeded  to  Troy,  and  asked  the  Trojan 
king  to  return  Helen  and  the  treasures  taken  at  the  same  time  ;  the 
Trojans  declined,  so  the  Greeks  once  more  moved  on.  As  has  been 
said  above,  the  poem  opens  in  the  tenth  year  of  the  siege.  The  Greeks 
had  ravaged  the  country  outside  of  the  walls  of  Troy,  but  were  power- 
less against  its  fortifications.    They  were  encamped  outside,  with  their 


BIRTH   OF   ACHILLES. 


galleys  drawn  up  on  the  shore.  There  had  been  many  fights  between 
the  two  armies,  when  the  Trojans  sallied  forth  from  behind  the  walls. 
Such,  then,  was  the  general  condition  of  affairs,  which  was  perfectly 
familiar  to  the  Greeks  when  they  heard  the  poem,  as  was  also  a  much 
/  larger  fund  of  legend  bearing  on  the  same  subject.     The  whole  story 

was  in  every  one's  mind,  and  in  choosing  a  part,  the  author,  whom 
for  convenience  we  call  Homer,  in  taking  an  episode  of  the  war,  was  free 
to  leave  the  whole  great  story  untouched,  and  the  part  that  he  chose 
was  that  announced  in  the  first  line : 

"Sing,  goddess,  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  son  of  Peleus." 
The  wrath  of  Achilles  and  the  evil  that  it  wrought  on  the  Greeks 
when  deprived  of  his  services;  the  death  of  Patroclus,  which  was  the 
result  of  his  anger ;  his  return  to  the  field,  which  the  death  of  his 
young  friend  inspired,  and  the  slaying  of  Hector:  such  is  the  whole 
story  of  the  Iliad.  This  use  of  an  episode  of  a  greater  tale  distin- 
guishes the  Iliad   from  every  other  epic  poem  of  ancient  or  modern 


CONTRAST    WITH  OTHER  EPICS— MYTHOLOGICAL    ORIGIN. 


33 


times.  Even  the  Odyssey  narrates  a  full,  complete  story.  The  ^neid 
is  still  more  packed  with  a  complex  message,  and  the  modern  imita- 
tions have  kept  close  to  this  model  in  at  least  this  respect.  The 
Sanskrit  epic,  the  Mahabharata,  is  even  a  more  marked  instance  of  the 
same  tendency.  It  was  left  to  the  Greeks  alone  to  tell  the  simplest 
story  in  the  most  impressive  way.  Every  thing  else  about  the  Iliad 
has  been  copied  with  greater  or  less  success,  but  it  has  always  been 
held  necessary  to  tell  a  great  story  in  a  long  poem,  and  artifice  has 
taken  the  place  of  art. 

Fortunately  the  poem  lives  apart  from  its  historic  or  mythological 
meaning.  That  Achilles  may  have  been  a  solar  hero  doomed  to  a  brief 
career,  whose  glory  was  adapted  to  some  brave  fight  in  a  war  with 


BOATS,  FROM   ARCHAIC   VASES. 


the  Asiatics,  is  a  matter  which  no  more  perplexes  the  reader  of  the 
poem  than  does  the  success  of  the  investigators  who  find  in 
"  Hamlet  "  a  reappearance  of  the  old  legend  of  night  and  day,  confuse 
our  enjoyment  of  the  play.  Even  in  Homer's  time  the  myth  survived 
only  as  a  tale  ;  its  ancestry  was  wholly  lost,  and  Homer  thought  of 
such  remote  meaning  as  little  as  Shakspere  did.  The  two  names 
belong  together,  for  nowhere  outside  of  Shakspere  do  we  find  such 
closeness  of  observation,  grandeur  of  expression,  and  comprehension  of 
human  nature.  Homer  is  the  poet  of  an  early  age,  to  be  sure,  but  of 
one  already  old  in  thought  and  experience. 

To  what  extent  the  lavish  use  of  epithets  is  a   survival  of  an  old 
custom  is  uncertain.     At   any  rate  they  are  used  with  a  freedom  that 


34  THE  ILIAD. 

is  now  lost ;  they  serve  but  to  lend  vividness  to  the  object  described. 
Now  epithets  are  more  frequently  characteristic  of  the  ingenuity  of  the 
man  who  uses  them  :  they  are  not  direct  aids  to  our  comprehension  of 
the  poem  so  much  as  illustrations  of  the  poet's  ingenuity.  The  differ- 
ence between  the  simple  manner  of  Homer  and  the  more  sophisticated 
formalism  of  a  time  of  advanced  civilization  enormously  complicates 
the  question  of  translating  him,  and  to  express  his  joyous  dignity  has 
been  found  as  hard  and  as  tempting  a  problem  as  the  utterance  of  any 
of  the  emotions  of  human  life.  Just  as  every  generation  is  confronted 
with  the  old  novelty  of  the  delight  of  life,  the  present  charm  and 
future  fate  of  beauty  and  strength,  which  has  to  be  sung  anew  for  those 
who  feel  that  only  now  does  the  world  exist,  so  do  the  great  classics 
stand  as  eternally  tempting  subjects  for  men  who  wish  to  convey  their 
charm  to  readers.  The  work  is  continually  done  over  again,  for  at  the 
most  but  one  or  two  generations  are  satisfied  with  any  rendering. 
Every  translation  has  but  a  temporary  life ;  it  is  best  when  it  utters 
its  meaning  after  the  fashion  which  the  time  most  approves,  and  when 
new  forms  appear  it  is  succeeded  by  new  attempts  to  say  the  same 
thing  in  the  later  language.  Consequently,  the  student  will  learn  about 
the  various  influences  that  have  gone  to  the  making  of  English  litera- 
ture by  comparing  the  various  versions. 

At  the  time  of  the  Renaissance  the  interest  in  Homer,  which  had 
slumbered  during  the  middle  ages,  in  the  general  darkness  of  the 
period,  awoke  to  new  life.  After  the  fall  of  Rome,  the  study  of  Greek 
had  ceased  ;  and  with  the  revival  of  letters,  scholars  at  once  perceived 
that  in  literature  at  least  all  roads  led  to  Greece.  Petrarch's  reverent 
admiration  for  the  manuscript  of  Homer,  no  word  of  which  he  could 
read  ;  his  eagerness  to  study  the  Greek  language ;  the  delight  with 
which  he  and  Boccaccio  read  the  Iliad  in  a  bald  Latin  translation,  fore- 
boded the  future  importance  of  the  poem,  even  if  it  may  be  said  that 
it  also  indicates  the  manner  in  which  Greek  was  to  be  known  through 
a  Latin  medium.  Throughout  the  middle  ages  the  fame  of  the  Trojan 
war  had  survived  in  a  maimed  and  crippled  form,  resting  principally  on 
the  accounts  of  Dictys  of  Crete,  and  of  Dares  the  Phrygian,  which 
were  alleged  contemporary  records  of  the  siege  by  participants,  trans- 
lated into  bad  Latin  from  now  lost  Greek  originals.  Dictys  had 
fought,  or  asserted  that  he  had  fought,  upon  the  Greek  side  ;  Dares 
had  been  among  the  Trojans ;  and  since,  in  imitation  of  Rome,  every 
country  in  modern  Europe  traced  its  lineage  back  to  Troy,  Dares 
was  the  favorite.  It  is  in  his  arid  record  that  Troilus  first  comes  into 
prominence.  Before  that  he  is  a  mere  name  ;  but  in  this  account  h6 
is  an  important  personage,  as  we  see  him  in  Chaucer's  "  Troilus 
and  Creseide,"  and   in  Shakspere's  "  Troilus  and  Cressida."     These 


TRANSLATIONS— EARLY  FRENCH— CHAPMAN.  35 

later  forms,  however,  belong  more  directly  to  Benoit  de  Sainte-More 
{Roman  de  Troie),  in  which  medieval  and  classical  notions  and  tradi- 
tions are  curiously  jumbled  together,  as  in  the  English  imitations.  A 
similar  vitality  of  the  spirit  of  the  middle  ages  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
French  mystery,  written  about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the 
Myst^re  de  la  Destruction  de  Troye-la-Grant,  by  J.  Millet,  a  still  more 
curious  maltreatment  of  the  ancient  story.  This,  although  a  century 
earlier  than  Shakspere's  play,  was  a  century  later  than  Petrarch's 
re-discovery  of  Homer,  and  with  the  spread  of  the  Renaissance  there 
appeared  great  hunger  for  a  true  rendering  of  Homer.  The  first  com- 
plete English  translation  of  the  Iliad  was  that  of  George  Chapman, 
which  began  to  appear  in  1596  or  1598,  and  was  finished  some  time 
between  1609  and  161 1.  This  had  been  preceded  by  a  translation  of 
ten  books  of  the  Iliad,  from  a  metrical  French  version,  by  one  Arthur 
Hall,  in  1581.  To  judge  from  the  single  line  quoted  in  Warton's 
"  History  of  English  Poetry,"  the  field  was  left  well  open  before  Chap- 
man.    This  line,  the  first  of  the  poem  : 

"  I  thee  beseech,  O  goddess  milde,  the  hatefull  hate  to  plaine," 
has  left  students  willing  to  carry  their  researches  no  further.  Chap- 
man's version  shares  with  every  one  that  has  ever  been  made  the  mis- 
fortune of  not  being  Homer,  but  it  has  soine  of  the  Homeric  qualities 
in  its  impetuous  and  vivid  force.  It  at  least  runs  on  and  carries  the 
reader  with  it,  although  too  often  Chapman  introduces  the  conceits  of 
his  own  time  which  are  far  removed  from  the  simplicity  of  the  great 
original.  Abundant  inaccuracies,  too,  reward  the  man  who  is  searching 
for  faults.  Nor  is  this  surprising:  he  tells  us  in  the  preface  that  he 
translated  the  last  twelve  books  in  fifteen  weeks,  which  is  at  the  rate 
of  about  eighty  lines  a  day,  at  a  time  when  the  study  of  Greek  in 
England  was  in  its  infancy — Groeyn  was  the  first  to  teach  it  at  Oxford 
in  1491  ;  and  Sir  John  Cheke  at  Cambridge  about  1540 — and  there 
were  but  few  of  the  aids  to  the  student  that  now  abound.  With  all  his 
obvious  faults,  however,  his  fervor  has  left  him  the  favorite  of  the 
poets  at  least,  and  that  is  perhaps  the  most  honorable  immortality 
that  the  writer  of  verse  can  have.  Dryden  tells  us  that  Waller  could 
never  read  his  translation  without  transport.  Pope,  on  the  other 
hand,  although  he  gives  Chapman  credit  for  "  a  daring  fiery  spirit  .  .  . 
which  is  something  like  what  one  might  imagine  Homer  himself 
could  have  written  before  he  arrived  at  years  of  discretion,"  yet 
says  that  "his  expression  is  involved  in  fustian,"  and  condemns  his 
work  as  a  "loose  and  rambling"  paraphrase.  Indeed  Chapman's 
manifest  errors  were  peculiarly  obnoxious  to  the  age  of  Pope.  It  was 
not  until  the  revival  of  interest  in  the  Elizabethan  writers  that 
appeared  in  the  reaction  against  the  spirit  that  animated  Pope,  that 


36  THE  ILIAD. 

justice  was  done  Chapman.  The  most  glowing  expression  of  this  late- 
born  enthusiasm  is  in  Keats's  beautiful  sonnet  "  On  First  Looking  into 
Chapman's  Homer."  Chapman  imagined  it  to  be  "  a  pedantical  and 
absurd  affectation  to  turn  his  author  word  for  word,"  and  that  a  trans- 
lator "must  adorn  "  the  original  "with  words,  and  such  a  style  and 
form  of  oration  as  are  most  apt  for  the  language  into  which  they  are 
converted,"  and  this  theory  led  him  far  astray.  A  certain  trace  of  it 
is  at  the  bottom  of  every  translator's  soul,  whether  he  seek  the  smooth 
turning  of  Homer  which  was  Pope's  effort ;  or  he,  like  Cowper, 
imitate  the  Miltonic  inversions ;  or  like  many  more  recent  men  try  to 
be  dignified  by  being  slow.  For  one  thing  every  translation  is  in 
some  degree  a  failure,  because  our  language  has  by  mere  use  lost  the 
original  freshness  of  the  Homeric  Greek,  and  the  necessary  literalness 
conveys  different  connotations  to  our  minds.  The  epithets  are  often 
worn  threadbare ;  their  repetition,  which  originally  was  a  natural 
thing,  falls  on  ears  accustomed  to  greater  artifice,  and  every  evidence 
of  the  difficulty  is  exposed  to  the  charge  of  inaccuracy.  After  count- 
less attempts,  to  describe  and  estimate  which  would  require  a  volume, 
the  present  generation  is  finding  its  completest  satisfaction  in  literal 
prose  translation.  Even  here,  however,  it  is  a  remote  and  conventional 
prose  that  undertakes  to  give  us  the  majesty  of  the  Homeric  verse ; 
it  is,  after  all,  a  frank  avowal  that  the  task  is  impossible.  Yet  through 
all  the  muffling  which  time  and  the  conditions  of  translation  have 
imposed,  Homer  stands  out  immortally  young  and  vivid.  His  story 
of  ceaseless  and  numberless  battles  finds  ever  delighted  readers  who 
never  weary;  who  find  the  tale  told  with  dignity  and  the  loftiness 
of  the  grand  style.     Here  is  a  brief  abstract  of  the  events. 


n. 

As  we  saw,  the  poem  describes  events  in  the  tenth  year  of  the  siege 
of  Troy.  Chryses,  a  priest  of  Apollo,  had  entreated  Agamemnon  to 
return  his  daughter  Chryseis,  who  had  been  captured,  but  his  entreat- 
ies are  of  no  avail ;  he  is  turned  away  with  contempt.  In  return  for 
this  insult  Apollo  sends  a  pestilence  among  the  Greeks,  and  Achilles 
convokes  an  assembly  to  deliberate  on  the  best  way  of  appeasing  the 
offended  deity.  Calchas,  "  most  excellent  far  of  augurs,"  declares 
that  the  favor  of  the  god  can  be  won  again  only  by  Agamemnon's  sur- 
render of  the  damsel  to  her  father.  Agamemnon  is  enraged  by  this 
counsel,  especially  when  Achilles  urges  him  to  follow  it.  The  discus- 
sion grows  hot,  and  only  the  advice  of  Pallas  Athene,  who  suddenly 
appears   before   him,  restrains  Achilles  from  drawing  his   sword  upon 


WRATH  OF  ACHILLES. 


37 


Agamemnon ;  but  he  threatens,  nevertheless,  to  leave  the  army  and  to 
take  himself  home  to  Phthia  with  his  forces.  Agamemnon  consents 
to  send  back  Chryseis  with  rich  gifts  to  her  father,  but  in  her  place  he 
takes  Briseis,  a  female  slave  who  had  become  the  property  of  Achilles 


SEIZURE  OF  BRISEIS.     {Frotn  a  Vase  Painting.') 


and  to  whom  he  was  much  attached.  Achilles  in  his  anger  wanders 
by  the  shore  of  the  sea,  and  asks  his  mother  Thetis,  the  daughter  of  the 
sea-god  Nereus,  to  contrive  some  revenge  for  him.  She  appears  and 
promises  to  petition  Zeus  to  let  the  Greeks  suffer  for  their  wrong- 
doing by  bitter  defeats,  and  she  mourns  the  harsh  fate  that  has 
granted  her  son  so  brief  and  perturbed  a  life.  Meanwhile  the  messen- 
gers from  Agamemnon,  with  Odysseus  at  their  head,  proceed  to 
Chryses  and  restore  to  him  his  daughter  ;  they  further  prepare  a  sump- 
tuous sacrifice  for  the  offended  god  and  entreat  his  good  offices  :  in  this 
they  are  successful  and  Apollo  relents.  Twelve  days  later — the  gods 
meanwhile  being  absent    in  Ethiopia,  at  the   uttermost  edge  of  the 


38  THE  ILIAD. 

world — Thetis  hastens  to  Olympus,  and  beseeches  Zeus  to  grant 
vengeance  to  her  son,  and  Zeus  promises,  with  a  nod  at  which  all 
Olympus  trembles,  that  he  will  let  the  Trojans  be  victorious  until 
Achilles  has  received  'satisfaction.  But  Here,  who  had  observed 
Thetis's  presence,  bitterly  reproaches  Zeus,  who  bids  her  hold  her 
peace ;  and  all  the  gods  are  troubled.  Hephaistos,  however,  restores 
good  feeling.  (Book  I.)  The  next  night  Zeus  sends  a  deceptive 
dream  to  Agamemnon  which  tempts  him  to  renew  the  conflict  by  a 
false  promise  of  victory.  In  consequence  Agamemnon  the  next  morn- 
ing summons  the  Achaians  (the  name  applied  then  to  the  Greeks)  to 
an  assembly,  and  to  test  their  opinions  urges  a  return  to  their  homes. 
The  excited  multitudes  rush  to  their  galleys,  but  Odysseus  withstands 
them  and  induces  them  to  go  back  to  the  assembly.  Here  he  denounces 
the  insolence  of  Thersites,  to  the  delight  of  all  who  are  present,  and  urges 
Agamemnon  to  enter  the  fight,  before  which  a  meal  is  taken  and  a  sacri- 
fice is  offered  to  Zeus.  Then  follows  the  catalogue  of  the  ships,  in 
which  the  galleys,  the  commanders  and  the  tribes  of  both  armies  are 
enumerated.  (Book  H.)  When  the  Greeks  and  Trojans  are  in  battle 
array,  Paris  steps  forth  to  open  the  fight,  but  gives  ground  before 
Menelaus.  Stung  by  Hector's  reproaches,  he  challenges  Menelaus  to 
single  combat  for  the  possession  of  Helen  ;  Menelaus  accepts  for  his 
part,  and  asks  that  a  sacrifice  should  be  offered  and  that  Priam  should 
be  called  to  the  battlefield  to  pledge  the  oath.  The  aged  king  is 
looking  down  from  the  Skaian  gate  upon  the  battlefield  with  a  num- 
ber of  venerable  companions,  and  while  there  thej''  are  joined  by 
Helen,  to  whom  the  king  points  out  and  names  the  different  Greek 
leaders.  From  this  place  he  is  summoned  to  the  field,  and  an  agree- 
ment is  made  that  to  the  conqueror  shall  belong  Helen  and  all  her 
treasures.  The  duel  begins  and  Menelaus  is  victorious,  but  Aphrodite 
conveys  Paris  to  his  palace,  where  Helen  is,  while  Agamemnon 
announces  Menelaus  the  winner  and  demands  the  observance  of  the 
compact.  (Book  HI.)  In  the  council  of  the  gods,  Zeus,  at  Here's 
request,  determines  the  fall  of  Troy.  Athene  is  sent  down  to  instigate 
a  treacherous  renewal  of  hostilities,  and  she  persuades  the  Trojan  Pan- 
darus  to  shoot  an  arrow  at  Menelaus.  After  the  truce  is  thus  broken, 
Agamemnon  goes  about  encouraging  the  Achaians  to  a  renewal  of  the 
fray  and  the  battle  begins.  (Book  IV.)  Diomed,  who  is  endowed  by 
Athene  with  resistless  might,  performs  wonderful  deeds;  he  plunges 
into  the  thickest  hordes  of  the  Trojans,  slaying  Pandarus  and  wound- 
ing ^neas,  whom  Aphrodite  undertook  to  remove  from  the  field, 
but  she  is  herself  wounded  by  Diomed  and  she  returns  to  Olympus. 
Apollo  carries  ^neas,  still  pursued  by  Diomed,  to  his  temple  on  the 
height  of  Pergamos.     Ares  now  hastens  to  aid  the  Trojans,  and  before 


REPULSE   OF   THE    GREEKS  BEFORE    TROY.  39 

him  and  Hector  the  Greeks  begin  to  give  ground.  Athene  and  Here 
descend  from  Olympus  to  take  part  in  the  battle,  and  Diomed, 
encouraged,  and  supported  by  Athene,  wounds  even  Ares.  (BookV.) 
Hector  goes  into  the  city  to  ask  his  mother  Hecuba  to  entreat  of 
Athene  aid  for  the  Trojans;  meanwhile  Diomed  and  Glaucus  meet, 
but  recognize  each  other  as  guest-friends.  While  Hecuba  prays 
to  Athene  for  aid,  Hector  goes  to  Paris  to  urge  him  to  come  forth 
again  to  battle ;  and  then  he  makes  his  way  to  his  own  house, 
and  then  to  the  Skaian  gate,  where  he  meets  and  consoles  his 
wife  Andromache  and  commends  his  son  Astyanax  to  the  care 
of  the  gods.  Having  done  this  he  returns  with  Paris  to  the 
battlefield.  (Book  VI.)  When  there.  Hector  challenges  the  bravest 
of  the  Greeks  to  single  combat,  and  they  draw  lots  to  see  which  shall 
face  the  Trojan  leader.  The  lot  falls  on  AjaxTelamon,  who  joyfully 
begins  the  fight,  which  prolongs  itself,  with  varying  success,  till  night- 
fall, when  the  heralds  separate  the  two  combatants,  who  exchange 
gifts  and  depart  to  their  respective  camps.  After  the  evening  meal, 
Nestor  advises  that  on  the  next  day  there  be  no  fighting,  that  they 
burn  the  dead  and  build  about  the  camp.  At  the  same  time  in  Troy 
Antenor  proposes  to  return  Helen,  but  Paris  refuses.  The  next 
morning, after  a  truce  is  determined,  both  sides  pay  the  last  rites  to 
their  dead,  and  the  Greeks  build  their  barricade,  at  which  Poseidon 
complains  to  Zeus.  (Book  VH.)  At  the  beginning  of  the  next  day 
Zeus  forbids  all  interference  of  the  gods  in  the  war.  The  conflict  goes 
on,  but  remains  undecided  until  noon,  then  fate  determines  the  success 
of  the  Trojans,  and  the  Greeks  are  driven  back  behind  their  intrench- 
ment.  Here  and  Athene  wish  to  go  to  their  aid,  but  Zeus  sends  Iris 
with  a  message  to  prevent  them.  Hector  and  the  Trojans  pass  the 
night  by  their  watchfires  before  the  Greek  encampment.  (Book 
VIII.)  Agamemnon,  despairing  of  success,  speaks  in  the  assembly  of 
the  leaders  in  favor  of  flight,  but  is  opposed  by  Diomed  as  well  as  by 
Nestor,  by  whose  advice  it  is  determined  to  send  ambassadors  to  con- 
ciliate Achilles.  Those  chosen  are  Odysseus,  Ajax  and  Phoinix,  the 
former  teacher  of  Achilles  ;  yet  their  entreaties  are  vain  ;  Achilles 
remains  obdurate  and  says  that  until  Hector  reaches  his  ships  he  shall 
not  raise  his  hand.  Phoinix  remains  with  Achilles  while  the  others 
take  back  the  sad  tidings.  (Book  IX.)  The  next  night,  Agamemnon 
and  Menelaus,  who  are  unable  to  sleep,  arise  and  wake  up  the  other 
Greek  leaders  to  take  counsel  together  in  their  distress.  It  is  decided 
that  Diomed  and  Odysseus  shall  reconnoiter  within  the  Trojan  line  and 
find  out  their  plans.  On  their  way  thither  they  meet  a  Trojan  spy, 
Dolon,  whom  they  slay,  after  learning  all  that  he  had  to  tell;  and  then 
they  proceed  to  the  camp  of  the  Thracian  prince  Rhesus,  who  had  but 


40  THE  ILIAD. 

newly  come  to  the  war.  Him  they  kill  with  twelve  of  his  companions, 
and  they  carry  off  his  horses  to  the  Greek  camp,  where  they  are 
warmly  received.  (Book  X.)  The  next  morning  the  fighting  is 
renewed ;  the  Greeks  advance  victoriously  until  Agamemnon  is 
wounded  and  withdraws.  Hector  sweeps  all  before  him ;  Diomed, 
Odysseus  and  other  Greek  leaders  are  wounded  and  forced  back  to 
the  ships ;  Achilles  sends  Patroclus  to  inquire  of  Nestor  about  the 
condition  of  the  Greeks ;  Nestor  bemoans  the  state  of  affairs  and  asks 
Patroclus  to  persuade  Achilles  to  take  part  in  the  fight,  or  at  least  to 
borrow  the  hero's  armor  and  return  to  the  field.  (Book  XI.)  The 
Achaians  are  driven  back  by  Hector  and  the  Trojans  within  the 
encampment  about  their  ships,  at  which  point  Hector  makes  the 
Trojan  horsemen  dismount  and  charge  against  the  walls  in  five  lines. 
Despite  the  bravest  resistance,  especially  on  the  part  of  the  two 
Ajaxes,  Sarpedon  tears  down  the  breastwork,  Hector  breaks  through 
the  gate  with  a  huge  stone,  and  the  Trojans  rush  in  over  the 
walls  and  through  the  breach.  (Book  XH.)  While  Zeus  for 
a  season  withdraws  his  attention  from  the  conflict,  Poseidon, 
disguised  as  Kalchas,  the  augur,  encourages  the  Greeks;  the 
two  Ajaxes  drive  back  Poseidon  from  the  gateway.  Idomeneus  and 
Meriones,  Antilochos  and  Menelaus  offer  courageous  resistance  on  the 
left  of  the  line ;  at  last.  Hector  masses  together  the  bravest  of  the 
Trojans  and  advances  victoriously.  (Book  XIH.)  Nestor  steps  out  of 
his  tent,  disturbed  by  the  noise  and  confusion,  and  meets  the  wounded 
leaders,  Agamemnon,  Diomed  and  Odysseus,  who  are  about  to  watch 
the  fray  and  to  encourage  the  dejected  Achaians.  In  order  that 
Poseidon  may  lend  them  his  aid.  Here  borrows  from  Aphrodite  her 
magic  girdle,  and  distracts  Zeus  from  the  observance  of  terrestrial 
things  until  he  falls  asleep.  In  the  battle,  a  stone  hurled  by  Ajax 
Telamon  knocks  down  Hector,  who  is  carried  off  insensible  and  the 
Trojans  retreat.  (Book  XIV.)  But  Zeus  awakens  and  sees  what  has 
happened :  and  in  his  wrath  he  commands  Here  to  call  Iris  and 
Apollo  to  remove  Poseidon  from  the  battle,  and  to  give  new  strength 
to  Hector,  who  revives  and  drives  back  the  Achaians  over  the 
intrenchments  to  the  ships.  There  a  terrible  fight  rages  ;  Ajax,  leaping 
from  deck  to  deck,  repels  the  assaults  of  the  Trojans  with  a  great  pike, 
and  Hector  throws  firebrands  into  the  ship  of  Protesilaos.  (Book  XV.) 
In  this  stress,  Patroclus  begs  Achilles  to  lend  him  his  armor  to  wear 
against  the  Trojans  ;  and  Achilles  gives  his  consent,  on  the  condition 
that  Patroclus  shall  return  as  soon  as  the  Trojans  are  driven  back  from 
the  ships.  Then  Achilles  prepares  his  forces  for  the  fight,  dividing 
them  into  five  bands,  and  encourages  them  for  the  battle.  Patroclus 
drives  back  the  Trojans   from   the  burning  ship   of  Ajax  and    kills 


X   — 


o 


42  THE  ILIAD. 

Sarpedon,  the  son  of  Zeus,  who  gives  the  body  to  Sleep  and  Death  to 
carry  to  his  home  in  Lykia.  Then  Patroclus,  against  the  commands 
of  Achilles,  presses  on  to  the  very  walls  of  Troy,  but  is  driven  back 
by  Apollo,  who  also  disarms  him,  and  Hector  kills  him.  (Book  XVI.) 
A  long  contest  follows  for  the  possession  of  the  body  of  Patroklos, 
whose  armor  Hector  takes  and  puts  on  himself,  but  at  last  the  corpse 
is  saved  from  the  Trojans,  who  follow  the  stubborn  retreat  of  the 
Greeks.  (Book  XVH.)  Achilles  receives  from  Antilochos  the  news 
of  his  friend's  death,\and  gives  way  to  such  uncontrollable  grief  that 
his  mother,  Thetis,  hastens  to  him,  and  tries  to  comfort  him  by  the 
promise  of  new  armor  from  Hephaistos.  The  fight  for  the  body  of 
Patroclus  is  resumed  until  the  voice  of  Achilles  drives  back  the  Tro- 
jans in  terror.  Patroclus  is  then  carried  to  the  tent  of  Achilles,  where 
the  Achaians  mourn  for  him  during  the  whole  night ;  then  the  body 
is  bathed  and  anointed  and  placed  on  a  bier.  At  the  request  of 
Thetis,  Hephaistos  makes  a  new  suit  of  armor  for  Achilles ;  the  shield  of 
which  is  especially  a  masterpiece.  Thetis  hastens  with  the  arms  to  her 
mourning  son.  (Book  XVHI.)  Achilles  laments  aloud  for  Patroklos, 
and  his  grief  breaks  forth  anew  at  the  sight  of  the  new  armor.  Thetis 
sprinkles  ambrosia  on  the  corpse  to  preserve  it  from  corruption. 
Achilles  at  once  summons  an  assembly,  to  which  all  come  joyfully. 
Achilles  and  Agamemnon  become  reconciled,  the  latter  recognizing 
his  error,  and  he  offers  anew  to  Achilles,  Briseis  and  rich  gifts.  Achilles 
is  anxious  to  begin  the  fight  for  revenge  at  once ;  but,  following  the 
advice  of  Odysseus,  they  determine  to  refresh  the  men  with  food  and 
drink  and  that  chosen  youths  shall  bring  Briseis  and  the  gifts  to 
Achilles.  This  is  done  with  solemnity.  Briseis  bursts  into  loud 
mourning  for  Patroclus,  and  Achilles  refuses  food  and  drink 
before  he  has  revenged  his  friend.  When  he  again  laments  with  a 
loud  outcry,  Zeus  bids  Athene  to  strengthen  him  with  nectar  and 
ambrosia,  the  food  of  the  gods.  The  Achaians  march  forth  again  to 
battle,  Achilles  leading  in  his  rich  armor.  As  he  steps  into  his  chariot, 
his  horse  Xanthos  warns  him  that  the  day  of  his  death  is  near.  (Book 
XIX.)  The  armies  are  arrayed  against  each  other,  and  Zeus  calls  a 
council  of  the  gods  to  declare  that  they  are  now  free  to  take  part  in 
the  conflict.  They  consequently  hasten  to  the  battlefield  :  at  their 
arrival  the  earth  trembles  so  violently  that  there  is  terror  in  Hades. 
Here,  Athene,  Poseidon,  Hephaistos  and  Hermes  stand  on  the  side  of 
the  Achaians  ;  Aphrodite,  Apollo,  Artemis  and  Ares  aid  the  Trojans. 
The  battle  begins,  and  ^neas,  as  the  first  of  the  Trojans,  goes  forward 
to  meet  Achilles;  he  would  have  been  killed,  however,  if  Poseidon  had 
not  taken  him  away  in  order  that  the  royal  race  of  Troy  should  not 
be   extinguished.     Achilles  makes  great  havoc  among  the  Trojans. 


ACHILLES  AND    HECTOR. 


43 


(Book  XX.)  As  the  defeated  Trojans  are  retreating  in  confusion 
from  the  battle,  some  to  the  city,  and  some  plunging  into  the  river 
Xanthos,  Achilles  pursues  the  last  into  the  stream,  where  he  performs 
more  deeds  of  valor  and  takes  captive  twelve  young  men  as  an  atone- 
ment for  the  slain  Patroclus.  The  enraged  Xanthos,  together  with 
Simoeis,  the  other  river,  rush  upon  Achilles  with  great  violence,  but 
Here  sends  Hephaistos  against  the  streams ;  he  turns  the  banks  and  the 
swollen  waters  in  their  bed.  The  gods  take  part  in  the  battle  ;  Athene 
wounds  Ares  and  casts  Aphrodite  to  the  ground ;  Artemis  is  injured 
by  Here,  and  hastens 
lamenting  to  Zeus  ; 
finally  the  gods  return 
to  Olympus.  Achilles 
hastens  to  the  city, 
the  gates  of  which  are 
thrown  open  to  admit 
the  fleeing  Trojans ; 
Achilles  can  not  pre- 
vent this,  being  led  to 
one  side  by  Apollo  in  achilles  and  hector  before  the  skaian  gate. 

the  guise  of  Agenor. 

(Book  XXI.)  After  the  Trojans  have  fled  into  the  city,  Hector,  in  spite 
of  the  lamentations  of  his  parents,  remains  outside  before  the  Skaian 
gate,  awaiting  Achilles.  When  the  Greek  hero  approaches,  however. 
Hector  flees  thrice  around  the  walls  of  Troy.  Since  the  golden  bal- 
ance that,  held  in  the  hand  of  Zeus,  foretold   Hector's  death,  Apollo 


\\         ,    -   , ,                        ,     , 

3 

^^      /9^ 

[— 

m 

r^-C         ^ 

W^^  d 

^k 

■^i^ 

tX 

-f-^^^  1               i 

r  ^ 

^ 

'^^K 

= 

•'w^ 

J^. 

•yW 

}  J^—^ 

NJt; 

^^ 

L 

^"^i  fy^  /y^ 

f&*-^— 

^-<4 

W-,^^=^=s?^^^^$^ 

f   o    \V/A     //T^ 

^^rin-~J.i>S^.^-<""r'^=^==^l.-- 

K.  JAm  <i 

^ 

a 

— 

ACHILLES   WITH    HECTOR'S  BODY    DRAGGED    AT  THE  CHARIOT. 

deserted  him,  and  Athene  lured  him  with  wiles  to  his  destruction. 
He  stands  to  face  Achilles,  whose  lance  pierces  his  throat,  and  he  falls. 
He  has  strength  but  to  beg  Achilles  not  to  disgrace  his  corpse,  and 
then  when  that  request  is  refused,  he  dies.  The  Greeks  gather  in 
amazement  at  the  noble  stature  and  beauty  of  Hector,  while  Achilles 
rejoices  in  his  vengeance,  and  prepares  insults  to  the  corpse.  He 
fastens  the  body  by  the  feet  to  his  chariot,  and  drags  Hector,  with  his 
head  in  the  dust,  to  the  ships.     His  father  and  mother  watch  this 


44 


THE   ILIAD. 


sad  ride  with  despair,  and  Andromache,  who  had  no  suspicion  of  her 
husband's  death,  when  she  hears  their  outcry,  hastens  to  the  tower  ;  she 
sinks  to  the  ground  insensible,  and  utters  the  most  heart-rending 
lamentations.  (Book  XXII.)  The  Achaians  return  to  their  camp; 
Achilles  and  his  hordes  resume  their  mourning  for  Patroclus,  driving 
three  times  about  the  corpse,  and  then  partaking  of  the  funeral  feast. 
The  next  night  the  shade  of  Patroclus  appears  to  Achilles  in  his  sleep 

to  ask  for  fitting  funeral  rites,  and 
that  the  remains  of  both  might 
rest  together.  The  following  day 
a  great  pyre  is  built,  upon  which 
the  body  is  laid,  and  solemn  sacri- 
fices are  offered,  including  four 
horses  and  the  twelve  Trojan 
youths.  When  first  the  fire  is  set, 
it  will  not  burn,  but  Achilles  prays 
to  the  north  and  west  winds,  which 
fan  the  flames  into  a  blaze.  The 
next  morning  the  bones  are  de- 
posited in  an  urn,  which  is  placed 
in  a  mound  of  earth.  Thereupon 
Achilles  arranges  games,  for  which 
he  offers  valuable  prizes  :  there  are 
chariot  races,  boxing,  wrestling, 
foot-races,  and  exercises  in  throw- 
ing the  spear,  etc.  (Book  XXIII.) 
After  the  sports  are  over  the 
Achaians  betake  themselves  to 
their  tents  for  supper  and  sleep, 
but  the  grief  of  Achilles  allows  him 
no  rest.  The  next  morning  he 
drags  the  body  of  Hector  around 
the  mound  of  Patroclus,  but 
Apollo  has  pity  on  him  even  in 
death,  and  covers  him  with  his 
golden  aegis,  that  Achilles  may 
not  tear  him  when  he  drags  him. 
Twelve  days  later  the  same  deity  in  the  council  of  the  gods  complains 
of  this  ill-treatment  of  the  Trojan  hero's  body,  and  Zeus,  in  spite  of  the 
opposition,  summons  Thetis,  who  communicates  to  Achilles  the  wish 
of  the  gods  that  he  give  back  the  corpse  for  an  indemnity.  At  the 
same  time  Zeus  sends  Iris  to  Priam;  she  finds  him  and  his  whole 
household  plunged  in  grief ;  she  bids  him  go   to  Achilles  himself  and 


IRIS,  MESSENGER   OF  THE  GODS. 


INTERFERENCE   OF   THE    GODS.  45 

arrange  the  ransom.  Priam  at  once  decides  to  do  this,  in  spite  of  his 
wife's  entreaties.  He  drives  out  of  the  house  the  inquisitive  Trojans, 
and  orders  his  sons  to  make  his  chariot  ready.  It  is  laden  with  costly 
gifts,  and  he,  with  Hecuba,  prays  to  Zeus  for  a  safe  return,  which  is 
promised  him  by  the  appearance  of  an  eagle  on  the  right  hand  above 
the  city.  Thereupon  he  gets  into  his  chariot  and  drives  off,  accom- 
panied by  his  herald.  Hermes  leads  him  to  the  tent  of  Achilles,  where 
he  woefully  entreats  for  his  son's  body  and  a  truce  of  eleven  days. 
Achilles  consents,  receives  him  as  a  guest  over  night,  and  sends  him  back 
to  Troy  with  his  son's  body  the  next  morning.  Kassandra  is  the  first 
to  descry  him  ;  the  people  stream  forth  to  meet  him,  and  the  body  is 
carried  into  the  palace,  where  Andromache,  Hecuba  and  Helen  in  turn 
lament.     On  the  tenth  day  occur  the  funeral  rites.     (Book  XXIV.) 


III. 

Such  is  the  brief  and  meager  outline  of  the  great  poem,  which  suf- 
fers when  reported  in  this  fashion  from  the  fact  that  the  adventures 
and  incidents  lack  all  the  covering  which  the  poet's  grace  threw  over 
them.  It  becomes  clear,  however,  that  the  poem  is  practically  a  unit ; 
one  story,  that  of  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  is  intended  to  be  told  from  its 
beginning  to  the  end,  but  whether  by  a  single  poet  or  by  a  number  whose 
separate  works  were  more  or  less  harmoniously  welded  into  one  whole, 
is  the  great  question  ;  the  weight  of  evidence  and  the  common  opinion 
are  inclining  toward  the  latter  view.  Possibly  what  seems  to  modern 
readers  most  remote  is  the  personal  interference  of  the  gods  in  the 
conflict,  with  their  inevitable  control  of  events.  Yet,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  their  influence  and  backing  were  felt  by  both  sides,  and 
that  the  possession  of  their  support  was  as  legitimate  an  aid  as  human 
bravery  or  military  skill,  or  any  other  advantage.  The  gods  were  but 
men  and  women  only  to  be  distinguished  from  human  beings  by  their 
possession  of  immortality  and  a  few  fairy-like  qualities,  such  as  the  power 
of  becoming,  and  making  others  invisible.  While  the  simplicity  with 
which  the  gods  are  treated  is  a  striking  thing  in  the  poem,  we  observe 
equal  directness  in  the  description  of  the  heroes.  Indeed,  although 
the  society  that  is  pictured  in  the  Iliad  is  an  aristocratic  one,  in  which 
princes  and  leaders  hold  a  position  like  that  of  the  principal  characters 
in  our  opera,  and  the  bulk  of  the  armies  is  made  up  of  an  indis- 
tinguishable array  of  men  like  the  chorus, — no  private  soldier  coming 
into  prominence  except  incidentally  to  swell  the  list  of  the  hero's  vic- 
tories,— yet,  on  the  other  hand,  these  heroes  are  not  fantastic  beings 
with   imaginary  qualities ;    they  are    in   fact   personifications  of  the 


46  THE  ILIAD. 

various  conflicting  tribes.  We  have  already  seen  that  Odysseus  did 
his  best  to  avoid  going  to  the  war,  and  once  there  the  heroes  were  not 
without  repugnance  to  the  fray.  Achilles  and  Hector  both  knew  what 
fear  was, — Achilles,  when  the  river  rose  against  him,  in  the  twenty-first 
book,  and  "  terribly  around  Achilles  arose  his  tumultuous  wave,  and 
the  stream  smote  violently  against  his  shield,  nor  availed  he  to  stand 
firm  upon  his  feet.  Then  he  grasped  a  tall  fair-grown  elm,  and  it  fell 
uprooted  and  tore  away  all  the  bank,  and  reached  over  the  fair  river 
bed  with  its  thick  shoots,  and  stemmed  the  river  himself,  falling  all 
within  him :  and  Achilles,  struggling  out  of  the  eddy,  made  haste  to 
fly  over  the  plain  with  his  swift  feet,  for  he  was  afraid."  Hector, 
brave  as  he  was  (Book  XXIV.),  was  seized  with  trembling  "  as  he  was 
aware  of  him,  nor  endured  he  to  abide  in  his  place,  but  left  the  gates 
behind  him  and  fled  in  fear."  Agamemnon,  too,  at  the  beginning  of 
Book  IX.,  in  the  assembly  "  stood  up  weeping  like  unto  a  fountain  of 
dark  water  that  from  a  beetling  cliff  poureth  down  its  black  stream  ; 
even  so  with  deep  groaning  he  spake  amid  the  Argives  and  said  :  '  My 
friends,  leaders  and  captains  of  the  Argives,  Zeus,  son  of  Kronos,  hath 
bound  me  with  might  in  grievous  blindness  of  soul ;  hard  of  heart  is 
he,  for  that  erewhile  he  promised  and  gave  his  pledge  that  not  till  I 
had  laid  waste  well-walled  Ilios  should  I  depart ;  but  now  hath  planned 
a  cruel  wile,  and  biddeth  me  return  in  dishonor  to  Argos  with  the  loss 
of  many  of  my  folk.  Such  meseemeth  is  the  good  pleasure  of  most 
mighty  Zeus,  that  hath  laid  low  the  heads  of  many  cities,  yea  and  shall 
lay  low  ;  for  his  is  highest  power.  So  come,  even  as  I  shall  bid  let  us 
all  obey ;  let  us  flee  with  our  ships  to  our  dear  native  land,  for  now  we 
shall  never  take  wide-wayed  Troy.'  "  Fear,  then,  was  something  that 
entered  into  the  composition  of  a  Homeric  hero,  although  it  has  been 
carefully  expunged  from  the  heroes  of  later  epics.  Modern  authors  have 
been  afraid  to  confess  timidity,  and  in  the  effort  to  outdo  Homer  a  great 
deal  has  been  done  in  the  way  of  accumulating  heroic  qualities. 
Indeed  many  of  the  facts  chronicled  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  show 
how  truly  caution  was  a  characteristic  of  the  men  who  have  served 
the  civilized  world  as  models  of  heroes.  Echepolos  offered  Agamem- 
non a  fine  mare  to  win  his  permission  to  stay  at  home.  None  of  them 
have  a  real  instinctive  love  of  fighting  such  as  we  find  in  the  great 
German  poems.  They  all  regarded  war  as  a  pitiable  business,  only  to  be 
endured  for  the  sake  of  some  ultimate  benefit.  In  the  second  book  of 
the  Iliad,  after  the  quarrel  between  Agamemnon  and  Achilles,  it  is 
only  with  great  difficulty  that  the  Achaians  are  again  persuaded  to 
fight.  When  Agamemnon  proposes  to  abandon  the  siege,  his  fellow- 
warriors  are  delighted  with  the  prospect  of  peace  and  of  returning 
home,  and  are  only  prevented   from  abandoning  every  thing  by  the 


TIMIDITY  OF   THE    HOMERIC  HEROES.  47 

interposition  of  Athene.  Then,  too,  when  they  get  into  battle,  they 
experience  unheroic  terrors  ;  wailing  would  arise  from  the  ranks  of 
the  Achaians.  When  the  Trojans  got  among  the  ships,  the  Greeks 
cried  because  they  fancied  that  they  were  doomed  to  destruction.  Odys- 
seus, when,  in  Odyssey,  XL,  he  is  speaking  of  the  men  in  the  wooden 
horse,  says  that  the  other  princes  and  counselors  of  the  Danaans  wiped 
away  their  tears,  "and  the  limbs  of  each  one  trembled  beneath  him, 
but  never  once  did  I  see  thy  son's  [Neoptolemus,  son  of  Achilles]  fair 
face  wax  pale,  nor  did  he  wipe  away  the  tears  from  his  cheeks,"  and 
in  fact  he  comported  himself  with  admirable  bravery.  It  is  more 
likely,  to  be  sure,  that  the  poet  drew  his  pictures  of  warfare  in  a  time 
of  peace,  when  the  original  martial  ardor  was  modified  by  Asiatic 
luxury,  when  riper  cultivation  had  weakened  the  early  military 
enthusiasm.  Yet,  another  part  of  this  unconventionality  may  pos- 
sibly be  ascribed  to  the  innate  sensitiveness  of  even  the  most  warlike 
Greeks.  Their  delicate  natures  were  quick  to  perceive  and  dread 
peril  that  would  be  scorned  by  a  ruder  people.  In  the  Mahabharata, 
the  great  Sanskrit  epic,  we  come  across  bits  here  and  there  that  show 
the  same  unconventional  treatment  that  we  find  in  Homer.  Thus, 
Yudhishthira,  in  his  fight  with  Drona,  being  sore  pressed,  "  mounted  a 
fleet  horse  and  galloped  out  of  sight  ;  for  it  is  no  shame  for  a  Kahatriya 
[or  member  of  the  military  caste]  to  fly  away  from  a  Brahman  [or 
priest]."  In  general,  however,  these  abnormal  heroes  are  killing  numer- 
ous elephants  when  not  outdoing  Bombastes  Furioso.  In  the  same 
poem  we  also  find  the  continual  interference  of  the  gods,  as  in  the 
Greek  epic.  In  the  Iliad  (Book  XVII.)  Menelaus  says  :  "  When  a  man 
against  the  power  of  heaven  is  fain  to  fight  with  another  whom  God 
exalteth,  then  swiftly  rolleth  on  him  mighty  woe.  Therefore  shall 
none  of  the  Danaans  be  wroth  with  me  though  he  behold  me  giving 
place  to  Hector,  since  he  warreth  with  gods  upon  his  side.  But  if  I 
might  somewhere  find  Ajaxof  the  loud  war-cry,  and  then  both  together 
would  we  go  and  be  mindful  of  battle  even  were  it  against  the  power 
of  heaven,  if  haply  we  might  save  his  dead  for  Achilles,  Peleus'  son : 
that  were  best  among  these  ills." 

IV. 

This  is  but  one  of  the  many  times  that  the  intervention  of  the  gods 
is  spoken  of ;  and  in  the  Mahabharata  they  are  no  less  active  in  aiding 
their  friends.  Krishna  appears  as  inevitably  as  if  the  poem  were  a 
tragedy,  and  curiously  enough  he  frequently  counsels  unfair  conduct 
to  the  heroes.  Thus  the  three  leading  heroes  on  the  losing  side  come 
to  their  end  by  foul  means.     One,  Drona,  is  the  victim  of  a  lie  which 


48  THE  ILIAD. 

his  human  ally  Yudhishthira  refuses  to  tell.  It  seems  that  Krishna 
told  Yudhishthira  that  if  he  told  Drona  that  his  son  Aswatthaman  was 
dead,  that  warrior  would  fall  an  easy  victim.  But  Yudhishthira 
refused  to  compass  his  enemy's  destruction  in  that  way.  Krishna, 
not  to  be  daunted,  has  an  elephant  named  Aswatthaman  put  to  death, 
and  another  hero  told  Drona  that  Aswatthaman  was  dead.  Drona  felt 
sure  that  the  statement  was  inaccurate,  and  in  his  wrath  he  slaugh- 
tered ten  thousand  cavalry  and  twenty  thousand  infantry — such  is  the 
Rabelaisian  invention  of  the  Sanskrit  poet — and  determined  to  ask 
Yudhishthira,  who  was  known  to  be  a  perfectly  honest  man,  Yud- 
hishthira meant  to  answer:  "  Aswatthaman  is  dead  ;  not  indeed  the 
man, but  the  elephant,"  but  as  soon  as  he  had  uttered  the  first  part  of 
the  sentence  Krishna  and  Arjuna  sounded  their  war-shells, and  Drona 
could  not  hear  the  explanatory  words,  and  the  god's  prophecy  was 
soon  fulfilled.  Kama  met  his  end  when  he  was  trying  to  raise  his 
chariot  wheel  that  had  stuck  in  the  earth,  and  he  imagined  that 
according  to  the  laws  of  fair  fighting  he  was  safe  from  attack,  but 
Krishna's  counsels  prevailed  ;  and  Duryodhana  was  mortally  wounded 
by  a  foul  blow  with  a  mace,  again  at  Krishna's  instigation.  These 
wiles  may  be  compared  with  those  which  are  to  be- found  in  the  Iliad, 
when  Hector's  death  is  only  brought  about  by  a  similar  device,  but 
while  both  belong  to  literature  to  be  sure,  the  Sanskrit  epic  has  the 
portentous  clumsiness  of  a  prehistoric,  long  vanished  mammal,  who 
soon  perished  among  the  unfittest. 

It  may  not  be  unfair  to  say  that  the  same  directness  of  vision 
that  enabled  Homer  to  perceive  that  even  brave  men  knew  what  fear 
was,  inspired  his  frank  statement  regarding  lapses  from  truth.  Pro- 
fessor Max  Miiller,  in  his  "  India  :  What  can  It  Teach  Us?  "  makes  it 
very  clear  that  truthfulness  is  not,  as  some  have  maintained,  the 
exclusive  property  of  the  Germanic  civilization.  Indeed,  Yudhish- 
thira's  reputation,  as  just  cited,  is  something  that  few  Greek  heroes 
could  match,  for  Achilles  is  the  only  leading  one  who  does  not  disre- 
gard veracity.  Pallas  Athene  is  full  of  deceit,  and  Odysseus,  her 
favorite,  is  interesting  to  her  on  account  of  his  infinite  capacity  for 
misrepresenting  facts.  Odyssey,  XIII.,  she  thus  addresses  him  : 
"  Crafty  must  he  be,  and  knavish,  who  would  outdo  thee  in  all  manner 
of  guile,  even  if  it  were  a  god  encountered  thee.  Hardy  man,  subtle 
of  wit,  of  guile  insatiate,  so  thou  wast  not  even  in  thine  own  country 
to  cease  from  thy  sleights  and  knavish  words,  which  thOu  lovest  from 
the  bottom  of  thine  heart !  But  come,  no  more  let  us  tell  of  these 
things,  being  both  of  us  practiced  in  deceits,  for  that  thou  art  of  all 
men  far  the  first  in  counsel  and  discourse,  and  I  in  the  company  of  all 
the  gods  win  renown  for  my  wit  and  wile." 


SIMPLICITY  OF  HOMER  ;  THE  MAHABHARATA  AND  OTHER  EPICS.    49 

We  see  that  the  gods  deceive  one  another  as  freely  as  do  the  men. 
The  quick-wittedness  of  Odysseus  made  him  the  representative  of  one 
of  the  ideals  of  the  Hellenic  race,  as  Achilles,  with  his  bravery,  was  of 
another;  and  the  qualities,  it  may  be  fair  to  say,  are  correlative,  for 
timidity  begets  deceit.  They  at  least  belong  to  an  unconventional 
condition  of  mind,  in  which  men  were  not  supported  by  abstract  prin- 
ciples, as  is  undoubtedly  the  case  with  their  successors  in  later  times, 
when,  even  if  absolute  truthfulness  is  rare,  conventional  honors  are 
paid  it.  Yet  the  frankness  of  Homer  in  mentioning  these  opinions 
savors  of  neither  cowardice  nor  dishonesty.  Hypocrisy  is  peculiar 
to  races  which  set  great  store  by  truth.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
Greeks,  they  certainly  can  not  be  called  hypocrites.  Throughout  this 
poem,  as  throughout  their  whole  literature,  their  moderation  and  perfect 
sanity  are  conspicuous.  Just  as  Homer  saw  that  quick-wittedness  was 
a  striking  quality  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  and  described  it  as  he  saw 
it,  he  described  the  various  incidents  of  the  poem  without  misrepre- 
sentation. The  Mahabharata  is  full  of  what  to  us  appears  gross 
exaggeration  :  one  hero,  for  example,  is  wounded  by  so  many  arrows 
that  they  formed  a  couch  that  held  him  up  as  he  lay  on  their  points 
slowly  dying.  In  the  Persian  epic,  the  Shah-Namah,  Rustem,  wrings 
the  hand  of  an  enemy  with  such  force  that  he  squeezes  his  nails  off; 
but  the  Greek  author  never  attempts  to  let  the  grandiose  take  the 
place  of  the  grand,  to  ennoble  his  heroes  by  making  them  do  the 
impossible.  All  the  fighting  in  the  Mahabharata  is  full  of  grotesque 
absurdities ;  men  are  forever  slaying  numberless  elephants  with  the 
ease  of  an  ogre  in  a  fairy  story  ;  these  marvels  give  doubtless  to  those 
who  hear  them  the  same  zeal  that  for  thousands  of  years  civilized  men 
have  felt  in  Homer's  simpler  art  with  its  abhorrence  of  monstrosities. 
His  work  lives,  while  the  oriental  epics  survive  as  curiosities,  like  the 
mammoths  and  clumsy  animals  of  early  geological  periods.  Nor  is  it 
in  their  externals  alone  that  the  poet's  skill  is  displayed ;  while  the 
directness  of  the  Greek  mind  is  shown  in  the  simple  anthropomorphic 
treatment  of  the  gods,  who  appear  without  supernatural  terrors,  so 
the  story  is  told  with  a  close  relation  to  human  life.  The  character 
of  Achilles,  his  anger  and  its  consequences,  are  put  before  us,  not  only 
with  vividness,  but  with  the  truest  art.  We  see  the  cause  of  his 
wrath,  the  futile  efforts  made  to  conciliate  him,  the  miseries  that  fall 
on  the  Greek  forces,  and  finally,  when  that  original  anger  is  expelled  by 
the  deeper  indignation  for  the  death  of  Patroklos,  his  return  to  the 
battle-field  and  final  success.  It  is  then  one  of  the  most  striking 
things  about  the  Iliad  that  the  interest  centers  not  in  the  events  but 
in  the  character  of  one  man.  We  are  not  told  the  story  of  the  fall  of 
Troy,  it  is  not  the  case  that  historical  incidents  form  the  core  of  the 


so  THE  ILIAD. 

poem, as  is  the  case  with  other  epics  ;  our  whole  attention  is  confined 
to  the  direct  observation  of  the  heart  of  one  man.  His  bravery  in 
war,  with  his  fervent  affection,  are  what  fascinate  us.  A  few  extracts 
will  make  this  clearer  than  many  pages  of  description.  Even  through 
the  medium  of  a  translation  Homer  speaks  to  all  men  as  no  one  who 
writes  about  him  can  do. 

V. 

In  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad,  Calchas  has  told  Agamemnon  that 
the  plague  can  only  be  averted  by  the  restoration  of  Chryseis  to  her 
father,  and  Agamemnon  has  answered  that  his  claims  must  be  made 
good  by  rich  indemnities.     Then  Achilles  breaks  out: 

"  Ah  me,  thou  clothed  in  shamelessness,  thou  of  crafty  mind,  how  shall 
any  Achaian  hearken  to  thy  bidding  with  all  his  heart,  be  it  to  go  a  journey 
or  to  fight  the  foe  amain  ?  Not  by  reason  of  the  Trojan  spearmen  came  I 
hither  to  fight,  for  they  have  not  wronged  me  ;  never  did  they  harry  mine 
oxen  nor  my  horses,  nor  ever  waste  my  harvest  in  deep-soiled  Phthia,  the  nurse 
of  men  ;  seeing  there  lieth  between  us  long  space  of  shadowy  mountains 
and  echoing  sea  ;  but  thee,  thou  shameless  one,  followed  we  hither,  to  make 
thee  glad  by  earning  recompense  at  the  Trojans'  hands  for  Menelaus  and 
for  thee,  thou  dog-face  !  All  this  thou  reckonest  not  nor  takest  thought 
thereof ;  and  now  thou  threatenest  thyself  to  take  my  meed  of  honor 
wherefor  I  travailed  much,  and  the  sons  of  the  Achaians  gave  it  me.  Never 
win  I  meed  like  unto  thine,  when  the  Achaians  sack  any  populous  citadel  of 
Trojan  men  ;  my  hands  bear  the  brunt  of  furious  war,  but  when  the  appor- 
tioning cometh  then  is  thy  meed  far  ampler,  and  I  betake  me  to  the  ships 
with  some  small  thing,  yet  mine  own,  when  I  have  fought  to  weariness. 
Now  will  I  depart  to  Phthia,  seeing  it  is  far  better  to  return  home  on  my 
beaked  ships ;  nor  am  I  minded  here  in  dishonor  to  draw  thee  thy  fill 
of  riches  and  wealth." 

Then  Agamemnon,  king  of  men,  made  answer  to  him  :  "  Yea,  flee,  if  thy 
soul  be  set  thereon.  It  is  not  I  that  beseech  thee  to  tarry  for  my  sake  ;  I 
have  others  by  my  side  that  shall  do  me  honor,  and  above  all  Zeus,  lord  of 
counsel.  Most  hateful  art  thou  to  me  of  all  kings,  fosterlings  of  Zeus  ; 
thou  ever  lovest  strife  and  wars  and  fightings.  Though  thou  be  very 
strong,  yet  that  I  ween  is  a  gift  to  thee  of  God.  Go  home  with  thy  ships 
and  company  and  lord  it  among  thy  Myrmidons  ;  I  reck  not  aught  of  thee 
nor  care  I  for  thine  indignation  ;  and  this  shall  be  my  threat  to  thee  :  see- 
ing Phoebus  Apollo  bereaveth  me  of  Chryseis,  her  with  my  ship  and  my  com- 
pany will  I  send  back  ;  and  mine  own  self  will  I  go  to  thy  hut  and  take 
Briseis  of  the  fair  cheeks,  even  that  thy  meed  of  honor,  that  thou  mayest 
well  know  how  far  greater  I  am  than  thou,  and  so  shall  another  hereafter 
abhor  to  match  his  words  with  mine  and  rival  me  to  my  face." 

So  said  he,  and  grief  came  upon  Peleus'  son,  and  his  heart  within  his 
shaggy  breast  was  divided  in  counsel,  whether  to  draw  his  keen  blade  from 
his  thigh  and  set  the  company  aside  and  so  slay  Atreides,  or  to  assuage  his 
anger  and  curb  his  soul.  While  yet  he  doubted  thereof  in  heart  and  soul, 
and  was  drawing  his  great  sword  from  his  sheath,  Athene  came  to  him  from 


"Oai 


HERA      FARNESE. 
{Formerly  in  the  Farnese  Palace  at  Rome,  now  at  Naples^ 


52 


l^HE   ILIAD. 


heaven,  sent  forth  of  the  white-armed  goddess  Hera,  whose  heart  loved 
both  ahke  and  had  care  for  them.  She  stood  behind  Peleus'  son  and  caught 
him  by  his  golden  hair,  to  him  only  visible,  and  of  the  rest  no  man  beheld 

her.  Then  Achilles  mar- 
veled, and  turned  him 
about,  and  straightway 
knew  Pallas  Athene  ;  and 
terribly  shone  her  eyes. 
He  spake  to  her  winged 
words,  and  said  :  "  Why 
now  art  thou  come  hither, 
thou  daughter  of  segis- 
bearing  Zeus  ?  Is  it  to 
behold  the  insolence  of 
Agamemnon,  son  of  Atreus  ?  Yea,  I  will  tell  thee  that  I  deem  shall  even 
be  brought  to  pass  :  by  his  own  haughtiness  shall  he  soon  lose  his  life." 
Then  the  bright-eyed  goddess  Athene  spake  to  him  again  :  "  I  came  from 
heaven  to  stay  thine  anger,  if  perchance  thou  wilt  hearken  to  me,  being  sent 


COINS   WITH    THE    HEAD   OF    HERA. 


ATHENE   WITH    LION-SKIN. 


forth  of  the  white-armed  goddess  Hera,  that  loveth  you  twain  alike  and 
careth  for  you.  Goto,  now,  cease  from  strife,  and  let  not  thy  hand  draw 
the  sword  ;  yet  with  words  indeed  revile  him,  even  as  it  shall  come  to  pass. 
For  thus  will  I  say  to  thee,  and  so  it  shall  be  fulfilled  ;  hereafter  shall  goodly 
gifts  come  to  thee,  yea,  in  threefold  measure,  by  reason  of  this  despite  ; 
hold  thou  thine  hand,  and  hearken  to  us."  And  Achilles  fleet  of  foot  made 
answer  and  said  to  her  :  "  Goddess,  needs  must  a  man   observe  the  saying 


QUARREL   BETWEEN  ACHILLES  AND  AGAMEMNON.  53 

of  you  twain,  even  though  he  be  very  wroth  at  heart  ;  for  so  is  the  better 
way.  Whosoever  obeyeth  the  gods,  to  him  they  gladly  hearken."  He  said, 
and  stayed  his  heavy  hand  on  the  silver  hilt,  and  thrust  the  great  sword 
back  into  the  sheath,  and  was  not  disobedient  to  the  saying  of  Athene  ;  and 
she  forthwith  was  departed  to  Olympus,  to  the  other  gods  in  the  palace  of 
gegis-bearing  Zeus. 

Then  Peleus'  son  spake  again  with  bitter  words  to  Atreus'  son,  and  in  no 
wise  ceased  from  anger :  "  Thou  heavy  with  wine,  thou  with  face  of  dog  and 
heart  of  deer,  never  didst  thou  take  courage  to  arm  for  battle  among  thy 
folk  or  to  lay  ambush  with  the  princes  of  the  Achaians  ;  that  to  thee  were 
even  as  death.  Far  better  booteth  it,  forsooth,  to  seize  for  thyself  the  meed 
of  honor  of  every  man  through  the  wide  host  of  the  Achaians  that  speaketh 
contrary  to  thee.  Folk-devouring  king  !  seeing  thou  rulest  men  of  naught ; 
else  were  this  despite,  thou  son  of  Atreus,  thy  last.  But  I  will  speak  my 
word  to  thee,  and  swear  a  mighty  oath  therewith  :  verily  by  this  staff  that 
shall  no  more  put  forth  leaf  or  twig,  seeing  it  hath  forever  left  its  trunk 
among  the  hills,  neither  shall  it  grow  green  again,  because  the  ax  hath 
stripped  it  of  leaves  and  bark  ;  and  now  the  sons  of  the  Achaians  that  exer- 
cise judgment  bear  it  in  their  hands,  even  they  that  by  Zeus'  command 
watch  over  the  traditions — so  shall  this  be  a  mighty  oath  in  thine  eyes — 
verily  shall  longing  for  Achilles  come  hereafter  upon  the  sons  of  the 
Achaians  one  and  all  ;  and  then  wilt  thou  in  no  wise  avail  to  save  them,  for 
all  thy  grief,  when  multitudes  fall  dying  before  manslaying  Hector.  Then 
shalt  thou  tear  thy  heart  within  thee  for  anger  that  thou  didst  in  no  wise 
honor  the  best  of  the  Achaians." 

So  said  Peleides  and  dashed  to  earth  the  staff  studded  with  golden  nails, 
and  himself  sat  down  ;  and  over  agamst  him  Atreides  waxed  furious. 

The  next  time  that  Achilles  comes  into  prominence  is  in  the  ninth 
book,  when  the  Greeks  send  to  him  an  embassy  to  entreat  his  recon- 
ciliation and  return. 


ACHILLES  PLAYING  THE  LYRE. 


Hard  by  the  rolling  thunder  of  the  sea 
They  paced  together,  lifting  many  a  prayer 
To  King  Poseidon  that  their  suit  might  be 
Graced  by  the  son  of  Peleus.     So  they  fare 
To  the  chief's  hut,  and  find  him  soothing  there 


54  THE  ILIAD. 

His  mind  with  the  shrill  lyre,  to  songs  he  knew — 
That  lyre  with  silver  yoke,  and  carven  fair. 
Which  from  Eetion's  spoil  he  chose  and  drew  — 
Soothing  his  mind  he  sang  heroic  deeds  thereto. 

Over  against  him  sat  Patroclus  dumb, 
He  only,  tarrying  till  the  master  cease. 
And  lo  !  the  ambassadors  both  forward  come, 
Odysseus  first,  and  stood  before  his  knees. 
And,  lyre  in  hand,  the  chief,  beholding  these, 
Sprang  to  his  feet,  and  with  him  rose  his  friend. 
Then  swift  Achilleus  gave  them  words  of  peace: 
"  O,  princes,  hail !  On  some  great  quest  ye  wend, 
Ye  to  my  heart  still  dear,  whoever  else  offend." 

Thus  said  Achilleus,  and  with  outstretched  hand 
Leading  them  forward  made  his  guests  recline 
On  benches  strewn  with  purple,  and  command 
Gave  to  his  friend,  Menoetius'  son  divine : 
"  Bring  now  with  speed  a  larger  bowl  of  wine 
And  mix  it  stronger,  and  set  cups  to  cheer 
Each  :  for  to-night  beneath  this  roof  of  mine 
Friends  are  come  in,  my  nearest  and  most  dear." 
Thus  did  he  speak.     Patroclus  to  his  friend  gave  ear. 

Then  in  the  blazing  firelight  his  great  board 
He  planted,  and  thereon  of  hog,  goat,  sheep. 
All  flourishing  with  fat,  the  chines  he  stored. 
These  held  Automedon,  and  wide  and  deep 
Achilleus  sliced,  then  spitted  the  full  heap  ; 
And  a  great  fire  divine  Patroclus  lit. 
But  when  the  crackling  flame  began  to  sleep. 
He  raked  the  embers,  on  the  stones  each  spit 
Laid,  and  the  sacred  salt  then  sprinkled,  as  is  fit. 

So  with  much  care  he  roasted  all  the  meat. 

And  on  the  table  ranged  it,  and  set  bread 

In  silver  baskets  for  the  chiefs  to  eat. 

Achilleus  dealt  out  portions,  head  by  head. 

Where  he  sat  fronting,  o'er  the  banquet  spread. 

Divine  Odysseus  from  the  adverse  wall ; 

Then  bade  Patroclus  in  the  fire  to  shed 

The  gods'  due  part,  and  he  obeyed  ;  and  all. 

With  eager  hand  outstretched,  upon  the  viands  fall. 

When  the  desire  was  quenched  of  food  and  drink, 

Aias  to  Phoenix  nodded,  and  divine 

Odysseus  in  his  heart  knew  what  to  think. 

And  brimmed  his  goblet,  and  held  forth  the  wine, 

And  spake:     "  Achilleus,  hail,  dear  friend  of  mine! 

Neither  before  in  Agamemnon's  hut, 

Nor  here  now,  do  we  lack  whereon  to  dine. 

Corn  in  abundance,  and  fat  joints  to  cut ; 

Naught  that  beseems  high  banquet  from  our  hand  is  shut. 

"  But  thoughts  far  other  than  of  feast  and  song 
Now  hold  us  ;  for,  divine  one,  in  our  sight 
Loom  clouds  of  sorrow,  and  our  fear  is  strong  ; 


EFFORTS    TO  PLACATE   ACHILLES.  55 

Nor  know  we  if  our  ships  at  morning  light 
Will  stand  or  fall,  except  thou  come  with  might. 
For  Troy's  brave  host,  and  their  allies  from  far. 
Near  to  our  fleet  and  wall  lie  camped  to-night. 
And  in  the  plain  their  watchtires  burning  are. 
And  even  now  they  threaten  the  black  ships  to  mar. 

Yea,  on  their  right  Kronion  hath  revealed 

His  sign,  and  Hector  in  his  hope  so  yearns. 

Mad  with  the  fire  of  Zeus,  to  sweep  the  field, 

That  even  now  both  men  and  gods  he  spurns. 

And  oft  aloud,  such  fury  in  him  burns. 

Chides  the  divine  Dawn  that  her  feet  are  lame ; 

For  he  is  set  to  break  the  high-built  sterns 

Off  from  our  ships,  and  wrap  the  wrecks  in  flame, 

And  in  the  smoke  hunt  down  the  Achaians  near  the  same. 

Nor  is  my  heart  not  shaken  lest  with  joy. 

By  the  decrees  of  heaven,  his  thought  he  reap, 

And  we  be  fated  to  find  here  in  Troy, 

Far  from  our  native  fields,  an  iron  sleep. 

Up  then,  at  last  arise,  in  harness  leap 

On  the  rough  battle,  and  our  cause  befriend ! 

Else  wilt  thou  feel  an  after  anguish  deep  ; 

For  wrong  once  done  no  medicine  can  mend. 

Think,  if  in  time  thou  mayst  our  evil  day  forefend. 

Ah,  my  beloved  !    Thy  father  Peleus  said 

That  day,  from  Phthia  when  he  let  thee  part : 

My  child,  Athene  and  Queen  Hera  dread 

Will,  if  they  will,  give  strength  :  rule  thou  thy  heart. 

'Tis  better  to  be  gentle.     Let  no  smart 

Stir  thee  to  evil  strife,  that  young  and  old 

May  honor  thee  the  more,  where'er  thou  art.' 

Such  were  his  words,  which  in  thy  breast  to  hold 

Thou  dost  forget. —  Cease,  turn,  and  bid  thy  wrath  be  cold. 

Not  worthless  are  the  gifts  that  shall  be  given, 
Which  Agamemnon  in  the  camp  to  thee 
Hath  vowed  to  render —  fireless  tripods  seven. 
Ten  talents  of  pure  gold,  no  slender  fee. 
Caldrons  a  score,  twelve  steeds  bred  generously. 
Who  in  the  swift  race  many  a  prize  have  won. 
Who  earns  such  wealth  as  by  those  horses  he. 
Needs  not  to  lack  broad  fields  beneath  the  sun, 
Needs  not  for  dearth  of  gold  be  ever  left  undone. 

'  Moreover  women  will  he  send  thee  seven. 
Skilled  in  the  study  of  all  household  good. 
Of  Lesbian  race,  who  to  his  choice  were  given 
When  that  fair  island  was  by  thee  subdued. 
And  these  of  women  first  in  beauty  stood. 
All  will  he  give,  and  with  them  shall  be  led 
Briseis,  whom  he  reaved  with  insult  rude. 
And  by  a  great  oath  will  he  bind  his  head. 
That  in  the  manner  of  men  he  hath  not  known  her  bed. 


56  THE  ILIAD. 

"  All  this  shall  on  the  spot  be  made  thine  own  ; 
And  if  hereafter  the  celestials  will 
That  Priam's  mighty  town  be  overthrown, 
Then  shalt  thou  enter,  and  compile  a  hill 
Of  brass  and  gold,  thy  heavy  bark  to  fill. 
When  we  the  Achaians  shall  our  prey  divide. 
And  twenty  Trojan  women  of  good  skill 
In  matters  of  the  house  elect  beside. 
Who,  next  to  Argive  Helen,  chief  in  grace  preside. 

"  And  if  we  sail  to  Argos,  womb  of  earth. 
Thou  shalt  be  married  to  his  child,  and  be 
Peer  to  that  tender  sapling  of  his  hearth, 
Orestes.     In  his  house  dwell  daughters  three, 
Virgins,  Chrysothemis,  Laodicd, 
And  Iphianassa.     Whom  thou  list  soe'er. 
Home  shalt  thou  lead  her  without  tax  or  fee; 
And  he  will  add  such  gifts,  exceeding  rare. 
As  no  man  for  his  child  did  ever  yet  prepare. 

"  And  well-built  cities  will  he  yield  thee  seven. 
Green  Ira,  Enop6,  and  Cardamyl, 
Aipeia  fair,  and  Pheras  blest  of  heaven, 
Deep-lawned  Antheia,  wet  with  many  a  rill, 
Pedasus  crowned  with  vineyards  on  the  hill  — 
All  on  the  coast-line  beyond  Pylos  bay. 
Men  rich  in  flocks  and  herds  that  region  fill. 
Who  at  thy  feet,  as  at  a  god's,  will  lay 
Gifts,  and  beneath  thy  rule  their  fat  revenues  pay. 

"  All  these,  to  quench  thy  fire,  will  he  bestow. 
But  if  within  thy  soul  thou  dost  abhor 
Both  Agamemnon  and  his  gifts,  yet  so 
Have  pity  on  the  Achaians,  wounded  sore 
And  broken  in  the  camp,  who  will  adore 
Thee  like  a  god  —  their  fame  is  in  thy  hand. 
Hector  is  now  not  far,  but  at  thy  door 
Raves  loudly  that  no  Danaan  in  the  land. 
None  that  our  ships  brought  hither,  can  before  him  stand. 

Answered  the  fleet  Achilleus  in  his  turn  : 
"  Versed  in  all  craft,  Laertes'  son  divine. 
No,  three  times  no  !  —  the  word  is  light  to  learn. 
Just  as  I  mean  it,  to  the  very  line 
Of  fixed  resolve  that  will  not  brook  decline. 
Clear  let  it  ring,  that  no  man  deem  it  well 
To  murmur  on,  for  any  lies  of  mine: 
Him  count  I  hateful  as  the  doors  of  hell 
Who  in  his  heart  thinks  other  than  his  tongue  doth  tell. 

"  Nay,  hear  me  out !  I  move  not  hand  or  knee, 
Neither  for  Agamemnon,  Atreus'  son. 
Nor  all  the  Danaan  kings.     What  boots  it  me 
Eternally  for  ever  to  go  on 

Fighting  with  hostile  men,  where  thanks  are  none? 
For  though  a  man  bide  fast  in  his  own  place, 
Or  drink  war  to  the  dregs,  our  doom  is  one. 
The  sluggard  and  the  strong  find  equal  grace  ; 
All  in  the  dust  lie  down,  the  valiant  and  the  base. 


A  CHILL  E  S'    COM P  LA  IN  T. 


57 


Or  weigh  my  griefs  —  am  I  so  far  preferred 

Tliat  I  should  alvvay  set  my  life  at  stake  ? 

See  with  each  morsel  how  the  mother-bird 

Flies  to  her  callow  nestlings  in  the  brake, 

And  with  herself  it  fares  ill  for  their  sake  ; 

So  ever  in  the  field  have  I  gone  through 

The  toil  of  bloody  days,  and  lain  awake 

The  long  nights,  brooding  what  was  left  to  do, 

Still  with  the  enemy  warring  for  the  wives  of  you. 


4.CHILLES   LOOKING    AFTER   THE   DEPARTING    BRISEIS. 
{From  a   Pompeiian  Wall  Painting^ 

Twelve  cities  with  my  fleet,  and  twelve  save  one 

On  dry  land  sieging  have  I  sacked  in  Troy, 

Each  with  a  hoard  of  spoil,  and  Atreus'  son 

Sat  by  the  ships,  and  here  and  there  a  toy 

Dealt  from  my  gains,  but  did  the  rest  enjoy. 

All  other  of  the  kings  their  guerdon  reap 

Whole  in  the  camp,  but  mine  he  doth  destroy. 

Mine  only  of  the  Achaians,  and  doth  keep 

Her  that  I  love  —  now  let  him  in  soft  dalliance  sleep  ! 


5  8  THE   ILIAD. 

"  Why  do  the  men  of  Argos  fight  and  fall  ? 
Or  to  what  end  is  this  far-famed  array? 
Hath  not  the  bright-haired  Helen  caused  it  all  ? 
Yes,  no  man  ever  loved  his  wife  but  they, 
None  but  the  sons  of  Atreus  !     Rather  say 
All  that  are  good  and  wise  love  well  their  own, 
As  I  loved  her,  albeit  my  sword's  prey. 
Now  am  I  robbed  and  cheated,  I  alone  — 
Go,  let  him  spare  his  pains  :  no  offering  shall  atone. 

"  Nay,  with  thyself,  Odysseus,  and  the  kings. 
This  ravage  of  red  fire  I  warn  him  quench. 
Without  my  help  hath  he  done  many  things, 
Builded  a  wall,  and  dug  with  stakes  a  trench  ; 
Yet  bloody  is  the  sword  in  Hector's  clench 
Still.     When  I  fought,  no  challenge  to  the  plain 
Could  from  the  hold  of  Troy  this  Hector  wrench 
Save  to  the  Western  gates  that  front  the  main  : 
There  he  abode  my  wrath,  and  scarce  got  home  again. 

"  Now  with  brave  Hector  will  I  fight  no  more. 
This  but  remaineth,  that  I  vows  fulfill 
To  Zeus  and  all  the  gods,  then  leave  the  shore 
With  barks  well  laden  ;  and,  if  so  thou  will, 
And  if  the  care  to  see  it  is  with  thee  still, 
Thou  on  broad  Hellespont  mayst  view  my  fleet 
Ride  early  in  the  morning,  rowed  with  skill ; 
And  if  Poseidon  give  us  help,  my  feet 
On  the  third  day  will  stand  in  Phthia's  green  retreat. 

"  There  I  go  back  to  many  things  I  love  ; 
Nor  empty  are  my  ships  of  brass  and  gold, 
And  fair-zoned  women  over  and  above. 
And  glittering  steel,  my  wages  that  I  hold. 
But  he  that  gave  it,  now  with  outrage  bold, 
Great  Agamemnon,  doth  my  guerdon  spoil. 
Therefore  I  bid  you  all  my  words  unfold. 
That,  if  again  some  Danaan  he  would  foil. 
Then  may  that  dire  offense  the  Achaian  host  embroil. 

"  His  brows  are  shameless,  and  his  soul  to  boot. 
Yet  me  the  craven  durst  not  front  again, 
Though  cloaked  in  impudence  from  face  to  foot. 
No  counsel  will  I  weave,  no  task  ordain, 
With  him  who  trapt  me  in  so  foul  a  train. 
Nor  can  his  glozing  tongue  me  twice  ensnare. 
Away  with  him  for  ever  !  Zeus  hath  ta'en 
His  wits.     I  hate,  and  can  in  no  wise  bear, 
Sight  of  his  gifts,  nor  him  do  I  count  worth  a  hair. 

"  Not  though  he  gave  me  twice  ten  fold,  or  more, 
His  wealth,  and  made  Orchomenus  my  bait. 
Or  Thebes  of  Egypt,  full  of  countless  store, 
Thebes  the  wide  hundred-gated,  and  each  gate 
Lets  out  two  hundred  charioteers  in  state, 
Though  treasures  he  might  deal  like  dust  or  sand, 
Not  even  then  could  he  my  wrath  abate. 
Till  from  my  soul  he  purge  the  searing  brand. 
And  uttermost  revenge  uprender  to  my  hand. 


ACHILLES  SPURNS    THE   GIFTS  OF    THE    ACHAIANS. 


59 


"  And  as  for  marriage,  I  will  not  come  near 
A  child  of  Agamemnon,  Atreus'  son. 
Though  she  be  golden  Aphrodite's  peer 
In  beauty,  and  Athene's  art  outrun, 
Not  thus,  nor  ever,  shall  that  rite  be  done. 
Nay,  let  him  rather,  as  he  list,  provide 
Some  Argive  kingly  enough  to  be  his  son  ; 
For,  if  the  gods  me  safely  homeward  guide, 
Peleus  himself  will  find  some  maiden  for  my  bride. 


APOLLO'S  SlIKINE. 
{After  Lehegue,   Recherches  sur  Delos.) 

In  Hellas  there  are  maids  of  kingly  line, 

And  fit  wives  may  be  chosen  from  the  same. 

Yea,  there  not  seldom  doth  my  soul  incline 

To  get  me  a  good  wife,  some  noble  dame. 

And  my  sire's  wealth  enjoy.     Life's  worth  may  claim 

More  than  men  say  Troy  held  in  days  of  old. 

That  time  of  peace  before  the  Achaians  came. 

More  than  that  stony  barrier  can  enfold 

In  the  Apollonian  shrine,  on  Pytho's  rocky  hold. 

For  oxen  and  fat  sheep  abide  their  price. 

And  lost  may  be  redeemed  in  spoil  again, 

And  tripods  may  be  had  not  once  nor  twice, 

And  high-bred  horses  with  their  golden  mane. 

But  man's  life,  when  it  flies,  no  power  can  chain. 

And  in  the  spoils  of  war  'tis  nowhere  found. 

Nor  hunters  in  the  field  that  prize  obtain, 

When  naked  to  the  night  that  hems  it  round. 

Once  from  the  teeth  it  slips,  and  is  beyond  the  bound. 


6o  THE   ILIAD. 

"  My  mother,  silver-footed  Thetis,  saith, 
Fate  can  I  choose  of  twain  —  if  here  I  fight, 
Dies  my  return,  my  glory  knows  not  death ; 
But  homeward  if  I  sail,  my  glory  quite 
Dies,  but  a  long  time  shall  I  see  the  light. 
And  from  cold  death  live  many  days  apart. 
And  verily  'twere  wise  to  share  my  flight. 
All  ye  the  rest.     Troy's  town  defies  your  art ; 
Zeus  makes  his  arm  their  shield,  and  gives  the  people  heart. 

"  Now  to  the  princes  of  the  camp  go  ye, 
And  tell  my  words  :  it  is  their  right  to  hear : 
That  with  a  better  judgment  they  may  see 
How  from  this  doom  both  men  and  fleet  to  clear. 
This  project  of  their  mind  will  not  cohere. 
Nor  bend  me,  to  the  which  they  set  their  hand. 
But  Phoenix  shall  remain  till  dawn  appear. 
And  in  my  ships  go  back  to  the  dear  land 
To-morrow,  if  he  will  —  by  his  own  choice  I  stand." 

He  spake,  and  all  in  silence  bowed  the  head, 
The  stern  rebuke  so  fiercely  he  rolled  out ; 
Till  with  strong  tears  the  old  knight  Phcenix  said, 
While  for  the  ships  he  trembled  sore  in  doubt : 
"  Achilleus,  if  indeed  thou  art  about 
Homeward  to  pass,  and,  in  thy  wrath  so  hot, 
To  let  Troy  burn  our  ships,  and  put  to  rout 
The  Achaian  host,  and  work  I  know  not  what. 
How  then  can  I,  dear  child,  remain  where  thou  art  not  ? 

"  That  day,  from  Phthia  when  he  let  thee  go. 
Not  yet  familiar  with  the  ways  of  fight, 
Nor  in  the  council  seen  where  great  men  show, 
Me  Peleus  sent,  to  learn  thee  all  things  right. 
To  put  words  in  thy  mouth,  and  deeds  incite ; 
Nor  will  I  leave  thee  till  my  time  is  told, 
Not  though  a  god  should  undertake  to-night 
To  peel  the  years  off,  and  my  youth  re-mold. 
As  when  I  left  sweet  Hellas  in  the  days  of  old. 

"  So  for  love's  sake  I  made  thee  what  thou  art. 
Godlike  Achilleus  ;  for  with  none  but  me 
At  table  ever  wouldst  thou  play  thy  part. 
Till  with  choice  bits  I  fed  thee  on  my  knee. 
And  held  wine  to  thy  lips  :  my  breast  would  be 
Oft  dabbled  with  the  wine  thy  weakness  spilt. 
Thus  have  I  toiled  and  suffered  much  for  thee. 
Since  never  from  mjy  loins  could  race  be  built ; 
Thee  for  my  child  I  took,  my  bulwark,  if  thou  wilt. 

"  Tame  then  thy  wrath  :  the  very  gods  will  turn, 
And,  though  a  man  sin  far,  their  hearts  incline 
To  heed  our  vows,  and  the  fat  gifts  we  burn. 
For  Prayers  are  daughters  of  great  Zeus  divine. 
Lame,  wrinkled,  haggard,  and  of  sidelong  eyen. 
These  are  in  Ate's  track  still  moving  slow, 
But  Ate  hath  strong  hands  to  make  men  pine. 
She  with  firm  tread  the  earth  walks  dealing  woe. 
And  they  behind  her  toil,  and  cure  it  as  they  go. 


PHCENIX  PLEADS  WITH  ACHILLES.  6l 

■  He  who  the  daughters  of  great  Zeus  on  high 
Shall  reverence  in  his  heart  when  they  come  near, 
Him  they  much  help,  and  still  regard  his  cry. 
But  whoso  drives  them  off  and  will  not  hear. 
Then  they  seek  Zeus,  and  at  his  knees  appear. 
That  Ate  mark  him,  and  avenge  the  wrong. 
But  thou,  Achilleus,  to  their  suit  give  ear, 
This  honor  that  they  ask  deny  not  long. 
They  who  the  stern  hearts  bend  of  others  that  are  strong. 

Save  for  set  gifts,  and  other  named  beside 
By  Atreus'  son,  not  lightly  to  give  o'er 
Thy  wrath  would  it  seem  wise,  and  help  provide 
To  save  the  army,  though  their  need  were  sore. 
Now  doth  he  bring  large  gifts,  and  promise  more. 
And  of  the  chiefs  whom  thou  dost  love  the  best 
Hath  sent  with  prayers  the  noblest  to  thy  door. 
Spurn  not  their  feet,  nor  yet  deny  their  quest. 
Albeit,  before,  in  anger  thou  didst  well  to  rest. 

Such  were  the  men  of  old  of  whom  we  hear ; 

Their  anger  might  be  tamed  with  gifts,  and  taught. 

This  I  remember  in  an  age  not  near ; 

And  to  you  all,  my  friends,  the  tale  is  brought. 

Once  the  Curetes  and  ^tolians  fought 

Round  Calydon  with  deeds  of  high  renown. 

And  many  were  the  deaths,     ^tolia  sought 

To  shield  the  lovely  Calydonian  town, 

And  the  Curetes  strove  with  fire  to  raze  it  down. 

'  For  bright-throned  Artemis  plagued  sore  the  land, 
She  lacking,  when  the  gods  received  their  hire, 
Her  own  first-fruits  ;  for  CEneus  held  his  hand, 
Rash  or  not  knowing  ;  but  the  sin  was  dire. 
So  the  divine  Maid-archer  stung  with  ire. 
Sent  a  wild  white-fanged  boar ;  and  the  fell  brute 
Found  him  a  lair,  and  trod  the  fields  to  mire. 
Laid  vineyards  waste,  and  tore  up  by  the  root 
The  tall  trees  of  the  land,  with  branch  and  flower  and  fruit. 

'  Him  Meleager,  son  of  CEneus,  slew, 
With  hounds  and  huntsmen  gathered  to  his  aid 
From  many  cities ;  for  he  scorned  a  few. 
This  huge  beast,  mad  with  power,  of  naught  afraid. 
And  much  men  on  the  funeral-pyre  he  laid. 
But  she,  yet  pouring  the  full  plagues  of  sin. 
Between  Cur^tis  and  yEtolia  made 
A  great  shout,  and  the  unutterable  din 
Of  arms,  for  the  boar's  head,  and  for  his  bristly  skin. 

'  While  Meleager,  dear  to  Ares,  fought. 
Still  the  Curetes  badly  fared  in  strife. 
And  to  their  walls  fell  back,  achieving  naught. 
But  when  wrath  darkened  Meleager 's  life, 
Wrath,  which  in  hearts  of  even  the  wise  is  rife, 
He  angry  with  Althasa,  who  him  bare. 
Lay  housed  with  Cleopatra,  his  dear  wife, 
Child  of  Evenus'  child,  Marpessa  fair, 
And  Idas,  flower  of  knights  that  on  the  earth  then  were. 


PHCENIX  RECOUNTS    THE  DEEDS  OF  MELEAGEK.  63 

"  He  for  his  lovely  bride  with  shaft  and  bow 
Braved  Phoebus  ;  and  their  child  for  ever  kept 
The  name  Halcyone,  a  name  of  woe, 
Thereafter  in  the  house  ;  so  wildly  wept, 
When  lord  Apollo  her  from  Idas  swept. 
That  mother  in  the  bitter  halcyon  strain  — 
Housed  with  his  wife  an  angry  sloth  he  slept, 
Eating  his  mother's  curse  with  fell  disdain, 
Who  by  the  gods  had  cursed  him  for  her  brethren  slain. 

"  She  madly  with  both  hands,  and  madlier  yet, 
Kind  Earth  would  beat,  and  falling  with  prone  knee 
And  eyes  down,  till  with  tears  her  breast  was  wet, 
Hades  implore,  and  dire  Persephone 
Against  her  child,  that  death  for  death  might  be. 
Soon  the  night-wandering  Fury  heard  her  cry. 
And  with  a  heart  like  flint  from  hell  came  she. 
Rolled  on  the  air  a  dreadful  clang  went  by, 
War's  thunder  at  the  gates,  and  battered  towers  on  high. 

"  Anon  the  elders  of  yEtolia  send 
The  noblest  of  their  priesthood  with  much  prayer. 
To  win  forth  Meleager  to  defend 
Their  walls,  and  promise  a  great  gift.     For  where 
Soil  on  the  plain  lay  richest  and  most  fair 
In  lovely  Calydon,  good  land  enow 
They  proffered,  an  estate  to  be  cut  there. 
The  one  half  vineyard,  where  he  list  and  how, 
And  the  one  half  clear  tilth  that  crumbles  to  the  plough. 

"  Also  the  old  knight  (Eneus  prayed  him  sore, 
And  oft  returned  and  gave  his  ears  no  rest. 
Shaking  the  strong  leaves  of  the  chamber-door. 
Yea,  though  his  mother  and  his  sisters  prest. 
He  would  not.     And  the  friends  whom  he  loved  best 
Came  and  besought  him,  men  of  high  renown. 
Nor  was  the  heart  yet  tamed  within  his  breast, 
Till  the  man's  chamber  was  half  beaten  down, 
And  the  foe  scaled  the  walls,  and  wasted  the  great  town. 

"  Then,  last  of  all,  about  his  neck  to  weep 
His  dear  wife  hung,  and  in  extreme  dismay 
Cast  on  his  mind  the  bitter  things  they  reap 
Whose  city  to  their  foes  is  given  a  prey  ; 
How  in  the  victory  grown  men  they  slay. 
And  sack  the  town  with  fire,  and  children  hale, 
And  some  the  deep-zoned  women  rend  away. 
And  his  heart  smote  him  as  he  heard  the  tale. 
And  he  sprang  forth  to  go,  and  seized  his  shining  mail. 

"  Thus  Meleager  did  ^tolia  save, 
Impelled  by  his  own  heart ;  but  in  the  end 
Received  not  at  their  hand  the  gift  so  brave, 
Yet  did  the  work.     But  thou  relent,  dear  friend. 
Rise,  and  the  gifts  go  with  thee !     To  defend 
Our  ships  when  flaming  were  less  worth  by  far. 
Come,  for  thine  honor  shall  man's  fame  transcend. 
But  when,  without  gifts,  thy  feet  mount  the  car. 
Less  shalt  thou  gain  in  honor,  and  yet  help  the  war." 


64  THE  ILIAD. 

And  answering,  spake  the  swift  Achilleus  there : 
"  O  Phcenix,  dear  old  man,  I  naught  regard 
This  honor  (and  yet  Zeus  hath  given  my  share). 
Which  holds  me  by  the  fleet,  a  life  so  hard. 
Till  the  breath  fail  me,  and  my  knees  be  marred. 
Yet  one  word  more,  and  it  my  last  shall  be : 
Vex  not  my  soul  with  weepings,  but  discard 
Thy  favor  to  the  king.     'Tis  not  for  thee, 
Whom  I  love,  to  love  him,  and  turn  away  from  me. 

"  Stand  ever  at  my  side  in  love,  in  hate. 
And  half  mine  honor,  half  my  realm,  is  thine. 
And  join  not  in  their  tidings,  but  here  wait 
And  sleep  on  a  soft  couch,  till  morning  shine ; 
Then  better  can  we  shape  our  own  design." 
So,  to  send  out  the  others,  with  his  head 
He  to  Patroclus  bowed  a  silent  sign 
In  the  hut  quickly  to  strew  Phoenix'  bed. 
And  Telamonian  Aias  then  arose  and  said  : 

"  Son  of  Laertes,  in  the  way  we  go 
End  can  I  none  find  out :  let  us  depart. 
Bad  is  our  news,  but  we  must  let  them  know. 
Come,  for  Achilleus  bears  an  iron  heart. 
Nor  can  the  love  we  lent  him  heal  his  smart. 
Yet  payment  still  for  child  or  brother  slain 
Men  take,  and  for  a  price  keep  down  their  heart. 
And  bid  the  slayer  in  the  land  remain  — 
But,  for  this  girl,  the  gods  let  never  thy  wrath  wane. 

"  Now  seven  for  one  we  yield,  the  best  we  find. 
And  gifts  abundant  —  thine  own  roof  revere. 
Thy  suppliants  are  we  come,  to  bend  thy  mind. 
Of  all  Achaia  thy  most  near  and  dear !  " 
But  he :  "  Brave  Aias,  prince  divine,  give  ear! 
Right  nobly  dost  thou  speak :  I  love  thee  well. 
But  when  I  ponder  how  in  public  here 
He  used  me  like  a  villain,  my  reins  swell 
With  anger,  and  I  hate  him  with  the  hate  of  hell. 

"  Go  now  your  ways,  and  render  back  my  word : 
Ne'er  of  the  bloody  field  will  I  think  more, 
Till  by  the  Myrmidons'  own  camp  is  heard 
The  roll  of  Hector's  march,  and  from  my  door 
I  see  the  son  of  Priam  driving  sore 
Your  host,  and  burning  with  red  fire  the  fleet. 
But  when  the  battle  round  my  hut  shall  roar, 
And  all  about  me  there  come  smoke  and  heat, 
Hector,  I  think,  though  raging,  will  at  last  retreat." 

In  the  eighteenth  book  Thetis  appears,  after  Patroclus  has  been 
slain,  and  asks : 

"  Why  weeps  Achilleus  }     What  is  now  thy  care  } 
Speak  out,  nor  hide  the  cause :  all  things  are  done 
By  Zeus,  for  which  thou  liftedst  hands  in  prayer. 
That  to  their  ships  the  Achaian  host  should  run, 
And  bear  much  woe,  for  want  of  thee,  my  son." 


ACHILLES  BESOUGHT  BY    THETIS.  65 

And,  groaning  deep,  the  chief  in  answer  said  : 
"  Mother,  'tis  true,  all  this  the  god  hath  done  : 
But  what  avails  it,  now  my  friend  is  dead, 
Patroclus,  whom  I  loved  e'en  as  my  own  dear  head  ? 

"  Him  have  I  lost :  his  arms  doth  Hector  wear, 
Mine  own  proud  harness,  wonderful  to  see. 
Which  the  gods  gave  to  Peleus,  guerdon  fair. 
That  day,  when  with  a  man  they  bedded  thee. 
Ah  !  hadst  thou  with  thy  mates  in  the  deep  sea 
Lived  on,  and  Peleus  ta'en  a  mortal  wife ! 
'Twas  that  great  sorrow  in  thy  heart  might  be 
For  thy  lost  son  :  for  never  more  in  life 
Shalt  thou  receive  me  home,  returning  from  the  strife. 

"  For  life  to  me  henceforth  is  sorry  cheer. 

Nor  care  I  with  my  kind  to  look  on  day. 

Save  Hector  first,  down  stricken  by  my  spear, 

Lie  prone  in  dust,  and  breathe  his  life  away. 

And  for  the  spoil  of  dead  Patroclus  pay." 

And  Thetis  spoke,  weeping  with  tearful  moan  : 
"  Short  will  thy  life  be,  child,  for  this  thy  say  ; 

For  after  Hector's  death  straight  comes  thine  own." 

Whom  answered  fierce  Achilleus  in  disdaining  tone  : 

"  Straight  let  me  die,  since  to  my  dying  friend 
I  lent  no  aid ;  far  from  his  own  abode 
He  fell,  nor  did  mine  arm  the  curse  forefend. 
Now  to  mine  home  I  never  shall  take  road, 
Nor  help  from  me  hath  to  Patroclus  flowed 
Nor  to  those  mates  who  died  'neath  Hector's  hand, 
Here  sit  I  by  the  vessels,  a  dead  load. 
Myself  the  best  of  all  the  Achaian  band 
In  war: —  for  better  some  in  council-hall  upstand.  • 

"  Perish  foul  strife  from  gods  and  mortals  too, 
And  anger,  which  doth  e'en  the  wise  provoke ; 
Which  sweeter  far  than  trickling  honey-dew 
In  a  man's  breast  comes  rising  up  like  smoke. 
'Twas  thus  my  wrath  'gainst  Agamemnon  woke. 
But  now,  though  grieved,  put  we  that  matter  by, 
Bowing  our  dear  hearts  to  compulsion's  yoke, 
I  go  to  find  out  Hector  :  let  me  die 
When  Zeus  my  end  ordains,  and  the  other  gods  on  high  ! 

"  Great  Heracles,  he  could  not  'scape  the  tomb. 
But  fate  and  Hera's  rancor  made  him  tame  : 
So  I,  if  fate  award  me  a  like  doom. 
Will  lie  down  dead  :  but  now  I  yearn  for  fame. 
And  long  to  make  some  deep-zoned  Dardan  dame. 
Wiping  with  both  her  hands  the  tears  that  rill 
Down  her  fair  cheeks,  weep  loud  for  grief  and  shame  ; 
And  let  them  know  that  I  have  long  sat  still. 
So  keep  me  not  from  fight,  though  fond  :  for  forth  I  will." 

And  silver-footed  Thetis  spoke  again  : 
"True  are  thy  words,  my  darling:  'tis  no  wrong 
From  thy  much-suffering  mates  to  ward  off  bane : 


66  THE  ILIAD. 

But  thy  fair  arms  are  kept  Troy's  host  among, 
Brazen,  bright-gleaming  :  Hector,  champion  strong. 
Flaunts  them  on  his  own  shoulders  :  well  I  wot 
Death  dogs  him  close,  nor  shall  his  pride  be  long. 
But  thou  the  press  of  battle  enter  not, 
Till  thou  behold  me  here,  returning  to  this  spot : 

"  For  I  return  with  earliest  dawn  of  day. 

From  lord  Hephsestus  other  arms  to  bring." 

So  saying,  she  wended  from  her  son  away. 

And,  turning,  spoke  to  her  sea-following : 
"  Now  plunge  you  down  where  the  deep  waters  spring, 

Hie  to  the  palace  of  our  reverend  sire. 

And  bear  the  tidings  to  the  gray  old  king : 

I  seek  Olympus  and  the  lord  of  fire. 

If  he  will  make  my  son  fresh  arms  at  my  desire." 

Another  impressive  scene  is  at  the  end   of  the  nineteenth   book, 
when  the  horses  of  Achilles  announce  his  early  death : 

Meantime  the  squires  his  chariot,  nothing  slack, 
Yoked,  fastening  strap  and  collar,  as  was  meet : 
The  fiery  steeds  they  bitted,  and  drew  back 
The  flowing  reins  to  the  well-soldered  seat  : 
Automedon  climbed  the  car  with  nimble  feet, 
Grasping  the  glittering  whip  of  golden  wire  : 
Behind  in  glorious  panoply  complete 
Mounted  Achilleus,  like  the  sun's  red  fire. 
And  fiercely  he  cheered  on  the  horses  of  his  sire : 

"  Xanthus  and  Balius  !  far-renowned  pair 
Born  of  Podarge  !  let  your  busy  brain 
Some  other  counsel  ponder,  how  to  bear 
Your  master  home,  when  war  has  had  her  drain, 
Nor  leave  him  as  ye  left  Patroclus  slain." 
Whom  from  the  harness  that  fleet  horse  bespoke, 
Xanthus,  and  drooped  his  head,  while  all  his  mane 
Trailed  on  the  ground,  escaping  'neath  the  yoke  : 
And  Hera  in  his  breast  a  human  voice  awoke  : 

"  Ay,  great  Achilleus,  we  will  save  thee  now  ; 
Yet  it  is  thy  death-day  near,  nor  ours  the  blame : 
No — 'tis  high  Heaven,  and  Fate  that  will  not  bow. 
For  not  that  sluggish  were  our  feet  or  lame 
Did  the  proud  foe  Patroclus'  body  shame. 
But  Leto's  son,  that  glorious  potency. 
Slew  him  in  fight,  and  won  for  Hector  fame. 
For  us,  like  swiftest  Zephyr  we  can  fly  : 
But  thine  own  fate  is  fixed,  by  God  and  man  to  die." 

Then  ceased  he,  for  the  dumb  Erinnyes  stayed 
The  fountain  of  his  voice :  and  with  sharp  gall 
Swift-foot  Achilleus  wrathful  answer  made  : 
"  Xanthus,  why  bode  me  death  ?  thou  hast  no  call. 
Right  well  I  know  that  'tis  my  fate  to  fall 
Here  in  this  land,  from  sire  and  mother  far ; 


68  THE  ILIAD. 

Yet  will  I  not  forbear  for  great  or  small 

Till  to  Troy's  host  I  give  their  fill  of  war." 

He  said,  and  in  the  van,  loud  shouting,urged  his  car. 

Another  memorable  passage  is  to  be  found  in  the  twenty-third  book, 
where  Patroclus  visits  Achilles  in  a  dream : 

But  when  the  lust  of  meat  and  drink  was  stayed. 
Each  sought  his  several  hut,  and  wooed  repose. 
Only  Pelides,  on  the  margin  laid 
Of  the  loud  deep,  groaned  with  heartrending  throes. 
Pillowed  in  a  smooth  place,  where  gently  upflows 
The  landward  wav^e,  his  comrades  round  about : 
There  sleep  came  down,  and  loosed  him  from  his  woes, 
Soft  mantling :  for  his  limbs  were  wearied  out, 
Giving  swift  Hector  chase  by  Ilion's  high  redoubt. 

When  lo  !  the  ghost  of  poor  Patroclus  came. 
Voice,  eyes,  height,  raiment,  all,  most  like  to  see, 
Stood  o'er  his  head,  and  called  him  by  his  name  : 
"  Sleep'st  thou,  Achilleus,  nor  rememberest  me? 
Living,  thou  lov'dst  me  ;  dead,  I  fade  from  thee  : 
Entomb  me  quick,  that  I  may  pass  death's  door :  ' 
For  the  ghosts  drive  me  from  their  company. 
Nor  let  me  join  them  on  the  further  shore  : 
So  in  the  waste  wide  courts  I  wander  evermore. 


Reach  me  thy  hand,  I  pray ;  for  ne'er  again, 
The  pile  once  lit,  shalt  thou  behold  thy  mate  : 
Never  in  life  apart  from  our  brave  train 
Shall  we  take  counsel :  but  the  selfsame  fate 
Enthralls  me  now  that  by  my  cradle  sate. 
Thou  too  art  doomed,  Achilleus  the  divine, 
To  fall  and  die  by  sacred  Troia's  gate. 
Yet  one  thing  more,  wilt  thou  thine  ear  incline ; 
Let  not  my  bones  in  death  lie  separate  from  thine. 

'  We  twain  together  in  your  house  were  bred, 
Since,  me,  poor  child,  Menoetius  did  convey 
Thither  from  Opus,  for  blood  rashly  shed, 
What  time  Amphidamas'  son  upon  a  day 
I  slew  unwitting,  quarreling  at  our  play. 
Welcome  I  had  from  Peleus,  horseman  brave. 
Who  reared  me  up  to  be  thy  squire  in  fray. 
So  let  our  bones  be  mingled  in  the  grave, 
Hid  in  the  golden  urn  thy  goddess  mother  gave." 


Whom  answering  swift  Achilleus  thus  addressed  : 

Why  com'st  thou,  loved  one,  thus  thy  will  to  show.? 

All  things  shall  be  fulfilled  at  thy  behest. 

But  stand  thou  near,  that  each  his  arms  may  throw 

Round  cither's  neck,  and  have  his  fill  of  woe." 

So  saying,  he  clutched  at  him  with  hands  outspread. 


HELEN  DESCRIBES    THE   GREEK  HEROES   TO  PRIAM.  69 

But  caught  not :  shrieking  went  the  soul  below 
Like  smoke :  up  leapt  Achilleus,  chill  with  dread. 
Smote  his  flat  palms  together,  and  words  of  pity  said  : 

"  O  heaven  !  there  doth  abide  among  the  dead 
Semblance  and  life,  though  thought  is  theirs  no  more  : 
For  all  night  long  hath  stood  above  my  head 
The  soul  of  poor  Patroclus,  wailing  sore, 
And  told  its  will  :  his  very  form  it  wore." 
So  saying,  in  each  he  wakened  sorrow's  spnng: 
Red  morning  broke  as  they  their  grief  did  pour 
Round  the  pale  corpse.     But  Agamemnon  king 
Sent  men  and  mules  abroad,  good  store  of  wood  to  bring. 

There  are  certain  other  passages  that  show  with  what  vividness 
Homer  saw  and  described  the  scenes  of  his  immortal  poem,  and  none 
is  more  worthy  of  note  than  the  one  that  portrays  Helen  watching 
the  Greek  army  from  the  Trojan  wall : 

There  Priam,  Panthoiis,  Lampus,  and  their  train, 

Thymcetes,  Clytius,  Hyketaon  sat, 

Ucalegon,  Antenor,  wise  of  brain. 

Hard  by  the  gates,  and  council  held  thereat ; 

Loosed  by  old  age  from  war,  but  in  debate 

Most  admirable,  and  with  the  voice  endued 

Of  clear  cicalas  that  in  summer  heat 

Thrill  with  a  silver  tune  the  shady  wood. 

Such  sat  the  Trojan  elders,  each  in  thoughtful  mood. 

These  seeing  Helen  at  the  tower  arrive, 
One  to  another  winged  words  addressed  : 
"  Well  may  the  Trojans  and  Achaians  strive. 
And  a  long  time  bear  sorrow  and  unrest. 
For  such  a  woman,  in  her  cause  and  quest. 
Who  like  immortal  goddesses  in  face 
Appeareth  ;  yet  'twere  even  thus  far  best 
In  ships  to  send  her  back  to  her  own  place, 
Lest  along  curse  she  leave  to  us  and  all  our  race." 

Then  Priam  called  her :     "  Sit  near  me,  dear  child, 

And  thy  once  husband,  kindred,  friends  survey. 

Thee  hold  I  guiltless,  but  the  gods,  less  mild. 

Scourge  me  with  war  when  I  am  old  and  gray. 

Now  tell  me  this  large  warrior's  name,  I  pray, 

This  so  majestic  in  his  port  and  mien ; 

Others  yet  taller  I  behold  to-day, 

But  none  till  now  so  beautiful  I  ween  ; 

So  estimable  and  grave,  so  king-like,  have  I  seen." 

Helen,  divine  of  women,  answering  saith  : 
"  Father,  thy  gray  hairs  speak  with  awful  power. 
O  that  for  dear  life  I  had  chosen  death. 
When  with  thy  son  I  left  my  bridal  bower. 
My  child,  and  sweet  companions  !  but  the  hour 


7o  THE  ILIAD. 

Passed,  and  I  wail  forever !     Thou  dost  see 

Lord  Agamemnon,  Atreus'  son,  the  flower 

Of  kings,  and  a  strong  warrior.     This  is  he 

That  was  my  husband's  brother,  unless  I  dream,  ah  me ! ' 


Him  then  the  old  man  much  admired,  and  said  : 
■  Blest  son  of  Atreus,  born  with  happy  star, 
O,  of  how  many  Achaians  art  thou  head  ! 
Once  that  vine-country  where  the  Phrygians  are, 
Numberless  men,  with  steeds  and  glancing  car. 
By  Otreus  and  high  Mygdon  ruled,  I  knew. 
Hard  by  Sangarius  stream  encamped  for  war. 
When  came  the  Amazons,  mv  help  they  drew : 
But  than  these  dark-eyed  warriors  they  were  far  more  few. 


Seeing  Odysseus  then  the  old  man  said  : 

Him  too  describe,  dear  child,  at  my  behest. 

Less  tall  than  Agamemnon  by  the  head. 

But  in  the  shoulders  wider,  and  the  breast. 

His  arms  upon  the  boon  earth  glittering  rest. 

As  mid  the  ranks  he  moveth  to  and  fro. 

Him  to  a  thick-fleeced  ram  I  liken  best. 

Passing  amid  a  great  flock  white  as  snow." 

And  Helen,  child  of  Zeus,  this  answer  did  bestow  : 


"  Odysseus  is  the  man,  Laertes'  son, 
Wise,  and  Ithaca's  rough  country  bred. 
All  arts  to  whom  and  deep  designs  are  known." 
Thereto  the  wise  Antenor  answering  said  : 

"  Lady,  a  true  word  from  thy  lips  hath  fled. 
Here  also  hath  divine  Odysseus  been. 
He  came  with  Menelaus,  warrior  dread, 
To  hear  of  thee  ;  they  were  my  guests,  I  ween, 
Who  the  whole  cast  of  both,  and  inmost  mind,  have  seen. 


'  When  in  the  Trojan  council  they  appeared, 
Each  standing,  Menelaus  overpassed 
His  friend  in  stature  upward  from  the  beard. 
Of  the  more  honourable  and  graver  cast 
Odysseus  seemed,  both  sitting.     When  at  last 
For  speech  the  arrows  of  keen  thought  they  strung, 
Then  Menelaus  spoke  with  utterance  fast. 
In  brief  sort,  chary  of  words,  but  clear  of  tongue. 
Not  wandering  from  the  point,  albeit  in  age  more  young. 


But  from  his  seat  when  wise  Odysseus  sprang. 

Firming  his  eyes  upon  the  ground  he  stood, 

Nor  waved  his  scepter  through  the  whole  harangue, 

But  clenched  it,  like  a  man  sullen  and  rude, 

As  'twere  a  boor  or  one  in  angry  mood. 

But  when  the  volume  of  his  voice  he  rolled 

In  words  like  snow-flakes,  winter's  feathery  brood, 

None  could  Odysseus  rival,  young  or  old  ; 

All  cared  to  hear  him  now  far  more  than  to  behold." 


PARTING  OF  HECTOR  AND  ANDROMACHE.  71 

Aias  beholding  third,  the  old  man  said  : 
"  Who  is  this  other,  far  most  tall  and  wide  ?  " 

Helen,  divine  of  women,  answering  said  : 
"  Aias,  the  tower  of  war  ;  and  on  that  side 

Stands,  girt  with  captains,  godlike  in  his  pride 

Idomeneus  of  Crete.     He  oft  of  old 

Did  in  my  husband's  home,  our  guest,  abide. 

But  now  all  other  Achaians  I  behold. 

All  of  them  know  right  well,  and  can  their  names  unfold. 

"  Only  two  captains  can  I  nowhere  see. 
Knight  Castor,  Pollux  of  the  iron  glove. 
Own  brethren,  of  one  mother  born  with  me. 
Came  they  not  hither  from  the  land  we  love  } 
Or,  if  they  sailed  the  briny  deeps  above, 
Dare  they  not  enter  on  the  field  with  men. 
For  taunts  and  insult,  which  my  name  doth  move  ?  " 
She  spake — but  them  kind  earth,  far  from  her  ken, 
In  Lacedasmon  held,  their  dear  land,  even  then. 

Meantime  the  heralds  bear  the  holy  things. 
Two  lambs,  and  wine  that  maketh  noble  cheer, 
Stored  in  a  goatskin  ;  and  Idasus  brings 
The  glittering  bowl,  and  golden  cups.     He,  near 
The  old  man  standing,  bade  him  mark  and  hear : 
"  Son  of  Laomedon,  with  speed  arise  ! 
For  now  Troy's  best  desire  thee  to  appear. 
And  Argives  brazen-mailed,  before  their  eyes, 
To  strike  truce  in  the  plain  with  prayer  and  sacrifice. 

In  the  sixth  book  is  the  famous  parting  scene  between  Hector  and 
Andromache : 

When  Hector  heard  that,  to  the  Western  gates. 

Meaning  that  way  to  pass  forth  to  the  plain, 

He  sped  back  quickly  through  the  long  wide  streets. 

And  lo  !  his  dear  wife  ran  to  meet  him  fain. 

Child  of  Eetion,  who  held  high  reign 

Over  Cilician  men,  in  Thebes  afar, 

'Neath  woody  Places  —  she,  and  in  her  train 

A  young  nurse  and  a  babe,  as  babies  are, 

Hector's  one  child,  their  darling,  like  a  lovely  star. 

Him  Hector  called  Scamandrius,  but  the  rest 
Astyanax  —  thus  honoring  Hector's  child  ; 
For  Hector  was  alone  Troy's  stay  confest. 
And  they  "The  City's  King"  his  babe  had  styled. 
He  then,  beholding  the  sweet  infant,  smiled 
In  silence :  but  Andromache  there  shed 
Thick  tears  beside  him,  and  in  anguish  wild 
Clasped  Hector  by  the  hand,  and  spake,  and  said, 
"  Dear  one,  thine  own  brave  temper  will  yet  lay  thee  dead. 

"  Thou  hast  no  pity  for  thy  child  or  me. 

Ere  long  thy  widow,  when  the  Achaian  men 
Shall  like  a  flood  pour  round,  and  murder  thee. 
I  tell  thee  it  were  better  for  me  then 


72  THE   ILIAD. 

Dark  earth  to  enter,  if  that  day  come  when, 

Light  of  my  eyes,  I  lose  thee.     For  no  cheer, 

No  comfort  ever  can  I  find  again, 

But  wailings  in  the  night,  and  anguish  drear, 

When  for  thine  arms  I  feel,  and  thou  art  nowhere  near. 


No  parents  have  I  now.     Achilleus  slew 

My  father,  when  he  came  to  raze  and  blot 

Cilician  Thebe,  and  with  doom  o'erthrew 

My  father's  people,  and  much  plunder  got. 

Eetion  he  slew  there,  but  stript  him  not : 

Awe  was  upon  him,  and  his  heart  was  bound. 

But  with  his  gilded  arms  in  that  same  spot 

He  burned  him,  piling  o'er  his  bones  a  mound  ; 

And  the  hill-nymphs,  Zeus'  children,  planted  elms  around. 


'And  brethren  I  had  seven, -within  our  hall ; 
In  one  day  did  their  light  go  down  and  cease  ; 
Swift-foot  divine  Achilleus  slew  them  all. 
Mid  their  slow  kine  and  sheep  of  silver  fleece. 
As  for  my  mother,  who  in  days  of  peace 
'Neath  woody  Placos  shared  my  father's  sway. 
Her,  with  the  spoil  brought  thence,  did  he  release 
For  countless  ransom  :  but  before  her  day 
By  Artemis'  keen  arrows  she  was  taken  away. 


O,  Hector,  thou  to  me  art  mother  dear. 
And  father,  brother,  husband  of  my  life. 
Have  pity !  on  the  tower  abide  thou  here  : 
Leave  not  an  orphan  child,  a  widowed  wife. 
Near  the  wild  figs,  where  footing  is  most  rife, 
Stand  :  for  by  that  way  came  their  bravest  on 
Thrice,  with  the  two  Aiantes,  wild  in  strife, 
Idomeneus,  the  Atridas,  Tydeus'  son, 
Whether  by  seer  advised,  or  by  their  own  heart  won." 


And  the  large  white-plumed  Hector  answered  then  : 
'  All  this  I  knew  ;  'twas  mine  own  heart's  appeal ; 
But  scorn  unutterable  from  Trojan  men 
And  long-robed  Trojan  women  I  fear  to  feel, 
If  like  a  dastard  from  the  fight  I  steal. 
No,  for  my  soul  I  cannot.     I  have  learned 
Still  to  be  foremost  for  my  country's  weal, 
Nor  even  from  the  van  my  feet  I  turned  ; 
Thus  for  my  sire  large  fame,  and  for  myself  have  earned. 


For  the  day  comes,  I  know  it,  and  the  hour 

Comes,  it  will  come,  when  sacred  Troy  shall  fall. 

And  Priam,  and  his  people,  and  his  power. 

Yet  not  that  sorrow  of  the  Trojans  all 

Hereafter,  when  in  vain  my  help  they  call, 

Nor  even  of  Hecuba,  nor  Priam  king, 

Nor  of  my  brothers,  whom,  so  many  and  tall, 

Their  foes  ill-minded  to  the  dust  shall  bring. 

Slain  with  the  sword,  my  breast  so  bitterly  can  wring 


PARTING  OF  HECTOR    AND  ANDROMACHE.  73 

'  Not  these,  nor  all  griefs  on  my  heart  so  weigh, 
As  thine,  when  some  one  of  the  Achaian  band 
Robs  thee  for  ever  of  thy  freedom's  day. 
And  bears  thee  weeping  to  an  alien  land. 
Lo,  then  in  Argos  shall  thou  set  thine  hand 
To  weave  thy  stern  task  at  another's  loom, 
Or  at  Messeis  and  Hyperia  stand 
With  pail  or  pitcher,  and  thy  heart  consume, 
Struggling  reluctant  much,  yet  conquered  by  strong  doom. 


Then  some  one  may  behold  thy  tears,  and  say, 
'  See  now  the  wife  of  Hector  whom  we  knew 
First  of  war-captains  in  his  country's  day. 
Ere  we  the  towers  of  Ilion  overthrew,' 
So  will  he  speak,  and  thou  shalt  wail  anew 
For  anguish,  and  sore  need  of  one  like  me, 
Thy  life  to  shield,  thy  slavery  to  undo. 
But  let  the  mounded  earth  my  covering  be, 
Ere  of  thy  cries  I  hear,  and  fierce  hands  laid  on  thee ! " 


Then  with  his  arms  spread  forth  did  Hector  lean 

Toward  his  fair  babe,  who  to  the  nurse's  breast 

Clung  with  a  cry,  scared  at  his  father's  mien. 

And  at  the  brazen  helm,  so  grimly  drest. 

Waving  aloft  the  long  white  horsehair  crest. 

Both  parents  laughed ;  and  Hector  from  his  brow 

Laid  the  helm  shining  on  the  earth,  then  pressed 

Fondly,  now  dandled  in  his  arms,  and  now 

Kissed  his  dear  child,  and  spake  to  all  the  gods  his  vow : 


Zeus,  and  all  gods,  Ifet  this  my  child  attain 

Praise  in  the  host  of  Troia,  even  as  I, 

In  strength  so  good,  and  full  of  power  to  reign ; 

And  when  he  comes  from  battle,  let  men  cry 

He  far  excels  his  father,'  and  on  high 

Spoils  let  him  bear  with  foeman's  gore  defiled, 

And  his  dear  mother's  heart  make  glad  thereby." 

He  spake,  and  in  his  wife's  arms  laid  the  child. 

Who  to  her  pure  breast  clasped  him,  as  in  tears  she  smiled. 


Her  lovingly  he  touched,  and  pitying  said  : 
'  Dearest,  be  not  too  heavy  and  undone ; 
For  no  man  against  fate  can  send  me  dead 
To  Hades,  and  his  hour  can  no  man  shun. 
None  bad  or  good,  since  earth  was  peopled  —  none. 
But  now  go  home,  and  to  thine  own  works  see. 
Distaff  and  loom,  and  keep  thy  house  at  one. 
This  business  of  the  war  men's  care  shall  be. 
Who  dwell  here  in  the  land,  and  most  of  all  to  me." 


74 


THE  JLIAD. 


In   the 
Achilles : 


last  book  is  described  the  interview  between   Priam    and 

But  when  unto  Achilleus'  hut  they  came 

Which  Myrmidonian  hands  made  for  their  king, 

Down  cutting  boughs  of  fir,  and  roofed  the  same 

With  grassy  thatch,  from  meadows  gathering. 

And  round  it  for  that  prince  a  mighty  ring 

Of  stakes  they  made :  across  the  door  there  lay 

A  single  bar  of  lir  :  the  enormous  thing 

Tasked  three  to  fix  it,  three  to  lift  away, 

Of  other  men  :  the  chief  its  weight  alone  could  sway. 


VISIT  OF   PRIAM   TO   ACHILLES. 

Now  Hermes  oped  it,  and  dismounting  cried  : 
'  Old  man,  a  blessed  god  thou  seest  in  me, 
E'en  Hermes,  sent  from  Zeus  to  be  thy  guide  : 
Now  I  go  back,  nor  shall  Achilleus  see 
My  face  :  for  cause  of  just  reproach  'twould  be 
For  gods  of  mortals  to  display  their  care. 
But  go  thou  in,  and  clasp  Achilleus'  knee. 
And  beg  him  by  his  sire  and  mother  fair 
And  his  one  darling  child,  that  thou  may'st  speed  thy  prayer. 

So  saying,  to  high  Olympus  back  did  wend 
Hermes;  and  Priam  lighted  to  the  ground, 
Leaving  Idasus  there,  who  stayed  to  tend 
Horses  and  mules  :  the  old  man.  onward  bound, 


INTERVIEW  BETWEEN  PRIAM  AND   ACHILLES.  75 

Passed  to  where  bode  Achilleus  ;  him  he  found 

There  sitting  :  but  his  mates  were  otherwhere  : 

Automedon  and  Alcimus  renowned, 

These  only  waited  :  from  his  evening  fare 

The  chief  had  newly  ceased,  and  still  the  board  was  there. 

Unseen  great  Priam  entered,  and  came  nigh. 

And  clasped  his  knees,  and  kissed  that  terrible  hand 

By  which  his  many  sons  had  come  to  die. 

As  one  by  Ate  driven,  in  his  own  land 

Slaying  a  man,  flies  to  a  foreign  strand. 

To  some  rich  house,  and  all  that  see  are  dazed. 

So  wondered  he  as  Priam's  face  he  scanned; 

Wondered  the  rest,  and  on  each  other  gazed. 

While  Priam  at  his  knee  voice  of  entreaty  raised : 


'  Think  of  thy  sire,  man  of  the  godlike  brow. 
Of  years  like  mine,  on  age's  threshold  drear  ! 
Perchance  his  neighbors  round  him  even  now 
Vex  him,  and  none  there  is  to  ward  off  fear : 
Yet  he,  when  of  thy  living  he  doth  hear, 
Is  glad  at  heart,  and  ever  hopeth  on 
Back  from  the  wars  to  see  his  offspring  dear: 
But  I  am  all  unhappy  :  many  a  son. 
Valiant  and  brave,  had  I,  but  Fate  hath  spared  me  none. 


'  Full  fifty  were  there  when  the  Achaians  came : 
Nineteen,  the  offspring  of  one  womb  were  they  : 
Yea,  seed  I  had  of  many  a  queenly  dame. 
But  the  more  part  have  bowed  their  knees  in  fray  : 
And  him,  my  pride,  Troy  and  the  Trojan's  stay, 
Thou  slewest,  for  his  country  battling  bold. 
Hector:  for  him  I  seek  the  ships  to-day. 
To  treat  for  ransom,  charged  with  gifts  untold. 
But  thou,  revere  the  gods,  and  pity  one  so  old  I 


Think  of  thy  sire  !  I  am  forlorner  yet, 

Enforced  to  dare  what  none  hath  dared  but  I, 

To  kiss  the  hand  that  my  son's  blood  made  wet." 

He  heard,  and  for  his  sire  was  fain  to  sigh  : 

Gently  he  touched,  and  put  the  old  man  by. 

So  they  two  thinking,  he  of  Hector  dead. 

Stretched  at  Achilleus'  feet,  wept  bitterly. 

While  the  other  mourned  his  sire,  or  in  his  stead 

Patroclus  :  and  their  groans  through  all  the  mansion  spread. 


But  when  of  tears  the  chief  had  his  desire. 

And  yearning  from  his  heart  and  limbs  had  fled. 

He  rose,  and  by  the  hand  raised  up  the  sire. 

Pitying  the  hoary  beard  and  hoary  head. 

And  soothingly  bespake  him,  and  thus  said  : 

Poor  man !  woe's  cup  thou  to  the  dregs  dost  drain. 

How  dar'dst  thou  journey  all  uncomraded 

E'en  to  his  face,  whose  ruthless  hand  hath  slain 

Thy  many  sons  and  brave  ?  of  iron  is  thy  heart's  grain. 


76  THE  ILIAD. 

"  Come,  rise  and  seat  thee  :  but,  for  this  our  grief, 
Let  it  have  rest,  though  smarting  :  for  the  chill 
Of  wintry  sorrow  yieldeth  no  relief : 
Since  for  sad  mortals  thus  the  blest  ones  will. 
To  live  in  pain,  while  they  are  painless  still. 
Two  casks  there  stand  on  Zeus'  high  palace-stair, 
One  laden  with  good  gifts,  and  one  with  ill : 
To  whomso  Zeus  ordains  a  mingled  share. 
Now  in  due  time  with  foul  he  meeteth,  now  with  fair : 

"  But  whoso  gets  but  ill,  that  wretch  forlorn 
Red-ravening  Hunger  o'er  the  boon  earth's  face 
Hounds,  and  he  wanders,  gods'  and  mortals'  scorn. 
So  Peleus  at  his  birth  the  gods  did  grace 
With  honor  :  born  to  rule  a  noble  race. 
He  wived  a  goddess,  though  of  mortal  breed  : 
Yet  e'en  in  his  full  cup  the  bale  had  place. 
For  in  his  house  grew  up  no  royal  seed  ; 
One  child  alone  is  his,  to  early  death  decreed. 

"  Nor  tend  I  his  gray  hairs,  since  far  away 
In  Troy  I  sit,  a  scourge  to  thee  and  thine. 
But  thou  of  old  wast  highly  blest,  men  say  : 
Far  as  the  sun  o'er  Lesbos'  isle  doth  shme 
To  Phrygia's  plains  and  Helle's  boundless  brine. 
Thou  bar'st  the  palm  for  sons  and  treasure-store. 
Now,  since  the  curse  hath  come  by  will  divine, 
Around  thy  town  are  fightings  evermore  : 
Yet  cheer  thee  still,  nor  grieve  so  sadly  and  so  sore. 

"  For  nought  'twill  stead  thee  for  thy  son  to  cry. 
Nor  wilt  thou  raise  him,  ere  fresh  ill  thou  dree." 
And  godlike  Priam  made  thereto  reply : 

"  Give  me  no  seat,  dread  monarch,  while  with  thee 
My  Hector  lies  untombed  ;  but  set  him  free, 
That  I  may  see  him,  and  take  the  gifts  we  bear  ; 
Heaven  give  thee  pleasure  of  them,  and  make  thee  see 
Thine  home  again,  since  thou  hast  heard  my  prayer, 
And  given  me  to  see  light   and  breathe  the  genial  air." 

To  whom  Achilleus,  with  dark-lowering  brow  : 
"  Stir  me  no  more,  old  man  :  myself  design 
To  loose  thy  son  :  one  came  from  Zeus  e'en  now. 
My  mother,  offspring  of  the  salt  sea  brine. 
Ay,  Priam,  I  know  thee  well,  some  power  divine 
Hath  led  thee  hither  on  thy  bold  emprise  : 
For  no  mere  man,  though  of  more  strength  than  thine, 
Could  pass  unchallenged  by  the  warders'  eyes, 
Or  lightly  move  the  bar  athwart  our  gate  that  lies. 

"  So  stir  not  more  my  heart  in  my  distress. 
Lest  thee,  e'en  thee,  old  man,  I  fail  to  spare. 
Though  suppliant  thou,  and  Zeus'  high  will  transgress.' 
He  spake :  the  old  man  trembled,  and  was  ware. 
Then  Peleus'  son,  like  lion  from  his  lair, 
Sprang  straight  from  out  the  chamber,  of  his  train 
Not  unattended  :  for  two  squires  were  there, 
Automedon  and  Alcimus,  the  twain 
Whom  most  their  chieftain  prized,  after  Patroclus  slain. 


DESCRIPTION  OF  BATTLES. 

The  mules  and  horses  loosed  they  from  the  yoke, 

And  to  the  hut  the  old  king's  herald  led 

And  set  him  on  a  seat :  then  out  they  took 

The  priceless  recompense  of  Hector's  head. 

Two  mantles  left  they,  round  the  corpse  to  spread. 

And  a  rich  tunic,  meet  for  his  attire. 

Then  bade  he  bondmaids  wash  and  oil  the  dead, 

Apart,  lest,  looking  on  his  son,  the  sire 

In  choler  should  break  forth,  and  rouse  Achilleus'  ire. 


77 


ARMOR    FROM    PERGAMON. 


The  fervor  with  which  the  battles  are  narrated  may  be  gathered 
from  this  passage  in  the  fourteenth  book : 

Quickly  he  sought  the  Earth-shaker  with  the  news,  . 
Stood  by  him,  and  spoke  words  with  wings  of  wind: 
"  Now,  great  Poseidon,  thine  occasion  use ; 
Now  give  the  Danaans  fame,  while  Zeus  is  blind  ; 
For  my  strong  spells  have  bound  him,  limbs  and  mind, 
By  Hera's  blandishments  to  sleep  betrayed." 
Then  went  he  to  the  tribes  of  human  kind, 
While  he,  spurred  on  the  Danaan  host  to  aid. 
Leapt  forth  into  their  van,  and  loud  monition  made  : 


"  What,  Argives,  shall  we  thus  the  day  forego  } 
Shall  Hector  burn  our  ships  and  glory  gain  } 
In  sooth,  he  says,  yea,  boasts  it  shall  be  so, 
Seeing  Achilleus  doth  from  war  refrain  : 
Yet  scant  that  loss,  if  we  who  here  remain 
Be  stirred  to  aid  each  other  in  the  field. 
Take  we  our  largest  shields  of  closest  grain. 
Our  brows  with  beaming  helmets  safely  steeled, 
And  in  our  valiant  hands  our  longest  javelins  wield. 


78 


THE  ILIAD. 


"  Forward  !  myself  will  lead  :  nor,  spite  his  vaunt, 
Will  Hector  dare  abide  when  we  rush  on. 
And  let  the  brave  who  finds  his  buckler  scant 
Give  it  some  weakling,  and  a  larger  don." 
Such  words  were  his  :  and  they  obeyed  each  one  : 
And  the  great  chieftains,  though  their  wounds  did  gall, 
Odysseus,  Diomede,  and  Atreus'  son, 
Passed  round  the  ranks  and  changed  their  weapons  all : 
The  large  the  stronger  took,  the  weaker  sort  the  small. 


SWORDS   FROM    MYCEN^. 


But  when  their  flesh  in  gleaming  brass  was  clad, 
They  moved  to  go  :  Poseidon  led  the  way ; 
In  his  huge  hand  a  long  keen  sword  he  had. 
Like  lightning:  yet  therewith  he  might  not  slay 
The  ranks  of  foemen,  but  their  hearts  dismay. 
Hector  his  Trojans  ranged  on  the  adverse  side. 
O,  long  and  dreadful  was  the  battle-fray 
Waged  by  Poseidon  there  and  Hector  tried, 
While  Trojans  he  with  help  and  he  Achaians  plied. 

The  sea  was  dashed  up  to  the  huts  and  fleet 

Of  Argos ;  and  they  met  with  a  loud  yell. 

Not  sea-waves  on  the  coast  so  loudly  beat 

As  'neath  the  north-wind  they  from  ocean  swell, 

Nor  fire  enkindled  in  a  mountain  dell 

In  leaping  on  the  wood  so  fierce  doth  roar. 

Nor  'mid  tall-foliaged  oaks  the  winds  so  fell 

Howls,  of  all  things  most  terrible  in  its  blore. 

As  Troy  and  Argos  yelled  when  each  on  each  they  bore. 

At  Aias  first  his  lance  brave  Hector  threw 

As  front  to  front  he  faced  him,  nor  yet  erred, 

But  smote  him  on  the  breast,  where  baldricks  two 

Ran,  one  the  shield  and  one  the  sword  to  gird  ; 

These  checked  the  blow.     Brave  Hector's  wrath  was  stirred 

At  such  miscarriage  :  back  he  did  retreat, 

Shunning  his  fate  :  Aias  ,by  anger  spurred. 

Caught  a  great  stone  of  those  that  at  their  feet 

Lay  many,  as  they  fought,  props  of  the  anchored  fleet. 


He  whirled  it  like  a  quoit  and  spun  it  round  ; 
O'er  the  shield's  rim,  on  to  the  neck  it  passed. 


DESCRIPTION  OF  BATTLES.  79 

As  some  tall  oak  falls  heavily  to  the  ground 

Smit  by  Zeus'  thunder,  and  a  sulphurous  blast 

Swift  follows  :  whoso  sees  it  is  aghast, 

For  Zeus'  sore  thunderstrokes  not  soon  are  healed : 

So  in  the  dust  fell  Hector,  tall  and  vast : 

He  dropped  his  lance,  and  on  him  fell  his  shield 

And  helmet,  and  all  o'er  his  brazen  armor  pealed. 

Hoping  a  prize,  the  foe  with  yells  rushed  on, 

And  showered  a  hail  of  darts,  athirst  for  blood  : 

But  stab  or  pierce  they  could  not,  ne'er  a  one, 

For  round  him  in  a  ring  Polydamas  stood 

With  great  ^neas  and  Agenor  good, 

Brave  Glaucus,  and  Sarpedon,  Lycia's  head  ; 

And  of  the  rest  each  succored  as  he  could. 

And  his  broad  shield  before  his  chieftain  spread  : 

And  him,  reared  on  their  hands,  his  mates  from  battle  sped. 

So  his  steeds  reached  he,  which  behind  the  roar 

Of  battle  stood,  with  car  and  charioteer  : 

Quickly  they  bare  him  homeward,  groaning  sore. 

But  soon  as  they  came  nigh  that  river  clear. 

Swift-eddying  Xanthus,  Zeus'  own  offspring  dear, 

They  take  him  out  and  water  on  him  pour  : 

He  fetched  a  breath,  and  did  his  eyes  uprear. 

And  sat  couched  up,  disgorging  the  black  gore  : 

Then  back  to  earth  he  fell,  and  gloom  his  eyes  came  o'er. 

Whom  when  the  Argives  saw  from  the  field  retire. 
More  fierce  they  rushed,  and  minded  them  of  fight ; 
Far  foremost  he  who  called  Oileus  sire. 
Charging  with  pointed  lance,  did  Satnius  smite, 
Whom  erst  on  Satnio's  banks  a  Naiad  bright 
Bore  to  his  father  Enops,  shepherd  sw^in  ; 
Him  then  Oileus'  son,  spear-famous  wight, 
Pierced  in  the  flank  :  he  fell,  and  o'er  him  slain 
Trojans  and  Danaans  there  a  desperate  strife  maintain. 

Then  to  avenge  the  dead  Polydamas  came, 
Panthous'  brave  son,  who  Prothoenor  hit 
On  the  right  shoulder  :  the  dart  held  its  aim 
On  through  the  back  :  o'erthrown,  the  dust  he  bit. 
And  the  slayer  boasted  loud,  for  all  to  wit  : 
'  Not  vainly  from  the  stalwart  arm,  I  ween. 
Of  Panthous'  mighty  son  that  lance  did  flit; 
Some  Argive  hath  it,  who  thereon  will  lean. 
And  travel  by  its  aid  down  to  the  house  unseen." 

He  spoke  :  the  Argives  listened,  smit  with  pain, 

But  most  of  all  stout  Aias'  heart  was  rent, 

Telamon's  son  ;  for  next  him  fell  the  slain. 

At  the  retiring  foe  a  lance  he  sent, 

Who,  springing  quick  aside,  did  death  prevent : 

So  'twas  Antenor's  son  received  the  spear, 

Archelochus  :  for  Zeus  his  ruin  meant : 

It  smote  him  where  the  head  and  neck  come  near. 

Just  at  the  neck's  last  joint,  and  cut  the  tendons  sheer. 


8o  .  THE   ILIAD. 

Head,  mouth,  and  nostrils  sooner  touched  the  ground, 
Than  shins  and  knees,  he  falling.     As  he  lay, 
Aias  outspoke  to  Panthous'  son  renowned  : 
"  Think  now,  Polydamas,  and  truly  say, 
Will  not  this  death  for  Prothoenor's  pay  ? 
No  mean  man  seems  he,  nor  of  lineage  base, 
But  brother  to  Antenor,  good  in  fray, 
Or  son  :  for  likest  that  his  form  and  face." 
So  spoke  he,  knowing  well :  on  Troy  came  grief  apace. 

Then  Acamas,  stalking  his  dead  brother  round. 
Slew  Promachus,  who  sought  to  drag  the  slain  ; 
And  o'er  him  Acamas  vaunted  with  loud  sound  : 
"  Not  ours  alone  the  labor  and  the  bane. 
Proud  Argives,  but  yourselves  sometimes  are  ta'en. 
See  how  my  spear  hath  given  up  to  decay 
This  Theban,  lest  my  brother's  death  remain 
Long  unrevenged  :  henceforth  let  each  man  pray 
A  brother  may  survive,  to  wipe  his  shame  away." 

He  spoke :  the  Argives  listened  smit  with  pain, 
But  most  of  all  Peneleos'  heart  was  rent ; 
Raging,  on  Acamas  he  rushed  amain, 
Who  swerved  aside,  nor  stayed  the  monarch's  hent : 
So  on  Ilioneus  his  good  steel  he  bent, 
The  child  of  Phorbas,  lord  of  cattle  fair. 
Who  of  all  Trojans  born  did  most  content 
Hermes,  who  gave  him  wealth  to  spend  and  spare  : 
To  whom  his  consort  bore  Ilioneus,  his  sole  heir. 

Beneath  his  brow  Peneleos  thrust  the  spear 
At  the  eye's  root,  and  thence  the  pupil  tore ; 
Onward  through  eye  and  nape  the  point  went  sheer  : 
He  sank  to  earth,  his  hands  spread  out  before : 
Forth  flashed  Peneleos  his  keen  sword,  and  shore 
Right  through  the  neck,  tumbling  to  earth  the  head 
And  helmet  both  :  still  the  pierced  eyeball  bore 
The  javelin  fixed  :  he,  like  a  poppy  red. 
Lifted  the  gory  prize,  and  to  the  Trojans  said  : 

"  Trojans,  my  heralds  be,  and  bear  my  tale 
To  proud  Ilioneus'  sire  and  mother  dear : 
Go,  bid  them  in  their  palace  weep  and  wail ; 
For  ne'er  shall  Promachus'  beloved  fere  ' 
Welcome  her  husband  home  with  smiling  cheer. 
When  once  again  we  Argives  cross  the  sea." 
Thus  boastfully  he  spoke  :  a  ghastly  fear 
Took  all  their  hearts,  and  each  one  eagerly 
Looked  round,  by  what  way  best  the  steep  of  doom  to  flee. 

Now  tell  me,  Muses,  dwellers  on  heaven's  height. 
Who  of  the  Achaians  foremost  won  and  wore 
The  red  spoils,  when  Poseidon  turned  the  fight. 
First  Telamonian  Aias  shed  the  gore 
Of  Hyrtius,  who  command  o'er  Mysians  bore  : 
Likewise  Antilochus  stout  Mermerus  slew. 
And  Phalkes  :  Meriones  their  harness  tore 
From  Morys  and  Hippotion  :  Teucer  true 
Sent  Prothoon  down  to  death  and  Periphetes  too. 


DESCRIPTION   OF  BATTLES. 


8i 


But  valiant  Menelaus  in  the  flank 

Pierced  Hyperenor,  shepherd  of  his  train  ; 

The  steel  raged  onward,  and  his  entrails  drank, 

And  through  the  ghastly  wound  the  soul  in  pain 

Went  speedily,  and  on  his  eyes  amain 

The  death-cloud  fell :  but  Aias  most  did  smite, 

Oileus'  swjft-foot  son  :  foro  er  the  plain 

None  else  could  follow  with  a  step  so  light. 

When  warrior  hearts  grow  faint,  and  Zeus  impels  to  flight. 


BATTLE     SCENE. 


CHAPTER  III.— THE  ODYSSEY. 

1. — The  Difference  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  and  the  Resultant  Discussion — 
An  Analysis  of  the  Latter  Poem.  II. — Some  of  the  Qualities  of  this  Poem — Its 
Coherence  and  Simplicity — The  Naivete  of  the  Heroes — The  Explanation  of  the 
Poem  as  a  Solar  Myth.     III. — Illustrative  Extracts. 


I. 

THE  Odyssey  is  very  unlike  the  Iliad,  and  the  difference  between 
them  has  been  expressed  in  very  many  ways :  that  the  Iliad  was 
written  for  men,  and  the  Odyssey  for  women,  and,  as  Aristotle  well  put 
it,  that  the  Iliad  is  pathetic  and  simple,  the  Odyssey  ethical  and  com- 
plicated. And  while  the  two  poems  are,  according  to  immemorial 
custom,  ascribed  to  the  one  Homer,  there  were  already  in  antiquity 
some  critics  who  conjectured  that  the  Odyssey  was  the  work  of 
another  author.  When  the  Homeric  discussion  began,  about  a 
century  ago,  it  was  about  the  Iliad  that  the  fight  was  fought ;  it  was 
generally  conceded  that, however  opinions  might  vary  with  regard  to 
that  poem,  the  Odyssey  Avas  secure  from  any  assault,  that  the  most 
captious  would  be  unable  to  detect  incoherences  and  confusion  in  it. 
Of  late  years,  it  is  to  be  noticed,  scientific  examination  has  discovered 
weak  spots  in  its  defenses,  and  openings  for  assault.  Indeed,  we  are 
justified  in  saying  that  the  battle  has  begun  and  promises  to  be  a  hot 
one.  Yet  even  when  the  struggle  is  over  and  half  the  world  finds 
inconsistencies  and  errors  and  repetitions  where  now  there  appears  an 
unbroken  front,  the  poem  will  remain,  as  the  Iliad  remains,  a  rich 
source  of  delight  for  many  generations  of  readers. 

The  obvious  differences  between  the  Iliad,  with  its  incessant  record 
of  personal  conflicts,  and  the  Odyssey,  which  narrates  the  adventures 
of  Odysseus  in  his  return  to  his  home  from  the  Trojan  war,  have  been 
called  only  such  dissimilarities  as  might  naturally  exist  between  the 
work  of  a  man's  youth  and  that  of  his  riper  years,  but,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  this  explanation  fails  to  cover  all  the  ground  on  which  sappers 
and  miners  are  at  work  against  the  notion  of  Homeric  unity.  We  are, 
perhaps,  only  safe  in  placing  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  together  as  prod- 
ucts of  what  may  be  called  an  epic  period,  and  even  of  the  Greeks  it 
is  true  that  the  flowering  season  of  any  one  literary  form  is  of  brief 
duration.     At  any  rate,  both  these  poems  belong  to  the  cycle  of  the 


TELEMACHUS  AIDED  BY  ATHENE. 


83 


Trojan  war.  Ten  years  had  been  spent  in  preparations  for  that 
struggle  ;  the  siege  lasted  ten  years,  and  Odysseus  spent  ten  years 
making  his  way  back  to  his  home.  His  adventures  on  the  journey 
form  the  subject  of  the  poem. 

When  it  begins,  Odysseus  had  for  nine  years  after  the  fall  of  Troy 
been  exposed  to  the  wrath  of  Poseidon,  but  now  at  last  the  gods 
decide  that  his  wanderings  shall  cease.  The  nymph  Calypso  is  mean- 
while detaining  the  hero  against  his  will  in  the  remote  western  island 
Ogygia,  and  thither  Hermes  is  sent  to  demand  his  release.  Athene 
also  hastens  to  Ithaca  to  carry 
comfort  to  Telemachus,  the  son 
of  Odysseus,  and  to  encourage 
him  to  take  certain  measures  in 
preparation  for  his  father's  return. 
She  enters  the  house  of  Odys- 
seus in  the  guise  of  Mentes,  an 
old  friend,  and  is  warmly  welcom- 
ed by  Telemachus,  who  laments 
his  sorrows  in  that  the  sons  of 
all  the  neighboring  lords  are  con- 
tinually reveling  in  his  house, 
devouring  his  substance,  in  order 
to  compel  his  mother  to  choose 
one  of  them  for  her  husband, 
knowing  well  that  the  one  whom 
she  selects  will  thereby  become 
the  king  of  Ithaca.  Athene  coun- 
sels him  to  ask  the  people  for  aid 
against  the  shameless  suitors, 
and  then  to  set  forth  upon  a 
journey  in  order  to  get  news  of 
his  long  missing  father.  Telem- 
achus is  at  once  encouraged 
to  boldness;  he  blames  his  mother,  who  is  averse  to  listening  to 
the  songs  of  Phemius,  the  old  bard,  about  the  sad  return  of  the  Achai- 
ans,  and  speaks  with  severity  to  the  suitors,  whose  suspicions  are 
aroused  by  the  visit  and  sudden  departure  of  Mentes.  When  even- 
ing comes  the  suitors  depart,  and  Telemachus  is  conducted  to  his 
sleeping-room  by  his  old  nurse,  Eurycleia.  (Book  I.)  The  next 
morning  the  people  are  summoned  to  an  assembly,  when  Telemachus 
brings  bitter  accusations  against  the  suitors  and  asks  for  the  assistance 
of  the  people.  The  suitors,  however,  throw  the  blame  on  Penelope, 
who   has    for    years    been    putting   them    off    on    the   pretext    that 


UDVSSEUS. 


84 


THE   ODYSSEY. 


before  marrying  a  second  husband  she  must  finish  a  shroud  for 
the  old  father  of  Odysseus,  but  as  much  as  slie  weaves  in  a 
day  she  unravels  at  night,  and  thus  postpones  her  choice  ;  but  if  she 
will  select  one  of  the  wooers,  Telemachus  will  have  peace.  While  the 
discussion  is  going  on,  in  answer  to  a  prayer  uttered  by  Telemachus, 
two  eagles  appear  rending  each  other,  a  sight  that  is  interpreted  by 
one  of  those  present  as  a  token  of  the  overthrow  of  the  suitors, 
who  reject  this  interpretation  with  some  warmth.  After  more  dis- 
cussion, the  assembly  breaks  up,  and  Telemachus,  going  to  the  sea- 


shore, prays  to  Athene,  who  appears  in  the  form  of  Mentor  and 
encourages  him  to  undertake  his  journey,-  promising  to  secure  him  a 
ship  and  companions.  Telemachus  returns  to  his  dwelling,  where  the 
suitors  treat  him  with  insult  which  he  meets  with  dignity,  and  then 
he  proceeds  to  prepare  for  his  journey.  He  makes  Eurycleia  swear 
that  she  will  not  mention  his  plan  to  his  mother  before  twelve  days, 
and  then  he  returns  to  the  suitors.  After  sunset  he  sets  off  with 
Athene,  who  still  appears  as  Mentor,  and  with  the  oarsmen  to  visit 
old  Nestor  at  Pylos.  His  departure  is  not  observed  by  the  suitors,  for 
Athene  made  them  dull  and  drowsy.  (Book  H.)  Early  the  next  morn- 
ing they  land  at  Pylos,  being  warmly  welcomed  by  the  men  who  are 
gathered  on  the  shore  to  offer  a  sacrifice,  and  participate  in  the 
rites.  Then  Telemachus,  being  encouraged  by  Athene,  tells  Nestor 
who  he  is,  and  that  he  has  come  to  get  information  about  his  absent 
father.     But  Nestor  in  a  long  speech  answers  that  he  can  give  him  no 


86  THE   ODYSSEY. 

news  of  Odysseus,  for  when  the  Achaians  were  making  ready  to 
return,  dissensions  broke  out,  and  he  started  with  a  party  to  which 
Odysseus  did  not  belong.  After  some  more  talk,  in  which  they 
lament  the  terrible  murder  of  Agamemnon  by  vEgisthus  and  Clytem- 
nestra,  and  speak  of  the  vengeance  wrought  by  Orestes,  his  son,  Nestor 
advises  Telemachus  to  consult  Menelaus  in  Sparta,  who  had  for 
many  years  wandered  in  strange  regions.  Meanwhile  the  day  is 
nearly  spent,  and  Telemachus  follows  Nestor  to  his  palace.  But  Athene 
takes  the  form  of  an  eagle  and  flies  away,  surprising  every  one  and 
delighting  Nestor,  who  perceives  that  Telemachus  is  a  favorite  of  the 
gods,  and  he  at  once  proposes  a  sacrifice  to  Athene,  which  is  offered 
up  the  next  day.  Then  Telemachus,  accompanied  by  Nestor's  son 
Pisistratus,  starts  in  a  chariot  to  Sparta,  where  they  arrive  after  a  two 
days'  journey.  (Book  III.)  There,  too,  Telemachus  finds  a  feast  going 
on,  for  Menelaus  is  celebrating  the  marriage  of  two  of  his  children, 
and  he  is  received  with  the  same  hospitality.  Telemachus  is  amazed 
at  the  splendor  of  the  house,  and  when  Menelaus  happens  to  speak  of 
Odysseus,  tears  gush  from  the  eyes  of  Telemachus ;  at  that  moment 
Helen  enters  the  room  and  she  at  once  recognizes  the  son  of  Odys- 
seus. Thereupon  so  many  mournful  memories  are  evoked  that  all 
present  burst  into  tears,  which  Helen  dispels  by  a  magic  potion  that 
she  puts  into  their  wine.  Then  they  talk  for  a  long  time  about  Odysseus 
until  the  evening  grows  late.  Early  the  next  morning,  Menelaus, 
who  sympathizes  keenly  with  Telemachus's  domestic  sorrows,  asks 
him  his  errand,  but  he  can  give  no  satisfactory  information  about 
Odysseus  ;  he  says,  however,  that  when  he  was  in  Egypt  the  sea-god 
Proteus  had  told  him  the  fate  of  many  pf  the  heroes  of  the  Trojan 
war:  of  the  younger  Ajax,  of  his  brother  Agamemnon,  and  of  Odys- 
seus that  on  the  island  of  Calypso  he  was  in  vain  yearning  for  home. 
Thereupon  they  betake  themselves  to  breakfast.  Meanwhile  the 
suitors  have  discovered  the  departure  of  Telemachus,  and  they  de- 
termine to  lie  in  wait  for  him  in  the  strait  between'  Ithaca  and  Samos 
and  to  slay  him.  Penelope  also  learns  that  Telemachus  is  gone,  and 
is  filled  with  grief ;  by  the  advice  of  Eurycleia,  who  confesses  her 
knowledge,  she  prays  to  Athene.  The  suitors  send  off  a  galley  to 
capture  Telemachus,  and  Penelope,  who  has  fallen  asleep,  has  her 
apprehensions  regarding  her  son's  fate  pacified  by  a  vision 
sent  by  Athene.  (Book  IV.)  The  perils  which  still  surround 
Odysseus  move  Athene  to  urge  before  Zeus  his  speedy  returh ; 
consequently  Hermes  is  at  once  sent  to  Calypso  with  orders 
to  let  him  go  immediately.  The  command  fills  her  with  indig- 
nation at  the  gods, who  are  forever  breaking  up  the  love-affairs  of  the 
goddesses,  but  she  obeys.     She  seeks  Odysseus,  whom  she   finds  on 


ODYSSEUS  RESCUED   BY  NAUSICAA. 


87 


the  shore,  weeping  from  homesickness,  and  announces  to  him  his 
speedy  departure.  At  first  he  can  not  believe  her,  but  when  she  con- 
firms her  statement  with  a  solemn  oath,  he  is  convinced,  and  only  with 
difficulty  represses  his  delight.  The  next  morning  he  begins  to  build 
a  raft,  which  is  finished  in  four  days,  and  on  the  fifth  he  sets  forth. 
On  the  eighteenth  day  of  his  voyage  he  sights  the  land  of  the  Phaea- 
cians,  when  Poseidon,  who  is  indignant  at  his  escape,  sends  out  a  furi- 
ous stprm  that  dismasts  the  boat  and  renders  it  unmanageable.  By 
the  advice  of  the  sea-nymph  Leucothea,  who  comes  to  the  surface 


ODYSSEUS  REVEALING  HIMSELF  TO   NAUSICAA. 
(^Front  a  1-^ase  Paittting^.) 

from  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  Odysseus  takes  off  his  clothes,  wraps 
himself  in  a  veil  which  she  gives  him,  and  leaps  into  the  water  to  try 
to  swim  to  the  shore.  For  two  days  and  two  nights  he  swims  towards 
it,  aided  by  the  north  wind,  and  after  many  struggles  he  reaches  the 
mouth  of  a  river  which  carries  him  to  land.  Thoroughly  exhausted, 
he  crawls  under  some  bushes  and  falls  asleep.  (Book  V.)  Nausicaa, 
the  daughter  of  the  Phaeacian  king,  Alcinous,  being  instigated  by  a 
dream  sent  by  Athene,  goes  down  to  the  shore  with  some  companions 
to  wash  her  clothes  at  the  mouth  of  the  river.  This  done,  after  a 
bath  and  food,  they  all  play  ball  together.  Nausicaa  accidentally 
throws  the  ball  into  the  water,  whereupon  they  all  scream  and  awaken 
Odysseus,  who  crawls  forth  from  beneath  the  bushes  and  asks  for 
clothes.  Nausicaa  has  a  mantle  given  him  and  makes  preparation 
to  conduct  him  to  her  father.  When  they  reach  the  grove  of  Athene, 
Odysseus  stops  to  pray  to  that  goddess.  (Book  VI.)  Guided  by 
Athene,  who  appears  in  the  form  of  a  maiden  carrying  water, 
Odysseus  goes  to  the  house  of  Alcinous  and  admires  its  splen- 
dor. The  goddess  envelops  him  in  a  cloud  that  renders 
him  invisible  until  he  comes  to  the  king  and  to  the  queen, 
Arete,  when  he  clasps  the  queen's  knees  in  supplication.     Alcinous 


SS  THE    ODYSSEY. 

receives  him  kindly, and  when  the  elders  are  gone,  the  queen  asks 
him  who  he  is  and  whence  he  comes,  whereupon  he  recounts  what  has 
happened  to  him  from  the  time  he  reached  Calypso's  island  until  he 
landed  among  the  Phaeacians,  (Book  VII.)  The  next  morning 
Alcinous  proposes  in  an  assembly  of  the  people  that  preparations  be 
made  for  sending  Odysseus  on  his  way,  and  that  the  princes  and 
rowers  should  have  a  feast  in  the  halls  of  the  palace.  Here  De- 
.  modocus,  the  minstrel,  sings  before  the  king  and  his  guests  the  story 
of  a  quarrel  between  Odysseus  and  Achilles,  and  Odysseus  is  moved 
to  tears,  but  Alcinous  alone  notices  his  emotion  and  suggests  that 
they  go  forth  to  witness  the  athletic  sports.  After  Odysseus  has 
beaten  every  one  at  throwing  the  heavy  weight,  Demodocus  sings  of 
the  loves  of  Ares  and  Aphrodite,  and  dances  close  the  entertainment. 
All  the  princes  bring  valuable  presents  for  Odysseus,  and  Arete  has 
them  packed  in  chests.  After  supper  Demodocus  sings  of  the  wooden 
horse  and  the  capture  of  Troy  with  such  pathos  that  Odysseus  is 
again  moved  to  tears,  and  Alcinous  urges  him  to  tell  his  name  and  his 
adventures.  (Book  VIII.)  Odysseus  now  begins  to  recount  his  varied 
experiences  from  his  departure  from  Troy  until  he  met  Calypso.  He 
describes  his  landing  among  the  Cicones  in  Thrace,  the  capture  of  their 
city,  and  the  subsequent  defeat  of  the  Achaians  with  the  loss 
of  six  men  from  each  ship.  Then,  after  being  driven  for  ten  days 
by  a  fierce  north  wind,  they  reached  the  land  of  the  lotos-eaters, 
whence  they  made  their  way  to  the  land  of  the  Cyclopes.  There  they 
had  a  curious  adventure  with  Polyphemus,  whom  Odysseus  blinded 
and  from  whose  rage  they  with  difficulty  escaped.  (Book  IX.)  From 
the  land  of  the  Cyclopes  Odysseus  and  the  survivors  sailed  to  the  float- 
ing island  where  lived  yEolus,  who  sent  them  away  with  a  favor- 
able west  wind,  first  giving  them  a  huge  wallet  inclosing 
the  other  winds.  Some  of  Odysseus's  companions  opened  this  wallet 
in  sight  of  Ithaca,  while  Odysseus  was  asleep,  and  the  winds  bursting 
forth  drove  the  ship  back  to  the  ^olian  islands,  but  the  ruler  spurned 
them  as  men  detested  of  the  gods.  Hence  they  wandered  for  six  days, 
and  on  the  seventh  day  they  reached  the  man-eating  Laestrygonians, 
who  destroyed  all  the  ships  with  their  crews,  except  the  one  of  Odys- 
seus, who  came  next  to  the  ^aean  island  where  dwelt  Circe.  Odysseus 
sent  some  of  his  men  to  this  magician,  who  at  once  transformed  them 
into  swine.  When  Odysseus  himself  visited  her,  he  escaped  her  arts 
by  means  of  the  magical  herb  moly,  a  gift  from  Hermes;  he  won  the 
goddess's  love,  secured  the  return  of  his  friends  to  human  form,  and 
remained  with  her  for  a  year.  He  then  persuaded  her  to  let  him  go, 
after  she  had  prophesied  that  he  must  descend  into  Hades  in  order  to 
learn  from  the  shade  of  the  seer  Teiresias  the   manner  of  his  return 


90 


THE   ODYSSEY. 


and  his  final  fate.  Circe  gave  him  instructions  which  Odysseus  fol- 
lowed, after  Elpenor  had  failed.  (Book  X.)  He  sailed  away  over  the 
ocean  until  he  reached  the  entrance  of  the  under  world,  when  he 
offered  sacrifice,  at  which  the  souls  of  the  departed  assembled.  The 
ghost  of  Elpenor  appeared  and  besought  the  rites  of  burial,  then 
appeared  Teiresias,  who  prophesied  to  Odysseus.  Next  appeared  his 
mother,  followed  by  the  spirits  of  famous  heroines.  Tyro,  Antiope, 
Alcmene,  Epicaste,  Chloris,  Lede,  Iphimedeia,  Phaedra,  Ariadne, 
Maera  and  Clymene.  When  at  this  point  of  his  narration  Odysseus 
pauses,  all  urge  him  to  go  on,  and  he  continues,  telling  them  how  he 


TRANSFORMED   COMRADES   OF  ODYSSEUS. 


saw  the  ghosts  of  the  heroes,  Agamemnon,  Achilles,  Ajax,  Minos,  and 
what  they  said.  After  he  had  beheld  the  sufferings  of  some  wicked 
men,  Tityus,  Tantalus,  and  Sisyphus,  and  mighty  Heracles,  he 
returned  to  the  upper  world.  (Book  XI.)  After  his  return  to  the  ^a- 
ean  island  Odysseus  buried  Elpenor's  body  and  received  further  direc- 
tions from  Circe  concerning  his  further  journey.  He  set  sail  with  a  favor- 
able wind,  passed  safely  by  the  Sirens  with  their  fascinating  voices, 
and  evaded  the  Wandering  Rocks,  passing  between  Scylla  and  Charyb- 
dis,  although  Scylla  seized  six  of  his  trustiest  companions,  and  finally 
came  to  the  island  of  Helios,  the  sun-god.  There  some  of  the  men, 
against  the  advice  of  Odysseus,  being  impelled  by  hunger,  slaugh- 
tered some  of  the  consecrated  cattle,  for  which  sacrilege  a  fearful  tem- 
pest fell  upon  them  after  they  had  set  sail  once  more,  that  wrecked  the 
ship  and  drowned  all  but  Odysseus,  who  managed  to  escape  on  frag- 
ments of  the  vessel  and  to   reach  the  island  of  Ogygia,  where  he  was 


RETURN  OF    TELEMACHUS.  91 

detained  by  Calypso.  (Book  XII.)  Here  ends  his  recital,  which 
began  in  the  ninth  book  ;  his  further  adventures  after  leaving  Ogygia 
are  told  in  the  seventh  book. 

After  finishing  his  narrative  Odysseus  receives  further  presents  from 
the  Phaeacians,  partakes  of  a  parting  meal,  and  embarks  in  the  ship 
which  carries  him  while  he  sleeps  through  the  night  to  Ithaca.  Before 
he  wakes  up  they  set  him  ashore  near  the  haven  of  Phorcys,  and  land 
all  his  presents,  but  the  ship  of  the  Phaeacians  on  his  way  back  is  turned 
into  stone  by  Poseidon.  When  Odysseus  wakes  up,  Athene  had 
enveloped  him  in  a  thick  mist  so  that  he  did  not  recognize  his 
native  land.  The  goddess  soon  appears  to  him  in  the  guise  of  a 
young  shepherd  and  tells  him  where  he  is,  assuming  once  more  her 
divine  form  and  dispelling  the  mist.  She  then  helps  him  to  conceal 
his  presents  in  a  cave,  and  after  they  have  devised  a  plan  for  mur- 
dering the  suitors,  she  changes  him  into  an  old  beggar.  (Book  XIII.) 
In  this  disguise  Odysseus  makes  his  way  to  the  hut  of  the  swine- 
herd Eumaeus,  who  receives  him  kindly  and  gives  him  further  infor- 
mation concerning  the  misdeeds  of  the  suitors.  Eumaeus  asks  who  he 
is,  and  Odysseus  tells  him  a  long  story  partly  true  and  partly  invented, 
trying  to  induce  the  swineherd  to  believe  that  his  master  shall  return. 
After  supper,  by  a  characteristic  device,  he  wheedles  a  warm  mantle 
from  Eumaeus,  and  sleeps  in  the  hut  while  the  swineherd  lies  down 
by  the  s.wine.  (Book  XIV.)  Meanwhile,  Telemachus,  who  is  still 
with  Menelaus  in  Sparta,  is  advised  by  Athene,  who  appears  to  him 
in  a  dream,  to  return  home,  and  is  warned  of  the  hostile  prepara- 
tions of  the  suitors.  Consequently,  after  a  final  banquet,  Telemachus, 
laden  with  gifts,  starts  off  in  company  with  Pisistratus  to  rejoin  his 
comrades  in  the  ship.  He  embarks  at  once,  taking  with  him  an 
Argive  seer  named  Theoclymenus  who  had  fled  from  his  country  for 
murder.  While  Telemachus  is  thus  journeying  back,  Eumaeus  recounts 
a  story  of  his  youth  to  Odysseus  until  late  in  the  night.  At  dawn 
Telemachus  lands  in  Ithaca,  and  after  providing  for  Theoclymenus, 
goes  to  the  hut  of  Eumaeus,  as  Athene  had  ordered.  (Book  XV.) 
There  he  meets  the  beggar,  whom  he  does  not  recognize,  and  sends 
Eumaeus  to  the  city  to  inform  his  mother  of  his  return.  During  his 
absence  Athene  bids  Odysseus  to  make  himself  known  to  his  son, 
and  they  arrange  the  discomfiture  and  death  of  the  suitors.  Toward 
evening  Eumaeus  returns  to  his  hut.  (Book  XVI.)  The  next  morn- 
ing Telemachus  alone  visits  his  mother  and  tells  her  about  his  jour- 
ney and  introduced  to  her  the  seer  Theoclymenus.  Soon  Odysseus 
appears,  still  disguised  as  a  beggar,  and  led  by  Eumaeus  ;  on  his  way 
he  is  shamefully  treated  by  Melanthius,  the  goatherd.  As  he  enters 
the  house   his  old  dog  Argos  recognizes  him  and   dies.      Odysseus 


92  THE   ODYSSEY. 

begs  of  the  suitors,  who  generously  give  him  something,  but  one, 
Antinous,  abuses  him  and  beats  him  with  a  footstool.  Penelope 
asks  to  speak  with  the  beggar,  but  he  postpones  talking  with  her  until 
evening.  (Book  XVII.)  The  common  beggar  Irus  tries  to  drive 
Odysseus  away  as  an  intruder,  and  the  suitors,  noting  the  quarrel,  ar- 
range a  fight  between  them,  in  which  Irus  is  worsted,  to  the  amusement 
of  the  spectators,  and  Odysseus  at  once  becomes  a  favorite.  Penelope 
then  makes  her  appearance,  endowed  by  Athene  with  every  charm  ;  she 
makes  new  promises  to  the  suitors  and  receives  from  them  precious  gifts. 
After  she  has  withdrawn,  Odysseus  is  railed  at  by  her  attendant  women 
and  is  again  ill-treated  by  the  suitors,  who  then  betake  themselves  to 
rest.  (Book  XVIII.)  Odysseus  is  left  alone  in  the  hall  with  Telem- 
achus,  and  they  both  carry  the  arms  away,  aided  by  a  light  which 
Athene  sends  to  them,  and  Telemachus  goes  to  rest.  Then  Penelope 
appears  and  asks  the  seeming  beggar  where  he  comes  from.  He 
replies  with  a  mixture  of  truth  and  falsehood,  and  concludes  with  the 
assurance  that  Odysseus  will  return  in  the  same  year  with  a  new 
moon.  She  then  commends  him  to  the  care  of  Eurycleia,  his  old 
nurse,  who  is  much  struck  by  his  resemblance  to  Odysseus.  She  pre- 
pares a  footbath  and  bathes  him,  and  recognizes  her  master  by  the 
scar  of  a  wound  on  his  foot  that  he  had  received  long  since  from  a 
boar  that  he  was  hunting.  Odysseus  with  difificulty  silences  her  as 
she  starts  to  betray  his  secret.  Penelope  resumes  the  conversation 
and  recounts  a  dream  which  she  has  had,  which  Odysseus  interprets  as 
a  prophecy  of  the  speedy  destruction  of  the  suitors  and  urges  her  to 
let  the  suitors  on  the  morrow  test  their  strength  with  the  bow  of 
Odysseus.  All  then  separate  for  the  night.  (Book  XIX.)  Odysseus, 
however,  can  find  no  rest,  being  harassed  with  thoughts  of  the  morrow's 
contest,  and  Penelope  sighs  and  laments  till  daybreak.  Odysseus 
hears  her  weeping  and  prays  to  Zeus,  who  thunders  as  a  sign  of  good 
omen.  The  hall  fills  up  once  more  ;  the  women,  Telemachus 
and  Eumaeus  appear  ;  the  insolent  goatherd  brings  the  goats  for  the 
dinner,  and  Philoetius,  the  cattle.  This  last-named  greets  Odysseus 
with  kindness,  who  lets  him  and  Eumaeus  know  that  Odysseus  is 
near  and  will  soon  slay  the  suitors.  Even  now  these  are  gather- 
ing for  the  morning  meal,  devising  the  death  of  Telemachus.  Once 
more  their  insolence  breaks  out :  one  of  them  hurls  an  ox's  foot  at 
Odysseus,  who  just  escapes  it.  They  all  go  on  with  their  feasting, 
laughing  wildly  together.  Theoclymenus  speaks  of  ominous  horrors 
and  apparitions  that  present  themselves,  and  leaves  the  hall.  Telem- 
achus himself  is  insulted  by  the  suitors.  (Book  XX.)  Then  Penelope 
biings  out  her  husband's  bow,  the  very  sight  of  which  calls  forth  har- 
rowing memories,  and  promises  that  the  one  who  can  bend  it  and  send 


ODYSSEUS  SLAYS    THE   SUITORS.  93 

an  arrow  through  the  rings  of  twelve  axes  shall  be  her  husband. 
Telemachus  takes  it;  and  saying  that  if  he  can  do  the  deed  his  mother 
shall  not  leave  her  home,  would  have  succeeded  had  not  Odysseus 
made  him  a  sign  that  he  should  desist.  Then  the  soothsayer 
who  had  already  denounced  the  wooers  tried  in  vain  to  bend  the 
bow,  and  others  also  failed.  Meanwhile  Eumaeus  and  Philoetius  go 
out  of  the  house,  followed  by  Odysseus,  who  tells  them  who  he  is, 
and  what  they  are  to  do  in  the  approaching  fray  ;  then  they  all  return 
to  the  hall.  When  Odysseus  asks  to  be  allowed  to  try  the  yet  un- 
strung bow,  the  suitors  abuse  him,  but  Penelope  urges  that  he  be 
allowed  to  try,  and  Telemachus  still  further  insists  upon  it,  at  the 
same  time  bidding  his  mother  to  leave  the  hall.  The  swineherd  gives 
the  bow  to  the  beggar  and  has  the  doors  of  the  hall  and  outer  gates 
quietly  barred.  The  beggar  easily  strings  the  bow  and  the  arrow  flies 
through  the  ax-rings  to  the  annoyance  of  the  suitors.  Telemachus 
takes  his  place  by  his  side,  armed  with  sword  and  lance.  (Book  XXI.) 
Odysseus,  throwing  off  his  rags,  springs  upon  the  great  threshold, 
and  with  another  arrow  kills  Antinous  ;  the  suitors  spring  up'  and 
look  in  vain  for  their  weapons.  Eurymachus  in  vain  prays  for  mercy. 
Telemachus  fetches  arms  for  his  father  and  himself  and  for  the  two 
trusty  men  who  are  with  them.  Athene  also  joins  them,  and  the  fray 
begins  ;  but  the  spears  of  the  wooers  are  powerless,  those  of  Odysseus 
and  his  little  band  never  miss,  and  every  one  of  them  is  put  to  death 
except  the  minstrel  Phemius  and  the  herald  Medon.  The  women 
set  every  thing  to  rights ;  the  guilty  women  are  hanged,  Melanthius, 
the  treacherous  goatherd,  is  slain,  and  the  whole  place  cleansed. 
The  women  who  had  remained  faithful  welcome  their  master.  (Book 
XXII.)  Eurycleia  announces  to  Penelope  the  joyful  tidings  of  her 
husband's  return  and  the  slaughter  of  the  wooers,  but  she  is  still 
afraid  to  believe  it.  She  comes  down  to  the  hall  and  sits  for 
a  long  time  opposite  her  husband  without  a  word,  although  Tel- 
emachus upbraids  her  lack  of  confidence.  Odysseus  orders 
that  a  marriage  festival  be  celebrated,  in  order  to  deceive  the 
neighbors  with  regard  to  what  has  happened.  Then  he  convinces 
Penelope,  by  recalling  reminiscences,  that  he  can  be  no  other  than 
Odysseus,  and  in  the  night,  that  is  miraculously  prolonged,  the  hus- 
band and  wife  recount  all  that  has  befallen  them  during  their  separa- 
tion. The  next  morning  Odysseus,  Telemachus,  and  the  faithful  herds- 
men start  to  see  Laertes,  the  aged  father  of  Odysseus.  (Book  XXIII.) 
Hermes  conducts  the  souls  of  the  wooers  to  the  lower  world,  where 
are  assembled  the  ghosts  of  many  of  the  Achaian  heroes ;  among 
them,  Agamemnon,  who  calls  Odysseus  happy  in  that  his  wife  is  so 
faithful.     Meanwhile  Odysseus  comes  to  the  house  of  Laertes,  whom 


94 


THE  ODYSSEY. 


he  finds  at  work  in  his  garden.  The  old  man  faints  when  Odysseus 
makes  himself  known.  A  meal  is  at  once  prepared,  and  the  old 
servants  express  their  delight.     Only  one  thing  remains  to  be  done, 


PENELOPE. 


the  report  of  the  slaying  of  the  suitors  has  created  a  tumult  in  the 
city,  and  an  armed  band  comes  forth  to  put  Odysseus  and  his  men  to 
death.  They  seize  their  weapons,  Athene  gives  Laertes  new  strength, 
and  he  overthrows  the  leaders  of  the  hostile  company ;  the  rest,  after 
a  futile  combat,  run  away,  and  the  bonds  between  Odysseus  and  his 
people  are  again  confirmed.     (Book  XXIV.) 


THE    CHARM  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  95 

II. 

Thus  ends  what  one  is  within  bounds  in  calling  the  best  story  in 
the  world,  for  certainly  in  naturalness,  in  abundance  of  interest,  in 
wealth  of  adventure  and  fullness  as  well  as  delicacy  in  the  study  of 
character,  no  epic  poem  approaches  it.  The  Persian  and  Sanskrit  epics 
lack  the  coherence  and  moderation  of  the  Greek  work ;  the  Nibelungen- 
Hed  certainly  does  not  share  its  completeness  ;  and  the  epics  that  have 
been  written  in  later  times  too  often  bear  the  mark  of  imitation,  to  endure 
comparison  with  the  greater  originals.  Moreover,  we  find  in  Homer 
a  vivid  enjoyment  of  the  world  and  of  life  which  is  immediately  to  be 
distinguished  from  the  quality  of  literary  perception  of  what  is  beauti- 
ful that  characterizes  his  successors.  Something  of  this  charm  which 
is  most  manifest  in  him  lingers  throughout  all  the  best  part  of  Greek 
literature,  but  we  soon  become  aware  that  the  writers  perceive  the 
complexity  of  the  world  and  of  human  experience.  They  know  as  well  as 
we  do,  that  happiness  comes  but  in  flashes,  although  their  temperament 
often  inclined  them  not  to  insist  on  this  open  secret.  In  Homer,  how- 
ever, life  is  comparatively  simple :  the  gods,  whose  pedigree  has  become 
obscure,  so  that  their  origin  as  personification  of  natural  forces  is  lost, 
are  often  scarcely  more  than  companions,  or  older  brothers,  of  men. 
A  god  is  feared  and  loved  simply  because  he  is  more  powerful  than 
human  beings  ;  he  is  a  good  friend  and  a  dangerous  enemy.  Plato's 
remark  that  man  is  a  god  to  a  dog,  well  illustrates  the  Homeric  rela- 
tion of  humanity  to  the  divine  beings  above  it  ;  they  are  exalted  men 
of  sometimes  inexplicable  passions  and  wayward  fancies,  but  repre- 
sentatives of  power  rather  than  of  right.  The  moral  code  which  is 
thus  reflected  on  the  rulers  of  the  world  is  a  very  simple  one.  In  the 
Iliad  bravery  and  magnanimity  are  seen  among  all  the  heroes  and 
notably  in  Achilles  ;  in  the  Odyssey  it  is  the  ingenuity  of  Odysseus, 
that  is  presented  for  admiration,  and  in  the  others,  faithfulness. 
Odysseus  rather  eludes  than  confronts  peril,  yet  we  Avho  are 
thoroughly  accustomed  to  travel,  may  perhaps  not  readily  under- 
stand just  how  much  was  implied  in  the  way  in  which  Odysseus 
faced  the  dangers  of  the  sea.  That  the  audience  who  heard  the 
poem  were  a  home-abiding  people  becomes  evident  from  various 
allusions  therein.  The  journey  of  Telemachus  to  Pylos  is  spoken  of 
as  a  serious  undertaking.  *'  Who  knows,"  a  proud  youth  would  say, 
"but  that  he  himself, if  he  goes  hence  on  the  hollow  ship,  may  perish 
wandering  far  from  his  friends,  even  as  Odysseus?"  The  nautical 
excellence  of  the  Phaeacians  is  extraordinarily  praised  as  something  ab- 
normal, and  the  perils  of  the  sea  are  made  very  prominent.  Thus,  Eu- 
maeus  tells  Telemachus,  "  Since  thou  wentest  in  thy  ship  to  Pylos,  never 


9^  THE    ODYSSEY. 

to  this  hour,  they  say,  hath  he  eaten  and  drunken  as  before,  nor  looked 
to  the  labors  of  the  field,  but  with  groaning  and  lamentation  he 
sits  sorrowing,  and  the  flesh  wastes  away  about  his  bones."  Yet 
part  of  the  mental  and  physical  disturbance  here  and  elsewhere  may 
be  explained  as  nervousness  arising  from  the  importance  of  his  voy- 
age. In  the  hands  of  a  poet  every  thing  would  tend  to  lending  weight 
to  the  main  story  and  to  making  impressive,  in  this  case,  the  neces- 
sity that  Odysseus  should  return.  Yet  there  is  no  such  defense  of 
the  perturbation  of  Menelaus  when  Proteus  tells  him  that  he  must 
go  from  the  island  Pharos  to  the  mouth  of  the  Nile  to  perform  sacri- 
fices :  ''  So  spake  he,  but  my  spirit  within  me  was  broken,  in  that  he 
bade  me  again  to  go  to  ^gyptus  over  the  misty  deep,  a  long  and 
grievous  way."  Moreover,  Odysseus  frankly  expresses  his  detesta- 
tion of  a  sea-faring  life,  and  doubtless  his  words  found  an  echo  among 
the  early  hearers  of  the  Homeric  poems,  whose  feelings  are  thus 
reflected  with  what  may  be  called  prehistoric  accuracy,  in  these  pic- 
tures of  the  horrors  of  the  sea.  Fortunately  Homer  had  no  desire  to 
ascribe  impossible  emotions  to  his  heroes. 

The  poem  is  apparently  an  old  story  retold,  for  besides  the  fact  that 
throughout  literature  there  is  no  evidence  of  absolute  originality,  there 
are  many  incidents  in  the  Odyssey,  such  as  the  parts  taken  by  the  gods, 
which  can  be  explained  only  as  allusions  to  fading  traditions  of  a 
remote  past.  One  of  the  more  interesting  of  the  attempts  to  inter- 
pret the  original  significance  of  these  epics  is  that,  already  referred  to, 
which  sees  in  them  late  versions  of  solar  myths.  The  Iliad  bears  a 
striking  resemblance  to  what  we  find  in  the  Rig  Veda,  in  which  the 
Panis,  the  spirits  of  night  and  winter,  steal  the  cattle  of  the  sun  and 
carry  them  by  an  uncertain  path  to  a  dark  cave  somewhere  in  the 
East.  Indra  sends  forth  Sarama,  the  dawn,  to  bring  them  back. 
Sarama  is  tempted  by  the  Panis  to  disobey  his  commands,  but  she 
returns  with  the  desired  information, as  Helenus  returns  home  with  the 
treasures  of  which  Menelaus  had  been  robbed  by  Paris.  Indra  and 
the  solar  heroes  can  not  recover  their  treasures,  however,  until  they 
capture  the  offspring  of  Brisaya,  the  violet  light  of  dawn,  as  Achilles 
captures  the  daughter  of  Briseis.  In  the  same  way  in  the  Iliad,  Achilles 
is  separated  from  Briseis  and  finds  her  again  only  at  the  end.  The  hero 
leaves  the  field,  as  the  sun  withdraws  behind  a  dark  cloud,  and  finally 
at  evening, when  Briseis  returns,  he  reappears  and  kills  the  cloud  that 
had  nearly  overcome  the  heroes  of  daylight,  but  as  he  conquers  he  is 
near  his  own  death  at  the  hands  of  the  evil  night-hero,  Pani.  Sir 
George  William  Cox,  in  his  "  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,"  and 
his  "Tales  of  Ancient  Greece,"  illustrates  in  this  way  both  the  Iliad 


THE  ILIAD  AND  ODYSSEY  COMPARED   WITH    THE    VEDA,  ETC.     97 

and  the  Odyssey  by  comparing  them  with  the  Veda,  the  Edda,  and 
the  NibelungenHed. 

Of  the  Odyssey  he  speaks  as  follows : 

"  When  Odysseus  goes  to  Troy,  he  is  simply  a  chieftain  in  the  great  host 
which  went  to  recover  the  treasure  taken  from  the  West,  like  the  Argonauts 
in  their  search  for  the  Golden  Fleece.  But  all  these  eastward  expeditions 
are  successful.  The  robber  or  seducer  is  despoiled  of  his  prey,  and  the  vic- 
tors must  journey  back  to  their  distant  home.  Thus,  round  the  chieftain  of 
each  tribe  would  gather  again  all  the  ideas  suggested  by  the  ancient  myths  ; 
and  the  light  reflected  from  the  glory  of  the  great  Phthiotic  hero  might  well 
rest  on  the  head  of  Odysseus  as  he  turns  to  go  from  Ilion.  Thus  would 
begin  a  new  career,  not  unlike  that  of  Herakles  or  Perseus  in  all  its  essential 
features.  Throughout  the  whole  poem  the  one  absorbing  desire  which  fills 
the  heart  of  Odysseus  is  to  reach  his  home  once  more  and  see  the  wife  whom, 
like  most  other  mythical  heroes,  he  had  been  obliged  to  leave  in  the  spring- 
time of  his  career.  There  are  grievous  toils  and  many  hindrances  on  his  way, 
but  nothing  can  turn  him  from  his  course.  He  has  to  fight,  like  Herakles 
and  Perseus,  Theseus  and  Bellerophon,  with  more  than  mortal  beings  and 
more  than  earthly  powers,  but  he  has  the  strength  which  they  had  to  over- 
come or  to  evade  them.  It  is  true  that  he  conquers  chiefly  by  strength  of 
will  and  sagacity  of  mind  ;  but  this  again  is  the  phase  which  the  idea  of 
Helios,  the  great  eye  of  day,  as  surveying  and  scanning  every  thing,  assumes 
in  Medeia,  Prometheus,  Asklepios,  Oidipous,  lamos,  and  Melampous.  The 
other  phase,  however,  is  not  wanting.  He,  too,  has  a  bow  which  none  but 
he  can  wield,*  and  he  wields  it  to  terrible  purpose,  when,  like  Achilleus, 
after  his  time  of  disguise,  he  bursts  on  the  astonished  suitors,  as  the  sun 
breaks  from  the  stormcloud  before  he  sinks  to  rest.  So,  again,  in  his  west- 
ward wanderings  (for  this  is  the  common  path  of  the  children  of  Zeus  or 
Helios),  he  must  encounter  fearful  dangers.  It  is  no  unclouded  sky  which 
looks  down  on  him  as  he  journeys  toward  the  rocky  Ithaka.  He  has  to  fight 
with  Kyklopes  and  Laistrygonians  ;  he  has  to  shun  the  snares  of  the  Seirens 
and  the  jaws  of  Skylla  and  Charybdis,  as  Perseus  had  to  overcome  the  Gor- 
gons,  and  Theseus  to  do  battle  with  the  Minotauros.  Yet  there  are  times  of 
rest  for  him,  as  for  Herakles  and  Bellerophon.  He  "yearns  for  the  love  of 
Penelope,  but  his  grief  can  be  soothed  for  awhile  by  the  affection  of  Kirke 
and  Kalypso,  as  Achilleus  found  solace  in  that  of  Diomede,  and  Herakles 
awhile  in  that  of  Deianeira.  Nay,  wherever  he  goes,  mortal  kings  and  chiefs 
and  undying  goddesses  seek  to  make  him  tarry  by  their  side,  as  Menelaos 
sought  to  retain  Paris  in  his  home  by  the  side  of  the  Spartan  Helen,  and  as 
Gunnar  strove  to  win  Sigurd  to  be  the  husband  of  his  sister.  So  is  it  with 
Alkinoos  ;  but,  in  spite  of  the  loveliness  and  purity  of  Nausikaa,  Odysseus 
may  not  tarry  in  the  happy  lajnd  of  the  Phaiakians,  even  as  he  might  not  tarry 
in  the  palace  of  the  wise  Kirke  or  the  sparkling  cave  of  the  gentle  Kalypso. 
At  last  he  approaches  his  home  ;  but  he  returns  to  it  unknown  and  friend- 
less.    The  sky  is  as  dark  as  when  Achilleus  lay   nursing  his  great  wrath 

♦Odyssey,  xxi.,  405,  k.-.A.  The  phraseology  of  the  poet  here  assumes,  perhaps  without  his  being  fully  aware 
of  it,  the  same  tone  with  the  narrative  which  tells  of  the  arming  of  Achilleus.  Others  have  tried  with  all  their 
might  to  Ijend  the  bow.  Odysseus  stretches  it  without  the  least  effort  (dre/>  CTZOvf^fjq),  and  the  sound  of  the 
string  is  like  the  whizzing  of  a  swallow  in  its  flight.  In  an  instant  every  heart  is  filled  with  dread,  and  every 
cheek  turns  pale  (tzolCI  r/awf  ETpcnreTo),  and,  to  complete  the  imagery,  they  hear  at  the  same  moment  the 
crash  of  the  thunder  in  the  sky. 


98  THE   ODYSSEY. 

behind  the  veil  of  his  sorrow.  Still  he  too,  like  Achilleus,  knows  how  to  take 
vengeance  on  his  enemies  ;  and  in  stillness  and  silence  he  makes  ready  for 
the  mortal  conflict  in  which  he  knows  that  in  the  end  he  must  be  victorious. 
His  foes  are  many  and  strong  ;  and,  like  Patroklos  against  Hektor,  Tele- 
machos*  can  do  but  little  against  the  suitors,  in  whom  are  reflected  the  Tro- 
jan enemies  of  the  Achaians.  But  for  him  also,  as  for  Achilleus,  there  is  aid 
from  the  gods.  Athene,  the  daughter  of  the  sky,  cheers  him  on,  and  restores 
him  to  the  glorious  beauty  of  his  youth,  as  Thetis  clothed  her  child  in  the 
armour  of  Hephaistos,  and  ApoUon  directed  his  spear  against  Hektor. 
Still  in  his  ragged  beggar's  dress,  like  the  sun  behind  the  rent  and  tattered 
clouds,  he  appears  in  his  own  hall  on  the  day  of  doom.  The  old  bow  is 
taken  down  from  the  wall,  and  none  but  he  can  be  found  to  stretch  it.  His 
enemies  begin  to  fear  that  the  chief  has  indeed  returned  to  his  home,  and 
they  crouch  in  terror  before  the  stranger,  as  the  Trojans  quailed  at  the  mere 
sight  and  war-cry  of  Achilleus.  But  their  cry  for  mercy  falls  as  vain  as  that 
of  Lykaon  or  of  Hektor,  who  must  die  to  avenge  the  dead  Patroklos  ;  for 
the  doom  of  the  suitors  is  come  for  the  wrongs  which  they  had  done  to  Pen- 
elope. The  fatal  bow  is  stretched.  The  arrows  fly  deadly  and  unerring  as 
the  spear  of  Artemis,  and  the  hall  is  bathed  in  blood.  There  is  nothing  to 
stay  his  arm  till  all  are  dead.  The  sun-god  is  taking  vengeance  on  the 
clouds,  and  trampling  them  down  in  his  fury.  The  work  is  done  ;  and  Pene- 
lope sees  in  Odysseus  the  husband  who  had  left  her  long  ago  to  face  his 
toils,  like  Herakles  and  Perseus.  But  she  will  try  him  still.  If  indeed  he 
be  the  same,  he  will  know  his  bridal  chamber  and  the  cunningly  carved 
couch  which  his  own  hands  had  wrought.  lole  will  try  whether  Herakles 
remembers  the  beautiful  net-work  of  violet  clouds  which  he  spread  as  her 
couch  in  the  morning.  The  sun  is  setting  in  peace.  Penelope,  fair  as  Oin- 
one  and  as  pure  (for  no  touch  of  defilement  must  pass  on  her,  or  on  lole  or 
Daphne  or  Brisei's),  is  once  again  by  his  side.  The  darkness  is  utterly  scat- 
tered ;  the  corpses  of  the  suitors  and  of  the  handmaidens  who  ministered 
to  them  cumber  the  hall  no  more.  A  few  flying  vapours  rush  at  random 
across  the  sky,  as  the  men  of  Ithaka  raise  a  feeble  clamour  in  behalf  of  the 
slain  chieftains.  Soon  these,  too,  are  gone.  Penelope  and  Odysseus  are 
within  their  bridal  chamber.  Oinone  has  gone  to  rest  with  Paris  by  her 
side  ;  but  there  is  no  gloom  in  the  house  of  Odysseus,  and  the  hero  lives 
still,  strong  and  beautiful  as  in  the  early  days.  The  battle  is  over.  The  one 
yearning  of  his  heart  has  been  fulfilled.     The  sun  has  laid  him  down  to  rest 

In  one  unclouded  blaze  of  living  light. 

If  tliis  theory  of  the  solar  myths  is  the  true  explanation,  and  it 
certainly  seems  at  least  to  point  out  the  direction  from  which  light 
may  come,  it  enables  us  to  comprehend  what  is  archaic  in  these 
poems,  and,  moreover,  teaches  us  to  admire  the  art  of  the  Greeks  in 
lending  to  what  was  the  common  property  of  the  Aryan  races  so  many 
attractive  qualities.  These  traditional  stories  formed,  as  it  were,  the 
material  for  a  competitive  examination  of  the  different  peoples,  and 
that  from  which  the  East  Indian  family  drew  inspiration  for  religious 
lyrics,  became  the  subject  of  epic  poetry  among  the   Scandinavian, 

*  Grote,    History   of   Greece,  Vol.    II.,    page  238. 


THE   OLD  MYTHS. 


99 


Teutonic  and  Hellenic  races,  who  sang  their  own  versions  of  the  old 
myths  common  to  all  the  Aryan  nations.  The  Greek  civilization,  the 
beautiful  land  in  which  it  flourished,  and  possibly  some  brief  period  of 
unusual  success,  enabled  some  poet  or  poets  to  compose  the  epics 
which  stand  forever  without  a  rival,  for  every  poet  is  but  the  resultant 
of  the  many  forces  of  the  time  in  which  he  lives.  This  explanation 
obviously  fails  to  give  ground  for  any  historical  lessons  to  be  learned 
from  Homer,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  as  Sir  George  Cox  says,  "  it 
reveals  to  us  a  momentous  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind." 

ni. 

In  choosing  extracts  from  the  Odyssey  we  shall  find  that  the  story 
within  the  story,  that  is  to  say,  the  hero's  recital  of  his  own  adven- 
tures, is  told  with  the  most  vivid  interest.     Thus  in  the  ninth  book  : 


EKTHZ    AlHrHZHOI     THI     HPOZ       AAKINOTN  TOT    tCAOnA 


ADVENTURES  OF   ODYSSEUS   WITH   CIRCE. 


I,  then,  Odysseus  am,  Laertes'  son, 

For  all  wise  policies  a  name  of  fear 

To  men  ;  my  rumor  to  the  skies  hath  gone. 

And  sunward  Ithaca  my  country  dear 

I  boast.     Hill  Neritus  stands  waving  there 

His  green  trees  visible  for  many  a  mile ; 

Centre  of  soils  divine,  which, clustering  near. 

Stars  of  the  blue  sea,  round  about  him  smile, 

Dulichium,  Same  steep,  Zacj-nthus'  wood-crowned  isle. 


THE   ODYSSEY. 

Thus  lies  the  land  high-tabled  in  the  main 
Westward  ;  the  others  take  the  morning  sun  ; 
Rough,  but  a  good  nurse,  and  divine  in  grain 
Her  heroes.     Never  can  I  gaze  upon 
Land  to  my  mind  so  lovely  as  that  one, 
Land  not  to  be  forgotten  —  aye,  though  me 
Calypso  in  her  caves  would  fain  have  won, 
And  Circe,  deep-embowered  within  the  sea. 
Held  me  with  artful  wiles  her  own  true  love  to  be. 

Never  could  these  the  inward  heart  persuade. 
Never  make  sweet  the  cold  unfaithfulness. 
More  than  all  pleasures  that  were  ever  made 
Parents  and  fatherland  our  life  still  bless. 
Though  we  rich  home  in  a  strange  land  possess. 
Still  the  old  memories  about  us  cling. 
But  hear,  while  I  the  bitter  woes  express. 
Which,  as  from  Troia  I  my  comrades  bring, 
Zeus,  the  Olympian  Sire,  around  my  life  did  fling. 

Me  winds  to  Ismarus  from  Ilion  bear. 

To  the  Ciconians.     I  their  town  lay  waste, 

And  wives  and  wealth  with  my  companions  share, 

That  none  for  me  might  sail  away  disgraced. 

Anon  I  urged  them  with  quick  feet  to  haste 

Their  flight,  but  they,  infatuate  fools,  forbore  — 

There  the  red  wine  they  ever  dreaming  taste. 

While  carcasses  of  sheep  lie  many  a  score. 

And  trailing-footed  beeves,  slain  on  the  barren  shore. 

But  all  this  while,  on  other  works  intent. 

Loudly  the  Cicons  to  the  Cicons  call. 

Who  more  and  braver  hold  the  continent. 

These  both  from  horseback  cope  with  heroes  tall, 

Or  foot  to  foot  can  make  their  foemen  fall. 

Wrapt  in  the  morning  mist  they  loom  in  view, 

Thick  as  the  leaves  and  flowers  ambrosial, 

Children  of  Spring.     Onward  the  dark  fate  drew. 

Big  with  the  woes  which  Zeus  had  destined  for  our  due. 

Hard  by  the  swift  ships,  each  in  ordered  line. 
With  steely  spears  the  battle  they  darrayne. 
While  toward  the  zenith  clomb  the  day  divine. 
We,  though  much  fewer,  their  assault  sustain. 
But  when  toward  loosing  of  the  plough  did  wane 
The  slanting  sun,  then  the  Ciconian  host 
Turned  us  to  flight  along  the  shadowy  plain. 
Six  of  our  comrades  from  each  ship  were  lost, 
But  we  the  rest  fled  safely  from  the  Thracian  coast. 

Then  on  our  course  we  sail,  distressed  in  heart. 

Glad  of  our  lives,  yet  grieving  for  the  dead  ; 

Natheless  we  list  not  from  that  shore  depart. 

Ere  thrice  with  cries  we  hailed  each  fallen  head 

Of  those  whose  blood  the  fierce  Ciconians  shed 

In  the  wide  plain.     Ere  yet  we  ceased  to  weep, 

Zeus  on  our  fleet  the  rage  of  Boreas  dread 

Launched,  and  with  black  clouds  veiled  the  earth  and  deep, 

While  the  dark  Night  came  rushing  from  heaven's  stormy  steep. 


ODYSSEUS'S  ADVENTURES.  lOI 

Headlong  the  ships  were  driven  with  tattered  sails. 
These  having  furled  we  drave  our  keels  ashore, 
Fearing  destruction  from  the  raving  gales. 
Two  nights  and  days  we  eating  our  heart's  core 
Lay  till  the  third  light  beauteous  Dawn  upbore ; 
Then  we  the  masts  plant,  and  the  white  sails  spread. 
And  sitting  lean  to  the  laborious  oar. 
Wind  and  good  pilotage  the  brave  barks  sped  ; 
Soon  had  1  scatheless  seen  my  native  earth  ahead, 

But  me  the  current  and  fell  Boreas  whirled, 
Doubling  Malea's  cape,  and  far  astray 
Beyond  the  rude  cliffs  of  Cythera  hurled. 
So  for  nine  days  along  the  watery  way, 
Teeming  with  monsters,  me  the  winds  affray 
And  with  destruction  ever  seem  to  whelm  : 
But,  on  the  afternoon  of  the  tenth  day. 
We  reached,  borne  downward  with  an  easy  helm. 
Land  of  the  flowery  food,  the  Lotus-eating  realm. 

Anon  we  step  forth  on  the  dear  mainland, 

And  draw  fresh  water  from  the  springs,  and  there, 

Seated  at  ease  along  the  silent  strand. 

Not  far  from  the  swift  ships  our  meal  prepare. 

Soon  having  tasted  of  the  welcome  fare, 

I  with  the  herald  brave  companions  twain 

Sent  to  explore  what  manner  of  men  they  were, 

Who,  on  the  green  earth  couched  beside  the  main, 

Seemed  ever  with  sweet  food  their  lips  to  entertain. 

Who,  when  they  came  on  the  delightful  place 
Where  those  sat  feeding  by  the  barren  wave. 
There  mingled  with  the  Lotus-eating  race; 
Who  nought  of  ruin  for  our  comrades  brave 
Dreamed  in  their  minds,  but  of  the  Lotus  gave ; 
And  whoso  tasted  of  their  flowery  meat 
Cared  not  with  tidings  to  return,  but  clave 
Fast  to  that  tribe,  for  ever  fain  to  eat. 
Reckless  of  home-return,  the  tender  Lotus  sweet. 

These  sorely  weeping  by  main  strength  we  bore 

Back  to  the  hollow  ships  with  all  our  speed, 

And  thrust  them  bound  with  cords  upon  the  floor. 

Under  the  benches  :  then  the  rest  I  lead 

On  board  and  bid  them  to  the  work  give  heed. 

Lest  others,  eating  of  the  Lotus,  yearn 

Always  to  linger  in  that  land,  and  feed. 

Careless  for  ever  of  the  home-return  : 

Then,  bending  to  their  oars,  the  foamy  deep  they  spurn. 

Thence  we  sailed  onward  overwhelmed  in  heart. 

And  to  the  land  of  the  Cyclopes  came. 

An  undiscerning  people,  void  of  art 

In  life,  and  tramplers  on  the  sacred  claim 

Of  laws  which  men  for  civil  uses  frame. 

Scorners  of  common  weal,  no  bounds  they  keep. 

Nor  learn  with  labors  the  rude  earth  to  tame ; 

Who  neither  plant  nor  plough  nor  sow  nor  reap  ; 

Still  in  the  gods  they  trust,  still  careless  wake  and  sleep. 


S    c,- 


THE    ODYSSEY. 

There  all  good  fruits  on  the  spontaneous  soil 
Fed  by  the  rain  of  Zeus  for  ever  grow ; 
Unsown,  untended,  corn  and  wine  and  oil 
Spring  to  their  hand  ;  but  they  no  councils  know 
Nor  justice,  but  for  ever  lawless  go. 
Housed  in  the  hills,  they  neither  buy  nor  sell. 
No  kindly  offices  demand  or  show  ; 
Each  in  the  hollow  cave  where  he  doth  dwell 
Gives  law  to  wife  and  children,  as  he  thinketh  well. 


ODYSSEUS   AND  THE    DRUNKEN   CYCLOPS. 
{From  a  Sarcophagus  Relief. ) 

Skirting  their  harbor,  neither  near  nor  far, 

A  little  island  lies,  with  forest  crowned. 

Wherein  wild  goats  in  countless  numbers  are; 

Since  there  no  track  of  mortal  men  is  found 

Who  hunt  in  hardship  over  mountain  ground. 

And  never  plough  hath  pierced  the  woodland  glen. 

Unvisited  it  lies  the  whole  year  round. 

None  their  tame  flocks  amid  those  pastures  pen. 

Feeding  wild  goats,  and  widowed  of  the  race  of  men. 

Not  to  Cyclopian  brood  doth  appertain 

Skill  in  the  seas,  or  vermeil-painted  fleet 

Of  barks,  which,  sailing  o'er  the  azure  main. 

Pass  and  repass  wherever  seemeth  meet. 

And  all  the  covenants  of  men  complete; 

Nor  have  they  shipwrights  who  might  build  them  such ; 

Else  would  they  soon  have  colonized  this  seat. 

Not  worthless  is  it,  but  at  human  touch 

Would  take  the  seasons  well,  and  yield  exceeding  much. 


Fast  by  the  margin  of  the  hoary  deep 

Lie  soft  well-watered  meadows.     There  the  vine 


ODYSSEUS'S  ADVENTURES.  103 

Would  bloom  for  ever.     If  to  plough  and  reap. 

Observant  of  the  hours,  one's  heart  incline, 

Black  with  fertility,  the  soil  doth  shine. 

Smooth  is  the  haven,  nor  is  need  at  all 

Of  anchor  cable,  and  shore-fastened  line. 

Floating  in  shelter  of  that  firm  sea-wall 

Sailors  at  will  may  wait  till  prosperous  breezes  call. 

There  a  white  waterfall  beneath  the  cave 
Springs  forth,  and  flashes  at  the  haven-head  ; 
Round  it  the  whispering  alders  darkly  wave. 
Thitherward  sailing  through  the  night  we  sped, 
Yea,  some  divinity  the  swift  ships  led 
Through  glooms  not  pierceable  by  power  of  eye. 
Round  us  the  deep  night-air  swung  listless,  dead  ; 
Nor  moon  nor  stars  looked  down  from  the  wide  sky, 
Hid  by  the  gross  cloud-curtain  brooding  heavily. 

No  mariner  beheld  the  nearing  strand. 

Helmsman  expert  or  wielder  of  the  oar. 

Nor  marked  the  long  waves  rolling  on  the  land. 

Still  with  a  steady  prow  we  onward  bore 

Till  the  keels  grated  on  the  shelving  shore. 

Then  we  the  sails  take  down,  and,  past  the  line 

Of  ripple,  landing  from  the  waters  hoar. 

Along  the  margin  of  the  deep  recline. 

And  sound-asleep  wait  dreaming  for  the  Dawn  divine. 

But  when  the  rosy-fingered  Dawn  came  on. 

Child  of  the  mist,  we  wondering  rose  apace 

The  beauteous  island  to  explore  anon. 

And  lo  !  the  Nymphs  inhabiting  the  place 

Stirred  in  our  sight  the  creatures  of  the  chase. 

That  so  my  comrades  might  have  food  to  eat. 

Straight  to  the  ships  for  bows  and  spears  we  race, 

And,  parted  in  three  bands,  the  thickets  beat ; 

Soon  did  the  god  vouchsafe  large  spoil  exceeding  sweet. 

Me  twelve  ships  followed,  and  for  each  we  won 
Nine  goats  ;  but  for  myself  I  chose  out  ten. 
Thus  all  day  long,  till  falling  of  the  sun, 
We  sat  there  feasting  in  the  hollow  glen  ; 
Cheerily  I  ween  the  red  wine  circled  then ; 
Since  of  the  liquor  there  remained  much  more 
Sealed  safely  in  the  ships  ;  for  when  our  men 
Sacked  the  Ciconian  citadel,  good  store 
Of  wine  in  earthen  vessels  to  our  fleet  they  bore. 

And  on  the  land  of  the  Cyclopes  near 

We  looked,  and  saw  their  smoke,  and  heard  their  hum. 

Also  the  bleatings  of  their  flocks  we  hear. 

Till  the  ambrosial  Night  made  all  things  dumb. 

But  when  the  rosy-fingered  Dawn  was  come, 

I  called  my  friends,  and  said  :  "  Stay  ye  the  rest, 

While  I  go  forward  to  explore  with  some, 

Mine  own  ship's  crew,  what  folk  this  shore  infest, 

Despiteful,  wild,  unjust,  or  of  a  gentle  breast." 


I04  THE    ODYSSEY. 

Forthwith  I  march  on  board,  and  bid  my  crew 
With  me  their  captain  the  tall  bark  ascend, 
And  the  stern-calDles  vigorously  undo. 
They  to  their  several  tasks  with  zeal  attend  ; 
Then,  sitting,  to  the  oars'  long  sweep  they  bend, 
And  smite  in  unison  the  billows  hoar. 
Right  quickly  to  the  continent  we  wend  ; 
And  lo  !  a  huge  deep  cave  our  eyes  before. 
Shaded  about  with  laurels,  very  near  the  shore. 

And  all  around  the  flocks  and  herds  recline. 
Parked  by  a  rough-hewn  fence  of  mountain  stone, 
Ail  overhung  with  oak  and  tow'ry  pine. 
There  dwelt  the  monstrous  keeper  all  alone. 
Who  in  his  breast  no  kindred  ties  did  own, 
But,  far  apart,  ungodly  ways  pursued  ; 
Sight  not  resembling  human  flesh  and  bone. 
But  like  a  mountain-column,  crowned  with  wood. 
Reigning  above  the  hills  in  awful  solitude. 

Then  of  my  comrades  I  the  rest  command 

To  guard  the  well-benched  ship,  remaining  there, 

But  I  the  while  with  my  twelve  bravest  land. 

And  of  dark  wine  an  ample  goatskin  bear. 

Which  Maron,  venerable  priest  and  seer 

Of  lord  Apollo,  the  divine  defence 

Of  Ismarus,  because  we  held  him  dear. 

Son  of  Euanthes,  gave  us  to  take  thence. 

Whom  with  his  wife  and  child  we  saved  in  reverence. 

Deep-foliaged  grove  his  dwelling  doth  enfold, 
Phoebus  Apollo's,  who  there  keeps  his  shrine. 
Rich  gifts  he  gave  me — talents  seven  of  gold 
Which  curiously  was  wrought  and  well  did  shine. 
And  bowl  of  silver,  and  twelve  jars  of  wine. 
Which  in  his  halls  lay  hidden  out  of  view. 
Mellow  with  age,  unmingled,  sweet,  divine ; 
Known  but  to  him  the  priest  and  other  two. 
His  wife  and  chief  house-dame,  of  all  his  retinue. 

When  they  the  red  wine  drank,  he  filled  one  cup. 

Which  when  in  twenty  measures  he  did  pour 

Of  water,  and  the  scent  divine  rose  up, 

'Twere  hard  to  hold  one's  cravings  any  more. 

Thereof  a  goatskin  filled  I  with  me  bore. 

And  in  a  wallet  did  provision  crowd, 

For  my  brave  heart  at  once  foreboded  sore. 

How  I  a  man  should  meet,  unpitying,  proud, 

Lawless  and  void  of  right,  with  giant  strength  endowed. 

Soon  to  the  cave  we  came,  nor  him  there  found. 
Who  'mid  the  pastures  with  his  flocks  did  stay. 
We  then  the  crates  admire  with  cheeses  crowned. 
And  the  pens,  packed  with  kids  and  lambs,  survey 
Where  in  his  place  each  kind  distinguished  lay. 
Here  rest  the  firstlings,  there  the  middle-born. 
And  further  on  the  yeanlings.     Brimmed  with  whey 
Pails,  ranged  in  ordered  rank,  the  walls  adorn  — 
Wherein  his  flocks  he  wont  to  milk  at  eve  and  morn. 


ODYSSEUS'S  ADVENTURES.  105 

With  strong  persuasion  me  my  friends  besought 

To  steal  some  cheeses,  and  return  with  haste 

To  the  swift  ship,  and  thither  having  brought 

Both  kids  and  fat  lambs,  from  their  pens  displaced. 

Sailing  to  vanish  o'er  the  watery  waste. 

I  to  our  loss  would  not  persuaded  be. 

Wishing  to  see  him  and  his  cheer  to  taste, 

If  chance  he  lend  me  hospitality  — 

Alas  !  to  my  poor  friends  no  welcome  host  proved  he  ! 

We  then  for  holy  offerings  kindle  flame, 

Eat  of  the  cheeses,  and  till  eventide 

Wait.     Then  with  flocks  and  herds  the  Cyclops  came 

Bearing  a  mighty  pile  of  pine  wood  dried. 

Wherewith  his  evening  meal  might  be  supplied. 

Down  with  a  crash  he  cast  it  in  the  cave ; 

We  to  the  deep  recess  ran  terrified. 

Anon  his  flocks  within  the  walls  he  drave, 

But  to  the  males  a  place  without  the  courtyard  gave. 

Forthwith  a  rock  stupendous  with  his  hands 

He  lifted,  and  athwart  the  entrance  flung. 

Firm-rooted  o'er  the  cave's  deep  mouth  it  stands. 

Not  two-and-twenty  wagons,  four-wheeled,  strong. 

Ever  could  move  the  mighty  bulk  along. 

Then  sat  he  down  and  milked  each  teeming  ewe 

And  she-goat,  and  anon  their  eager  young  j 

Under  the  dams  disposed  in  order  due  ; 

And  all  the  while  thick  bleatings  rang  the  wide  cave  through. 

Half  the  white  milk  he  curdled,  and  laid  up 

On  crates  of  woven  wicker-work  with  care  ; 

And  half  he  set  aside  in  bowl  and  cup 

To  stand  in  readiness  for  use,  whene'er 

Thirst  should  invite,  and  for  his  evening  fare. 

Thus  he  his  tasks  right  busily  essayed. 

And  at  the  last  a  red  flame  kindled  there ; 

And,  while  the  firelight  o'er  the  cavern  played. 

Us  crouching  he  espied,  and  speedy  question  made. 

Strangers,  who  are  ye .''  from  what  strand  unknown 

Sail  ye  the  watery  ways  .''     After  some  star 

Of  purpose,  or  on  random  courses  blown 

Range  ye  like  pirates,  whom  no  perils  bar, 

Who  risk  their  own  lives  other  men  to  mar  ?  " 

So  made  he  question,  and  our  dear  heart  brake. 

Scared  at  the  dread  voice  searching  near  and  far, 

The  rough  rude  accent,  and  the  monstrous  make, 

Natheless,  though  sore  cast  down,  I  thus  responding  spake: 

'  We  sons  of  Argos,  while  from  Troy  we  keep 
Straight  homeward,  driven  by  many  storms  astray. 
Over  the  wide  abysses  of  the  deep. 
Chance  on  another  course,  a  different  way. 
Haply  such  doom  upon  us  Zeus  doth  lay. 
Also  of  Agamemnon,  Atreus'  son, 
Soldiers  we  are,  and  his  command  obey 
Whose  name  rings  loudest  underneath  the  sun. 
City  so  vast  he  sacked,  such  people  hath  undone. 


lo6  THE   ODYSSEY. 

"  So  in  our  wanderings  to  thy  knees  we  come 
If  thou  the  boon  of  hospitality 
Wouldst  furnish  to  our  wants,  or  render  some 
Of  those  sweet  offices  which  none  deny 
To  strangers.     Thou  at  least  the  gods  on  high 
Respect,  most  noble  one !  for  theirs  are  we, 
Who  now  poor  suppliants  on  thy  help  rely  ; 
Chiefly  revere  our  guardian  Zeus,  for  he 
Avenger  of  all  such  is  ever  wont  to  be  !  " 

So  did  I  speak  :  he  ruthlessly  replied : 
"  O  fool,  or  new  from  some  outlandish  place, 
Who  by  the  fear  of  gods  hast  me  defied ! 
What  then  is  Zeus  to  the  Cyclopian  race, 
Matched  with  whose  strength  the  blessed  gods  are  base  ? 
Save  that  I  choose  to  spare  your  heads,  I  trow 
Zeus  will  not  much  avail  you  in  this  case. 
But  tell  me  where  your  good  ship  ye  bestow. 
At  the  land's  end  or  near,  that  I  the  truth  may  know." 

Thus  spake  he,  urging  trial  of  our  state. 
Nor  caught  me,  in  the  experience  manifold 
Well  versed.     With  crafty  words  I  answered  straight : 
"  Mighty  Poseidon,  who  the  earth  doth  hold. 
Near  the  far  limits  which  your  land  enfold. 
On  the  sharp  rocks  our  vessel  did  impel. 
Thither  a  great  wind  from  the  deep  us  rolled. 
I  with  these  comrades  from  the  yawning  hell 
Of  waters  have  alone  escaped,  the  tale  to  tell." 

He  nought  replied,  but  of  my  comrades  twain 

Seized,  and  like  dog-whelps  on  the  cavern-floor 

Dashed  them  :  the  wet  ground  steamed  with  blood  and  brain. 

Straight  in  his  ravin  limb  from  limb  he  tore 

Fierce  as  a  lion,  and  left  nothing  o'er ; 

Flesh,  entrails,  marrowy  bones  of  men  just  killed. 

Gorging.     To  Zeus  our  hands,  bemoaning  sore. 

We  raised  in  horror,  while  his  maw  he  tilled, 

And  human  meat  devoured,  and  milk  in  rivers  swilled. 

After  his  meal  he  lay  down  with  the  sheep. 

I,  at  the  first,  was  minded  to  go  near 

And  in  his  liver  slake  my  drawn  sword  deep  ; 

But  soon  another  mind  made  me  forbear  ; 

For  so  should  we  have  gained  destruction  sheer. 

Since  never  from  the  doorway  could  we  move 

With  all  our  strength  the  stones  which  he  set  there. 

We  all  night  long  with  groans  our  anguish  prove, 

Till  rosy-fingered  Dawn  shone  forth  in  heaven  above. 

At  dawn  a  fire  he  kindled  in  the  cave, 
And  milked  the  famous  flocks  in  order  due. 
And  to  each  mother  her  young  suckling  gave. 
But  when  the  morning  tasks  were  all  gone  through. 
He,  of  my  wretched  comrades  seizing  two, 
Gorged  breakfast  as  became  his  savage  taste, 
And  with  the  fat  flocks  from  the  cave  withdrew. 
Moved  he  the  stone,  and  set  it  back  with  haste. 
Lightly  as  on  some  quiver  he  the  lid  replaced  ; 


ODYSSEUS'S  ADVENTURES.  107 

Then  toward  the  mountain  turned  with  noise  ;  but  I 

Sat  brooding  on  revenge,  and  made  my  prayer 

To  Pallas,  and  resolved  this  scheme  to  try  : 

For  a  huge  club  beside  the  sheepfold  there, 

Green  olive-wood,  lay  drying  in  his  lair, 

Cut  for  a  staff  to  serve  him  out  of  doors, 

Which  we  admiring  to  the  mast  compare 

Of  some  wide  merchantman  with  twenty  oars, 

Which  the  divine  abysses  of  the  deep  explores. 

Therefrom  I  severed  as  it  were  an  ell. 

And  bade  my  comrades  make  it  smooth  and  round. 

Then  to  a  tapering  spire  I  shaped  it  well. 

And  the  green  timber  in  the  flame  embrowned 

For  hardness ;  and,  where  dung  did  most  abound, 

Deep  in  the  cave  the  pointed  stake  concealed. 

Anon  my  comrades  cast  their  lots  all  round. 

Which  should  with  me  the  fiery  weapon  wield. 

And  twirl  it  in  his  eye  while  sleep  his  huge  strength  sealed. 

Then  were  four  chosen  —  even  the  very  same 

Whom  I  myself  should  have  picked  out  to  be 

My  comrades  in  the  work  —  and  me  they  name 

The  fifth,  their  captain.     In  the  evening  he 

Came,  shepherding  his  flocks  in  due  degree. 

Home  from  the  hills,  and  all  his  fleecy  rout 

Into  the  wide  cave  urged  imperiously. 

Nor  left  one  loiterer  in  the  space  without, 

Whether  from  God  so  minded,  or  his  own  dark  doubt. 

Soon  with  the  great  stone  he  blocked  up  the  cave. 

And  milked  the  bleating  flocks  in  order  due. 

And  to  each  mother  her  young  suckling  gave. 

But  when  the  evening  tasks  were  all  gone  through, 

He  of  my  wretched  comrades  seizing  two 

Straight  on  the  horrible  repast  did  sup. 

Then  I  myself  near  to  the  Cyclops  drew, 

And,  holding  in  my  hands  an  ivy  cup 

Brimmed  with  the  dark-red  wine,  took  courage  and  spake  up  : 

'  Cyclops,  take  wme,  and  drink  after  thy  meal 
Consumed,  of  human  flesh,  that  thou  mayest  know 
The  kind  of  liquor  wherein  we  sailors  deal. 
This  a  drink-offering  have  I  brought,  that  so 
Thou  mightest  pity  me  and  let  me  go 
Safe  homeward.     Thou  alas  !  with  fury  extreme 
Art  raving,  and  thy  fierceness  doth  outgrow 
All  bounds  of  reason.     How  then  dost  thou  dream 
Others  will  seek  thy  place,  who  dost  so  ruthless  seem  .?  " 

He  then  received  and  drank  and  loudly  cried 

Rejoicing  :  "  Give  me,  give  me  more,  and  tell 

Thy  name,  that  some  good  boon  I  may  provide. 

True,  the  rich  earth  where  the  Cyclopes  dwell. 

Fed  by  the  rain  of  Zeus,  in  wine  doth  well, — 

But  this  is  nectar,  pure  ambrosia's  soul." 

So  spake  he.     Thrice  I  gave  the  fatal  spell ; 

Thrice  in  his  foolishness  he  quaffed  the  whole. 

Then  said  I,  while  his  brain  with  the  curling  fumes  did  roll : 


lo8  THE    ODYSSEY. 

"  Cyclops,  thou  askest  me  my  name  renowned  — 
Now  will  I  make  it  known  ;  nor  thou  withhold 
That  boon  whereto  thy  solemn  troth  is  bound  — 
Hear  then  ;  my  name  is  Noman.     From  of  old 
My  father,  mother,  these  my  comrades  bold, 
Give  me  this  title."     So  I  spake,  and  he 
Answered  at  once  with  mind  of  ruthless  mould  : 

"  This  shall  fit  largess  unto  Noman  be  — 
Last,  after  all  thy  peers,  I  promise  to  eat  thee." 

Therewith  his  head  fell  and  he  lay  supme, 
Tamed  by  the  stroke  of  all-subduing  sleep  ; 
And  the  vast  neck  heaved,  while  rejected  wine 
And  morsels  of  men's  flesh  in  spasms  did  leap 
Forth  from  his  throat.     Then  did  I  rise,  and  deep 
In  the  live  embers  hid  the  pointed  stake. 
Urging  my  comrades  a  good  heart  to  keep. 
Soon  the  green  olive-wood  the  fire  did  bake 
Then  all  a-glow  with  sparkles  I  the  red  brand  take. 

Round  me  my  comrades  wait.     The  gods  inbreathe 

Fierce  ardour.     In  his  eye  we  thrust  the  brand, 

I  twirling  from  above  and  they  beneath. 

As  when  a  shipwright  at  his  work  doth  stand 

Boring  ship-timber,  and  on  either  hand 

His  fellows,  kneeling  at  their  toil  below. 

Whirl  the  swift  auger  with  a  leathern  band 

For  ever ;  —  we  the  weapon  keep  whirling  so, 

While  round  the  fiery  point  red  blood  doth  bubbling  flow. 

And  from  the  burning  eyeball  the  fierce  steam 

Singed  all  his  brows,  and  the  deep  roots  of  sight 

Crackled  with  fire.     As  when  in  the  cold  stream 

Some  smith  the  axe  untempered,  fiery-white, 

Dips  hissing ;  for  thence  comes  the  iron's  might , 

So  did  his  eye  hiss,  and  he  roared  again. 

Loudly  the  vault  rebellowed.     We  in  flight 

Rushed  diverse.     He  the  stake  wrenched  forth  amain. 

Soaked  in  the  crimson  gore,  and  hurled  it  mad  with  pain ; 

Then,  bursting  forth  into  a  mighty  yell. 

Called  the  Cyclopes,  who  in  cave  and  lair 

'Mid  the  deep  glen  and  windy  hill-tops  dwell. 

They,  trooping  to  the  shriek  from  far  and  near, 

Ask  from  without  what  ails  him  :  "  In  what  fear 

Or  trouble,  Polyphemus,  dost  thou  cry 

Through  night  ambrosial,  and  our  slumbers  scare  ? 

Thee  of  thy  flocks  doth  mortal  violently 

Despoil,  or  strive  to  kill  by  strength  or  treachery  .-*  " 

And  frenzied  Polyphemus  from  the  cave 

This  answer  in  his  pain  with  shrieks  out-threw : 

"  Never  by  strength,  my  friends,  or  courage  brave  ! 
Noman  by  treachery  doth  me  subdue." 
Whereto  his  fellows  winged  words  renew  : 

"  Good  sooth  !  if  no  man  work  thee  injury, 
But  in  thy  lone  resort  this  sickness  grew, 
The  hand  of  Zeus  is  not  to  be  put  by  — 
Go,  then,  in  filial  prayer  to  king  Poseidon  cry." 


OD  YSSE  WS'S  AD  VENTURES. 


109 


So  they  retiring;  and  I  laughed  in  heart, 

To  find  the  shrewd  illusion  working  well. 

But  the  dread  Cyclops  over  every  part 

Groped  eyeless  with  wild  hands  in  anguish  fell, 

Rolled  back  the  massive  mouthstone  from  the  cell, 

And  in  the  door  sat  waving  everywhere 

His  lightless  arms,  to  capture  or  repel 

Any  forth  venturing  with  his  flocks  to  fare  — 

Dreaming  to  deal  with  one  of  all  good  prudence  bare. 

Seeking  deliverance  'mid  these  dangers  rife. 

So  deadly-near  the  mighty  evil  pressed, 

All  thoughts  I  weave  as  one  that  weaves  for  life. 

All  kinds  of  scheming  in  my  spirit  test ; 

And  this  of  various  counsels  seemed  the  best. 

Fat  rams  there  were,  with  goodly  fleeces  dight 

Of  violet-tinted  wool.     These  breast  to  breast 

I  silent  link  of  osiers  twisted  tight, 

Whereon  the  ill-minded  Cyclops  used  to  sleep  at  night. 

By  threes  I  linked  them,  and  each  middle  one 

Carried  a  man  :  one  walked  on  either  side  : 

Such  was  our  plan  the  monster's  rage  to  shun  ; 

And  thus  three  rams  for  each  man  we  provide. 

But  I,  choosing  a  beast  than  all  beside 

Fairer,  in  length  more  large  and  strength  of  spine, 

Under  his  belly  in  the  woolly  hide 

Clinging  with  both  hands  resolutely  recline  ; 

And  thus,  groaning  in  soul,  we  wait  the  Dawn  divine. 


ESCAPE  OF  ODYSSEUS    BOUND   TO   THE    RAM. 
{Front  a  yase  Painting.) 

But  with  the  rosy-fingered  Morn  troop  thence 
The  fat  rams  toward  their  pastures  eagerly. 
While  bleat  the  unmilked  ewes  with  udders  tense. 
Distressful.     So  their  lord,  while  each  went  by. 
Feeling  their  backs  with  many  a  bitter  sigh. 
Dreamed  not  that  we  clung  bound  beneath  the  breast. 
Last  came  the  great  ram,  trailing  heavily 
Me  and  his  wool,  with  cumbrous  weight  oppressed. 
Him  mighty  Polyphemus  handling  thus  addressed  : 


"O  THE  ODYSSEY. 

"  Ah  !  mine  own  fondling,  why  dost  linger  now 
So  late  ? — far  other  wast  thou  known  of  old. 
With  lordly  steps  the  flowery  pastures  thou 
First  ever  seekest,  and  the  waters  cold, 
First  too  at  eve  returnest  to  the  fold. — 
Now  last  of  all  —  dost  thou  thy  master's  eye 
Bewail,  whose  dear  orb,  when  I  sank  controlled 
With  wine,  this  Noman  vile  with  infamy. 
Backed  by  his  rascal  crew,  hath  darkened  treacherously  } 

"  Whom  let  not  vaunt  himself  escaped  this  debt, 
Nor  think  me  quenched  and  poor  and  powerless ; 
Vengeance  may  chance  to  overtake  him  yet. 

0  hadst  thou  mind  like  mine,  and  couldst  address 
Thy  master,  and  the  secret  lair  confess 
Wherein  my  wrath  he  shuns,  then  should  his  brain 
Dashed  on  the  earth  with  hideous  stamp  impress 
Pavement  and  wall,  appeasing  the  fell  pain 

Which  from  this  Noman-traitor  nothing-worth  I  drain  !  " 

Thus  spake  he,  and  the  great  ram  from  his  doors 

Dismissed.     A  little  eastward  from  the  cave 

Borne  with  the  flock  we  passed,  and  left  his  floors 

Blood-stained  behind,  escaping  a  dire  grave. 

First  mine  own  bands  I  loosened,  and  then  gave 

My  friends  their  freedom  :  but  the  slow  fat  sheep. 

Lengthily  winding,  to  the  ships  we  drave. 

Joy  stirred  within  our  comrades  strong  and  deep. 

Glad  of  our  help  from  doom,  though  forced  the  slain  to  weep, 

Natheless  their  lamentations  I  made  cease. 
And  with  bent  brows  gave  signal  not  to  wail ; 
But  with  all  haste  the  flock  so  fine  of  fleece 
Bade  them  on  shipboard  set,  and  forward  sail. 
So  they  the  canvas  open  to  the  gale 
And  with  timed  oarage  smite  the  foamy  mere. 
Soon  from  such  distance  as  the  voice  might  hail 
A  landsman,  and  by  shouting  make  him  hear, 

1  to  the  Cyclops  shrilled  with  scorn  and  cutting  jeer : 

"Cyclops,  you  thought  to  eat  a  poor  man's  friends 
Here  in  your  cavern  by  sheer  brutal  might. 
Go  to  :  rough  vengeance  on  thy  crime  attends  ; 
Since,  in  thy  soul  not  reverencing  the  right. 
Thy  guests  thou  hast  devoured  in  foul  despite, 
Even  on  thine  own  hearth.     Therefore  Zeus  at  last 
And  all  the  gods  thine  evil  deeds  requite." 
So  did  I  blow  wind  on  his  anger's  blast. 
He  a  hill-peak  tore  off,  and  the  huge  fragment  cast 

Just  o'er  the  blue-prowed  ship.     As  the  mass  fell. 

Heaved  in  a  stormy  tumult  the  great  main. 

Bearing  us  landward  on  the  refluent  swell. 

I  a  long  barge-pole  seize  and  strive  and  strain 

To  work  our  vessel  toward  the  deep  again. 

Still  beckoning  to  my  crew  to  ply  the  oar  ; 

Who  stoop  to  the  strong  toil  and  pull  right  fain 

To  twice  the  former  distance  from  the  shore. 

Then  stood  I  forth  to  hail  the  Cyclops  yet  once  more. 


OD  YSSE  C/S'S  AD  VENTURES. 

Me  then  my  friends  with  dear  dissuasions  tire 

On  all  sides,  one  and  other.     "  Desperate  one  ! 

Why  wilt  thou  to  a  wild  man's  wrath  add  fire? 

Hardly  but  now  did  we  destruction  shun, 

So  nigh  that  hurling  had  our  bark  undone. 

Yea,  let  a  movement  of  the  mouth  but  show 

Where  through  the  billows  from  his  rage  we  run, 

And  he  with  heads  will  strew  the  dark  sea-flow, 

And  break  our  timbered  decks — so  mightily  doth  he  throw." 

So  spake  they,  but  so  speaking  could  not  turn 
My  breast  large-hearted  ;  and  again  1  sent 
Accents  of  wrath,  his  inmost  soul  to  burn  : 
"  Cyclops,  if  mortal  man  hereafter,  bent 
To  know  the  storj-  of  this  strange  event, 
Should  of  thy  hideous  blindness  make  demand, 
Asking  whence  came  this  dire  disfigurement, 
Name  thou  Laertes-born  Odysseus'  hand, 
Waster  of  walls,  who  dwells  in  Ithaca's  rough  land." 

Then  did  he  groaning  in  these  words  reply  : 
"  Gods  !  the  old  oracles  upon  me  break  — 
That  warning  of  the  antique  prophecy 
Which  Telemus  Eurymides  once  spake  — 
Skilled  seer,  who  on  our  hills  did  auguries  take, 
And  waxed  in  years  amid  Cyclopian  race. 
Of  all  these  things  did  he  foreshadowings  make, 
And  well  proclaimed  my  pitiable  case, 
And  how  this  lightless  brow  Odysseus  should  deface. 

"  But  always  I  some  great  and  beauteous  man 
Expected,  one  in  awful  strength  arrayed, 
So  to  assail  me  as  the  legend  ran. 
Now  one  unworthy  by  unworthy  aid 
Doth  blind  me  helpless,  and  with  wine  waylaid, 
And  al-to  strengthless  doth  surpass  the  strong. 
But  come,  Odysseus,  let  respect  be  paid 
To  thee  my  guest,  and  thou  shalt  sail  ere  long, 
By  the  Earth-shaker  wafted,  free  from  scathe  and  wrong. 

"  His  child  am  I,  my  sire  he  boasts  to  be, 
Who  if  he  will,  none  else  of  mortal  seed 
Or  of  the  blest,  can  heal  my  wound."     Thus  he  : 
But  I  made  answer :  "  Now  in  very  deed 
I  would  to  heaven  this  right  arm  might  succeed 
So  surely  in  thy  death,  as  I  am  sure 
That  not  Poseidon  even,  at  thy  need. 
Thee  of  thine  eyelessness  hath  power  to  cure, 
Know  well  thy  fatal  hurt  forever  shall  endure." 

Then  to  the  king  Poseidon  he  made  prayer. 
Lifting  his  heart  up  to  the  starry  sky  : 
"  Hear  now,  great  monarch  of  the  raven  hair ; 
Holder  of  earth,  Poseidon,  hear  my  cry, 
If  thou  my  father  art  indeed,  and  I 
Thy  child  !     Or  ever  he  the  way  fulfil, 
Make  thou  Laertes-born  Odysseus  die, 
Waster  of  walls  !  or  should  the  high  Fates  will 
That  friends  and  home  he  see,  then  lone  and  late  and  ill 


1^2  THE    ODYSSEY. 

"  Let  him  return  on  board  a  foreign  ship, 
And  in  his  house  find  evil !  "     Thus  he  prayed 
With  hand  uplifted  and  indignant  lip  : 
And  the  dark-haired  one  heeded  what  he  said. 
He  then  his  hand  upon  a  great  stone  laid, 
Larger  by  far  than  that  he  hurled  before, 
And  the  huge  mass  in  booming  flight  obeyed 
The  measureless  impulse,  and  right  onward  bore, 
There  'twixt  the  blue-prowed  bark  descending  and  the  shore. 

Just  short  of  ruin  ;  and  the  foaming  wave 
Whitened  in  boiling  eddies  where  it  fell. 
And  rolling  toward  the  isle  our  vessel  drave, 
Tossed  on  the  mane  of  that  tumultuous  swell. 
There  found  we  all  our  fleet  defended  well. 
And  comrades  sorrow-laden  on  the  sand. 
Hoping  if  yet,  past  hope,  the  seas  impel 
Their  long-lost  friends  to  the  forsaken  strand  — 
Grated  our  keel  ashore  ;  we  hurrying  leap  on  land. 

Straight  from  the  hollow  bark  our  prize  we  share. 

That  none  might  portionless  come  off.     To  me 

The  ram  for  my  great  guerdon  then  and  there 

My  well-greaved  comrades  gave  in  courtesy  ; 

Which  1  to  Zeus,  supreme  in  majesty. 

Killed  on  the  shore,  and  burned  the  thighs  with  fire: 

But  to  mine  offering  little  heed  gave  he  ; 

Since  deep  within  his  heart  the  cloud-wrapt  Sire 

Against  both  friends  and  fleet  sat  musing  deathful  ire. 

So  till  the  sun  fell  did  we  drink  and  eat, 

And  all  night  long  beside  the  billows  lay 

Till  blushed  the  hills  'neath  morning's  rosy  feet  ; 

Then  did  I  bid  my  friends,  with  break  of  day, 

Loosen  the  hawsers,  and  each  bark  array  ; 

Who  take  the  benches  and  the  whitening  main 

Cleave  with  the  sounding  oars,  and  sail  away. 

So  from  the  isle  we  part,  not  void  of  pain. 

Right  glad  of  our  own  lives,  but  grieving  for  the  slain. 

The  passage  describing  Eurycleia's  recognition  of  Odysseus  is  thus 
translated  by  Messrs.  Butcher  and  Lang  :     (Book  XIX.) 

Then  wise  Penelope  answered  him  :  '*  Ah  !  stranger,  would  that  this 
word  may  be  accomplished.  Soon  shouldst  thou  be  aware  of  kindness  and 
many  a  gift  at  my  hands,  so  that  whoso  met  with  thee  would  call  thee 
blessed.  But  on  this  wise  my  heart  has  a  boding,  and  so  shall  it  be. 
Ne^ither  shall  Odysseus  come  home  any  more,  nor  shalt  thou  gain  an  escort 
hence,  since  there  are  not  now  such  masters  in  the  house  as  Odysseus  was 
among  men, — if  ever  such  an  one  there  was, — to  welcome  guests  revered 
and  speed  them  on  their  way.  But  do  ye,  my  handmaids,  wash  this  man's 
feet  and  lay  a  bed  for  him,  mattress  and  mantles  and  shining  blankets,  that 
well  and  warmly  he  may  come  to  the  time  of  golden-throned  Dawn.  And 
very  early  in  the  morning  bathe  him  and  anoint  him,  that  within  the  house 
beside  Telemachus  he  may  eat  meat,  sitting  quietly  in  the  hall.  And  it  shall 
be  the  worse  for  any  hurtful  man  of  the  wooers,  that  vexes  the  stranger,  yea 


EURYCLEIA    RECOGNIZES  ODYSSEUS.  113 

he  shall  not  henceforth  profit  himself  here,  for  all  his  sore  anger.  For  how 
shalt  thou  learn  concerning  me,  stranger,  whether  indeed  I  excel  all  women 
in  wit  and  thrifty  device,  if  all  unkempt  and  evil  clad  thou  sittest  at  supper  in 
my  halls  ?  Man's  life  is  brief  enough  !  And  if  any  be  a  bad  man  and  hard 
at  heart,  all  men  cry  evil  on  him  for  the  time  to  come,  while  yet  he  lives,  and 
all  men  mock  him  when  he  is  dead.  But  if  any  be  a  blameless  man  and 
blameless  of  heart,  his  guests  noise  abroad  his  fame  among  all  men  and 
many  call  him  excellent." 

Then  Odysseus,  rich  in  counsel,  answered  her  and  said  :  "  O  wife  revered 
of  Odysseus,  son  of  Laertes,  mantles  verily  and  blankets  are  hateful  to  me, 
since  first  I  left  behind  me  the  snowy  hills  of  Crete,  voyaging  in  the  long- 
oared  galley  :  nay  I  would  lie  as  in  time  past  I  was  used  to  rest  through  the 
sleepless  nights.  For  full  many  anight  I  have  lain  on  an  unsightly  bed,  and 
awaited  the  bright-throned  Dawn.  And  baths  for  the  feet  are  no  longer  my 
delight,  nor  shall  any  women  of  those  who  are  serving  maidens  in  thy  house 
touch  my  foot,  unless  there  chance  to  be  some  old  wife,  true  of  heart,  one 
that  has  borne  as  much  trouble  as  myself  ;  I  would  not  grudge  that  such 
an  one  should  touch  my  feet." 

Then  wise  Penelope  answered  him  :  '*  Dear  stranger,  for  there  has  been 
none  ever  so  discreet  as  thou,  nor  dearer,  of  all  the  strangers  from  afar  that 
have  come  to  my  house,  so  clearly  thou  speakest  all  things  discreetly  ;  I 
have  such  an  ancient  woman  of  an  understanding  heart,  that  diligently  nursed 
the  hapless  man  my  lord,  and  cherished  him  and  took  him  in  her  arms,  in 
the  hour  when  his  mother  bare  him.  She  will  wash  thy  feet,  albeit  she  is 
weak  with  age.  Up  now,  wise  Eurycleia,  and  wash  this  man,  who  is  of  like 
age  with  thy  master.  Yea  and  perchance  the  feet  and  hands  of  Odysseus 
are  even  now  such  as  his,  for  men  quickly  age  in  sorrow." 

So  she  spake,  and  the  old  woman  covered  her  face  with  her  hands  and 
shed  warm  tears,  and  spake  a  word  of  lamentation,  saying  : 

"  Ah  !  woe  is  me,  child,  for  thy  sake,  all  helpless  that  I  am  !  Surely  Zeus 
hated  thee  above  all  men,  though  thou  hadst  a  god-fearing  spirit !  For 
never  yet  did  any  man  burn  so  many  fat  pieces  of  the  thigh  and  so  many 
choice  hecatombs  to  Zeus,  whose  joy  is  in  the  thunder,  as  thou  didst  give 
to  him,  with  prayers  that  so  thou  mightest  grow  to  a  smooth  old  age  and 
rear  thy  renowned  son.  But  now  from  thee  alone  hath  Zeus  wholly  cut 
off  the  day  of  thy  returning.  Haply  at  him  too  were  the  women  like  to 
mock  among  strangers  afar,  whensoever  he  came  to  the  famous  palace  of 
any  lord,  even  as  here  these  shameless  ones  all  mock  at  thee.  To  shun  their 
insults  and  many  taunts  it  is  that  thou  sufferest  them  not  to  wash  thy  feet, 
but  the  daughter  of  Icarius,  wise  Penelope,  hath  bidden  me  that  am  right 
willing  to  this  task.  Wherefore  I  will  wash  thy  feet,  both  for  Penelope's 
sake  and  for  thine  own,  for  that  my  heart  within  me  is  moved  with  pity.  And 
now  mark  the  word  that  I  shall  speak.  Many  strangers  travel-worn  have 
ere  now  come  hither,  but  I  say  that  I  have  never  seen  any  so  like  as  thou  art 
in  fashion  and  voice  and  feet  to  Odysseus." 

Then  Odysseus,  rich  in  counsel,  answered  her,  saying  :  "  Old  wife,  even 
so  all  men  declare,  that  have  beheld  us  twain,  that  we  favor  each  other 
exceedingly,  even  as  thou  dost  truly  say." 

Thereupon  the  crone  took  the  shining  cauldron  which  she  used  for  the 
washing  of  feet,  and  poured  in  much  cold  water  and  next  mingled  there- 
with the  warm.  Now  Odysseus  sat  aloof  from  the  hearth,  and  of  a  sudden 
he  turned  his  face  to  the  darkness,  for  anon  he  had  a  misgiving  of  heart  lest 


114  THE   ODYSSEY, 

when  she  handled  him  she  might  recognize  the  scar,  and  all  should  be 
revealed.  Now  she  drew  near  her  lord  to  wash  him,  and  straightway  she 
knew  the  wound,  that  the  boar  had  driven  with  his  white  tusk  long  ago,  when 
Odysseus  went  to  Parnassus  to  see  Autolycus,  and  the  sons  of  Autolycus,  his 
mother's  noble  father,  who  outdid  all  men  in  thievery  and  skill  in  swearing. 
This  skill  was  the  gift  of  the  god  himself,  even  Hermes,  for  that  he  burned 
to  him  the  well  pleasing  sacrifice  of  the  thighs  of  lambs  and  kids  ;  where- 
fore Hermes  abetted  him  gladly.  Now  Autolycus  came  to  the  rich  land 
of  Ithaca,  and  found  his  daughter's  son  a  child  new-born,  and  when  he 
was  making  an  end  of  supper,  behold  Eurycleia  set  the  babe  on  his  knees, 
and  spake  and  hailed  him  :  "  Autolycus,  find  thou  a  name  thyself  to  give  thy 
child's  own  son  ;  for  lo  !  he  is  a  child  of  many  prayers." 

Then  Autolycus  made  answer  and  spake  :  "  My  daughter  and  my  daugh- 
ter's lord,  give  ye  him  whatsoever  name  I  tell  you.  For  behold  I  am  come 
hither  in  great  wrath  against  many  men  and  women  over  the  fruitful  earth, 
wherefore  let  the  child's  name  be  '  a  man  of  wrath,'  Odysseus.  But  when 
the  child  reaches  its  full  growth,  and  comes  to  the  great  house  of  his  mother's 
kin  at  Parnassus,  whereby  are  my  possessions,  I  will  give  him  a  gift  out  of 
these  and  send  him  on  his  way  rejoicing." 

Therefore  it  was  that  Odysseus  went  to  receive  the  splendid  gifts.  And 
Autolycus  and  the  sons  of  Autolycus  grasped  his  hands  and  greeted  him  with 
gentle  words,  and  Amphithea,  his  mother's  mother,  cast  her  arms  about  him 
and  kissed  his  face  and  his  beautiful  eyes.  Then  Autolycus  called  to  his 
renowned  sons  to  get  ready  the  meal,  and  they  hearkened  to  the  call.  So 
presently  they  led  in  a  five-year-old  bull,  which  they  flayed  and  busily  pre- 
pared, and  cut  up  all  the  limbs  and  deftly  chopped  them  small  and  pierced 
them  with  spits  and  roasted  them  cunningly,  dividing  the  messes.  So  for 
that  livelong  day  they  feasted  till  the  going  down  of  the  sun,  and  their  souls 
lacked  not  aught  of  the  equal  banquet.  But  when  the  sun  sank  and  dark- 
ness came  on,  then  they  laid  them  to  rest  and  took  the  boon  of  sleep. 

Now  so  soon  as  early  Dawn  shone  forth,  the  rosy-fingered,  they  all  went 
forth  to  the  chase,  the  hounds  and  the  sons  of  Autolycus,  and  with  them 
went  the  goodly  Odysseus.  So  they  fared  up  the  steep  hill  of  wood-clad 
Parnassus,  and  quickly  they  came  to  the  windy  hollows.  Now  the  sun  was 
but  just  striking  on  the  fields,  and  was  come  forth  from  the  soft  flowing 
stream  of  deep  Oceanus.  Then  the  beaters  reached  a  glade  of  the  wood- 
land, and  before  them  the  hounds  ran  tracking  a  scent,  but  behind  them 
came  the  sons  of  Autolycus,  and  among  them  goodly  Odysseus  followed 
close  on  the  hounds,  swaying  a  long  spear.  Thereby  in  a  thick  lair  was  a 
great  boar  lying,  and  through  the  coppice  the  force  of  the  wet  winds  blew 
never,  neither  did  the  bright  sun  light  on  it  with  his  rays,  nor  could  the  rain 
pierce  through,  so  thick  it  was,  and  of  fallen  leaves  there  was  great  plenty 
therein.  Then  the  noise  of  the  men's  feet  and  the  dogs'  came  upon  the 
boar,  as  they  pressed  on  in  their  hunting,  and  forth  from  his  lair  he  sprang 
towards  them  with  his  back  well  bristled  and  fire  shining  in  his  eyes,  and 
stood  at  bay  before  them  all.  Then  Odysseus  was  the  first  to  rush  in, hold- 
ing his  spear  aloft  in  his  strong  hand,  most  keen  to  smite  ;  but  the  boar  was 
too  quick  for  him  and  struck  him  above  the  knee,  ripping  through  much 
flesh  with  his  tusk  as  he  charged  sideways,  but  he  reached  not  to  the  bone 
of  the  man.  But  Odysseus  smote  at  his  right  shoulder  and  hit  it,  so  that  the 
point  of  the  bright  spear  went  clean  through,  and  the  boar  fell  in  the  dust 
with  a  cry,  and  his  life  passed  from  him.  Then  the  sons  of  Autolycus  began 
to  busy  them  with  the  carcase,  and  as  ior  the  wound  of  the  noble  godlike 


ii6 


THE    ODYSSEY. 


Odysseus,  they  bound  it  up  skilfully,  and  stayed  the  black  blood  with  a  song 
of  healing,  and  straightway  returned  to  the  house  of  their  dear  father. 
Then  Autolycus  and  the  sons  of  Autolycus  got  him  well  healed  of  his 
wound,  and  gave  him  splendid  gifts,  and  quickly  sent  him  with  all  love  to 
Ithaca,  gladly  speeding  a  glad  guest.  There  his  father  and  lady  mother 
were  glad  of  his  returning,  and  asked  him  of  all  his  adventures,  and  of  his 
wound  how  he  came  by  it,  and  duly  he  told  them  all,  namely,  how  the  boar 
gashed  him  with  his  white  tusk  in  the  chase,  when  he  had  gone  to  Parnassus 
with  the  sons  of  Autolycus. 

Now  the  old  woman  took  the  scarred  limb  and  passed  her  hands  down  it, 
and  knew  it  by  the  touch  and  let  the  foot  drop  suddenly,  so  that  the  knee 
fell  into  the  bath,  and  the  vessel  rang,  being  turned  over  on  the  other  side, 
and  that  water  was  spilled  on  the  ground.  Then  grief  and  joy  came  on  her 
in  one  moment,  and  her  eyes  filled  up  with  tears,  and  the  voice  of  her  utter- 
ance was  stayed,  and  touching  the  chin  of  Odysseus  she  spake  to  him,  saying  : 

"  Yea,  verily  thou  art  Odysseus,  my  dear  child,  and  I  knew  thee  not 
before,  till  I  had  handled  all  the  body  of  my  lord." 

Therewithal  she  looked  toward  Penelope,  as  minded  to  make  a  sign  that 
her  husband  was  now  home.  But  Penelope  could  not  meet  her  eyes  nor 
understand,  for  Athene  had  bent  her  thoughts  to  other  things.  But  Odys- 
seus feeling  for  the  old  woman's  throat  seized  it  with  his  right  hand  and 
with  the  other  drew  her  closer  to  him  and  spake, saying  : 

*'  Woman,  why  wouldst  thou  indeed  destroy  me  ?  It  was  thou  that  didst 
nurse  me  there  at  thine  own  breast,  and  now  after  travail  and  much  pain  I 
am  come  here  in  the  twentieth  year  to  mine  own  country.  But  since  thou 
art  ware  of  me,  and  the  god  has  put  this  in  thy  heart,  be  silent  lest  another 
learn  the  matter  in  the  halls.  For  on  this  wise  I  will  declare  it,  and  it  shall 
surely  be  accomplished  :  If  the  gods  subdue  the  lordly  wooers  unto  me,  I 
will  not  hold  my  hand  from  thee,  my  nurse  though  thou  art,  when  I  slay  the 
other  handmaids  in  my  halls."  Then  wise  Eurycleia  answered,  saying  : 
"  My  child,  what  word  hath  escaped  the  door  of  thy  lips !  Thou  knowest 
how  firm  is  my  spirit  and  unyielding,  and  1  will  keep  me  close  as  hard  stone 
or  iron.  Yet  another  thing  will  I  tell  thee,  and  do  thou  ponder  it  in  thine 
heart.  If  the  gods  subdue  the  lordly  wooers  to  thy  hand,  then  will  I  tell 
thee  all  the  tale  of  the  women  in  the  halls,  which  of  them  dishonour  thee  and 
which  be  guiltless." 

Then  Odysseus,  rich  in  counsel,  answered  her  saying  :  "  Nurse,  wherefore 
I  pray  thee  wilt  thou  speak  of  these  ?  Thou  needest  not,  for  even  I  myself 
will  mark  them  and  take  knowledge  of  each.  Nay,  do  thou  keep  thy  saying 
to  thyself,  and  leave  the  rest  to  the  gods."  Even  so  he  spake,  and  the  old 
woman  passed  forth  from  the  hall  to  bring  water  for  his  feet,  for  that  first 
water  was  all  spilled.  So  when  she  had  washed  him  and  anointed  him  well 
with  olive  oil,  Odysseus  again  drew  up  his  settle  nearer  to  the  fire  to  warm 
himself,  and  covered  up  the  scar  with  his  rags. 

There  is  another  beautiful  passage  describing  the  dog's  v^^elcome  to 
his  master,  in  the  seventeenth  book  : 

Thus  they  spake  one  to  the  other.  And  lo  !  a  hound  raised  up  his  head 
from  where  he  lay  and  pricked  his  ears,  Argos,  the  hound  of  the  enduring 
Odysseus,  which  of  old  himself  had  bred,  but  had  got  no  joy  of  him,  for  ere 
that,  he  went  to  sacred  Ilios.  Now  in  time  past  the  young  men  used  to  lead 
the  dog  against  wild  goats  and  deer  and   hares  ;  but  now  was  his   master 


ODYSSEUS  AND   HIS  DOG  AUGOS, 


117 


gone,  and  he  lay  cast  out  in  the  deep  dung  of  mules  and  kine,  whereof  he 
found  great  plenty  spread  before  the  doors,  till  the  thralls  of  Odysseus 
should  carry  it  away  to  dung  therewith  his  wide  demesne.  There  lay  the 
dog  Argos,  full  of  vermin.  Yet  even  now  when  he  saw  Odysseus  standing 
by,  he  wagged  his  tail  and  dropped  both  his  ears,  but  nearer  to  his  master  he 
had  not  the  strength  to  draw.  But  Odysseus  looked  aside  and  wiped  away 
a  tear  that  he  easily  hid  from  Eumaeus,  and  straightway  he  asked  him,  say- 
ing : 

"  Eumaeus,  verily  this  is  a  great  marvel,  this  hound  lying  here  in  the  dung. 
Truly  he  is  goodly  of  limb,  but  I  know  not  certainly  if  he  have  speed  with 
his  beauty,  or  if  he  be  comely  only  as  are  men's  trencher  dogs  that  their  lords 
keep  for  the  pleasure  of  the  eye." 

Then  didst  thou  make  answer,  swineherd  Eumaeus  :  **  In  very  truth  this 
is  the  dog  of  a  man  that  has  died  in  a  far  land.  If  he  were  what  once  he 
was  in  limb  and  in  the  feats  of  the  chase,  when  Odysseus  left  him  to  go  to 
Troy,  thou  wouldst  marvel  at  the  sight  of  his  swiftness  and  his  strength. 
There  was  no  monster  that  could  flee  from  him  in  the  deep  places  of  the 
wood,  when  he  was  in  pursuit  ;  for  even  on  a  track  he  was  the  keenest  hound. 
But  now  he  is  holden  in  an  evil  case,  and  his  lord  has  perished  far  from  his 
own  country,  and  the  careless  women  take  no  charge  of  him.  Nay,  thralls 
are  no  more  inclined  to  honest  service  when  their  masters  have  lost  the 
dominion,  for  Zeus,  of  the  far-borne  voice,  takes  away  the  half  of  a  man's 
virtue  when  the  day  of  slavery  comes  upon  him." 

Therewith  he  passed  within  the  fair-lying  house,  and  went  straight  to  the 
hall,  to  the  company  of  the  proud  wooers.  But  upon  Argos  came  the  fate 
of  black  death,  even  in  the  hour  that  he  beheld  Odysseus  again,  in  the 
twentieth  year. 


ARGOS    RECOGNIZES   IN   THE   BEGGAR,    HIS   MASTER  ODYSSEUS, 


CHAPTER  IV.— THE  EPICS  IN  GENERAL,  AND  THE 
HOMERIC  HYMNS. 

-Extravagance  of  Some  of  the  Praise  given  to  Homer  by  Over-enthusiastic  Admirers 
— Some  of  the  Points  of  Resemblance  and  Difference  between  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey,  as  in  the  relation  of  Gods  to  Men,  etc.  ;  The  Different  Kinds  of  Similes 
in  the  Two  Poems ;  of  Epithets — The  Moral  Law  as  it  is  Implied  and  Stated. 
II. — The  Other  Compositions  Ascribed  to  Homer  ;  Hymns,  Parodies  and  Minor 
Poems — The  Light  that  the  Hymns  throw  on  Early  Religious  Thought — The 
Myths  not  invented  as  Stories,  but  Attempted  Explanations  of  the  Universe — 
The  Mock-Homeric  Poems.  III. — Illustrative  Extracts.  IV. — The  Later  Epics  : 
their  Subjects ;  their  Relation  to  the  Homeric  Poems  ;  and  their  Merit. 


I. 

NATURALLY  enough,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  have  been  the  ob- 
ject of  much  indiscriminate  praise,  and  the  reverence  that  is  their 
due  has  at  times  inspired  a  form  of  laudation  which  is  scarcely  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  enthusiastic  worship,  and  admiration  for  the  beauty  of 
the  poems  has  blinded  rapturous  adorers  to  the  exact  significance  of  some 
of  the  extravagant  paeans.  One  of  the  commonest  as  well  as  one  of  the 
least  warranted  of  these  extravagant  utterances  is  this,  that  Homer 
drew  a  perfectly  happy  period.  Thus  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  says  : 
*'  In  Homer  alone  of  the  poets  a  national  life  is  transfigured,  wholly 
beautiful,  complete,  and  happy ;  where  care,  doubt,  decay,  are  as  yet 
unborn."  Fortunately  for  his  fame,  however,  Homer  did  not  conceive 
of  the  world  as  a  place  devoid  of  care  and  decay,  and  although  this 
statement  as  the  author  made  it  is  really  only  a  dithyrambic  expression 
of  admiration  and  nothing  more,  we  often  find  a  similar  incongruity 
between  the  text  of  Homer  and  the  canticles  of  thosie  who  perhaps  are 
readier  to  praise  than  to  read  him.  This  author  goes  on  to  say  that 
the  imitative  writers  of  epics  draw  imaginary  pictures  of  flawless  bliss 
out  of  their  own  imagination,  but  Homer  "  paints  a  world  which  he 
saw,"  as  if  he  saw  a  world  without  care,  doubt  and  decay.  In  other 
words,  Mr.  Harrison  accepts  the  mythical  story  that  Homer  was  blind. 
Yet,  in  fact,  this  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  the  error  that  has  in- 
spired Homer's  would-be  rivals  to  describe  a  faultless  ideal  world.  He 
did,  to  be  sure,  paint  the  world  he  saw,  and  they  have  tried  to  outdo 
him  by  painting  worlds  that  no  one  has  ever  seen,  which  should 
exceed  his  by  their  freedom   from  faults,  but  with  the   result  that  he 


THE    WORLD  DESCRIBED   BY  HOMER.  119 

survives,  while  they  linger  as  men  adorned  with  merely  literary  charm. 
The  world  that  he  beheld  was  one  full  of  grief,  disappointment, 
treachery,  and  the  immortal  charm  of  his  portrayal  lies  in  his  recogni- 
tion and  expression  of  this  truth.  Was  there  no  care  in  Troy,  or  in 
the  Grecian  camp  ?  None  in  Penelope's  heart  as  she  waited  for 
Odysseus?  None  in  Odysseus  as  he  made  his  weary  way  homeward  ? 
Was  there  no  doubt  among  the  stalwart  warriors  that  fought  the 
immortal  fight  about  Ilium?  No  decay?  These  questions  are 
curiously  answered  if  Mr.  Harrison's  statements  are  affirmed.  When 
Homer  mourned  that  men  had  dwindled  so  that  in  these  degenerate 
days  they  could  not  lift  the  weight  which  the  heroes  swung  without 
an  effort  ;  when  he  described  Priam's  anguish  at  pleading  with 
Achilles,  or  Penelope's  faithful  watch  for  her  husband,  it  was  no  fan- 
tastic world  he  described  ;  we  are  all  ready  enough  to  decry  the 
imagined  inferiority  of  the  present;  and  as  for  the  other  and  more 
serious  matters,  it  seems  scarcely  worth  while  to  say  that  it  is  Homer's 
perception  of  the  world  that  makes  him  great ;  all  the  intervention  of 
the  gods  and  the  impossible  machinery  can  not  mar  the  vividness  of 
his  perception  of  human  emotions,  and  these  emotions  are  made  up 
of  care,  doubt,  and  decay. 

The  error  of  this  indiscriminate  enthusiasm  is  easy  to  comprehend. 
We  all  place  the  Golden  Age  in  the  past,  and  associate  with  the 
chronicles  of  a  vague  early  period  the  general  inexactitude  of  our 
impressions  ;  but  Homer  either  saw  something  like  what  he  sang,  or, 
as  is  more  likely,  lived  when  its  harsh  outlines  were  a  little  misty,  and 
so  readily  lent  it  its  air  of  cloudland  ;  yet  he  was  not  so  remote  from 
his  object  as  to  forego  the  very  life  of  poetry,  which  is  truth.  An 
impossible  land  of  faultless  happiness  would  have  faded  like  a  dream. 
Homer  is  immortal  because  he  wrings  our  heart  with  agony,  despair, 
and  doubt.  He  does  not  call  upon  us  to  sympathize  with  angels ;  if 
he  had  done  so,  angels  would  have  been  his  only  readers. 

The  main  resemblance  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  is  this : 
that  the  two,  beside  holding  altogether  the  highest  position  in  epic 
poetry,  evidently  belong  to  very  nearly  the  same  period.  They  both 
treat  of  the  myths  concerning  the  Trojan  war,  but  as  to  the  manner 
of  treatment  countless  differences  arise  as  soon  as  they  are  at  all 
carefully  examined.  In  ancient  times,  as  indeed  is  still  the  case,  the 
two  poems  were  ascribed  to  the  one  poet.  Homer,  but  there  were 
many  who  found  the  points  of  difference  too  great  for  the  acceptance 
of  that  hypothesis.  Some  explained  this  diversity  on  the  theory  that 
Homer  wrote  the  Iliad  in  his  youth  or  early  maturity,  and  the  Odyssey 
in  his  old  age,  a  proposition  which  no  longer  commends  itself  to 
scholars.     Yet  the  explanation,  though  unacceptable,  points  out  very 


I20  EPICS  IN  GENERAL. 

clearly  the  difference  between  the  two  poems.  No  one  can  read  them 
without  being  convinced  that  the  Odyssey  is  the  later  poem  ;  the 
whole  tone  is  that  of  a  riper  civilization.  The  gods  still  interfere  in 
human  actions,  but  Olympus  is  no  longer  distracted  by  their  quarrels ; 
the  hero  is  not  a  tool  of  the  gods,  but  a  dependent  being,  who  is,  so  to 
speak,  their  favorite,  but  not  their  tool.  In  the  Odyssey,  too,  we  observe 
a  change  in  the  growth  of  respect  for  oracles  and  in  the  maturer  reflec- 
tion that  frequently  finds  expression.  There  are,  moreover,  what  we 
may  call  technical  differences,  such  as  the  extension  of  the  use  of  the 
word  Hellas  for  the  main  division  of  Greece  exclusive  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus, instead  of  limiting  it  to  the  Thessalian  home  of  the 
Myrmidons,  as  is  the  case  in  the  Iliad,  and  in  the  prominence  given  in 
the  Odyssey  to  Hermes,  who  takes  the  place  assigned  in  the  other 
poem  to  Iris. 

All  of  these  arguments  concern  scholars  rather  than  readers,  who 
will  demand  no  stronger  proof  than  their  own  feelings,  and  especially 
is  this  true  of  that  convenient  figment  of  the  imagination,  the  gen- 
eral reader  who  always  thinks  what  the  writer  tells  him  to  think. 
The  likeness  between  the  two  poems  is  probably  part  of  their  common 
possession  of  the  qualities  of  the  period  in  which  they  were  composed. 
In  both,  the  vivid  and  direct  representation  of  nature  is  a  striking 
merit.  Homer,  first  and  almost  alone,  has  seen  nature,  while  most  of 
his  successors  have  seen  it  with  eyes  dimmed  by  the  reading  of  books. 
It  is  in  the  comparisons  that  Homer  has  spoken  most  impressively. 
Some  of  these  are  of  the  utmost  simplicity:  "As  beautiful  as  an  im- 
mortal;" "he  fell  like  a  tower  in  the  raging  battle;"  "they  fought  like 
blazing  fire ;  "  "  they  were  as  numberless  as  the  sands  on  the  sea-shore 
or  the  leaves  in  the  forest,"  etc.,  etc.  Others  again  are  fuller  and 
more  complicated  ;  they  consist  not  of  the  single  image  that  strikes 
the  eye,  but  of  a  series,  or  of  several  distinct  parts  of  one  image  that 
are  combined  to  throw  light  on  some  human  action  or  feeling.  The 
Iliad  is  especially  rich  in  comparisons  of  this  kind  ;  many  of  them  are 
taken  from  hunting  adventures ;  others  from  various  familiar  scenes 
and  occupations.  Thus  the  many  accounts  of  battles  are  saved  from 
monotony  by  the  numerous  vivid  similes  :  thus,  Paris  shrinks  back 
like  the  traveler  before  the  snake  ;  Apollo  overthrows  the  wall  as  a 
boy  knocks  down  a  sand  fort;  one  hero  slips  behind  the  protecting 
shield  of  Ajax,  like  a  child  behind  his  mother;  Achilles,  when  he 
sees  Priam  in  his  tent,  stares  at  him  as  strangers  stare  at  a  fugitive 
murderer  ;  Ajax  gives  ground  before  the  Trojan  like  the  ass  retreating 
before  boys  with  sticks,  etc.,  etc. 

In  the  Odyssey  we  find  similes  of  a  more  refined  sort :  Penelope's 
tears  at  hearing  the  recital   of  her  husband's  woes  are   like  melting 


THE  SIMILES  OF  HOMER  — ETHICAL    QUALITIES.  121 

snow,  and  when  the  two  meet,  they  embrace  like  shipwrecked  per- 
sons who  have  escaped  death ;  and  when  Odysseus  reaches  the 
land  of  the  Phaeacians,  "  as  when  children  are  watching  the  pre- 
cious life  of  a  father,  who  lies  sick,  in  pain,  slowly  fading  away 
—  for  some  baneful  power  attacks  him — and  the  gods  free  from 
peril  the  man  who  is  thus  loved  ;  so  precious  appeared  to  Odys- 
seus the  land  and  the  trees."  One  sees  the  advance  from  direct 
vision  to  reflection  in  comparing  the  similes  of  the  Odyssey  with 
those  of  the  Iliad.  Homer's  use  of  epithets  also  attracts  the  reader's 
attention;  almost  every  noun  has  its  descriptive  adjective;  the  sea  is 
continually  wide ;  the  sword,  sharp ;  the  lance,  long ;  these  are  the 
simplest  epithets.  The  yoke-carrying  steers,  the  never-resting  sun, 
the  silver-buckled  sword,  indicate  more  careful  thought.  The  abundance 
of  epithets  that  marks  the  poems  is  but  one  of  many  indications  of 
the  tireless  ingenuity  of  the  Greeks  and  of  the  many-sidedness  of  their 
minds.  The  same  keen  love  of  clearness  that  enriched  their  syntax  is 
seen  here  in  the  simpler  enumeration  of  the  various  sides  of  different 
objects ;  the  profusion  of  qualities  that  caught  their  attention  proves 
the  susceptibility  of  their  perceptions,  while  the  avoidance  of  mere 
mechanical  repetition  and  the  agreeable  variety  bear  witness  to  the 
sensitiveness  of  their  taste.  The  astounding  brilliancy  of  the  Greeks 
is  here,  as  it  were,  in  the  bud,  and  we  find  it  fascinated  by  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  world  in  its  newness,  before  literature  had  left  its  trail  of 
associations  over  the  whole  face  of  nature. 

The  moral  world  was  known,  however,  more  fully  than  the  physical 
world,  and  the  ancients  drew  from  the  Homeric  poems  profound 
moral  instruction.  They  perceived  the  praise  given  to  love  of  home, 
of  family,  to  bravery  and  persistence,  and  drew  from  it  courage  and. 
inspiration.  Every  accurate  portrait  of  an  individual  abounds  with 
moral  lessons,  because  no  man  lives  who  is  not  in  some  ethical  relation 
with  his  kind  at  every  step.  Every  act  of  his  concerns  his  neighbor 
as  truly  as  it  concerns  himself ;  his  inaction  is  equally  far-reaching, 
and  no  portrait  can  be  drawn  of  him  that  shall  not  be  full  of  moral 
teaching,  however  little  this  may  be  intended  by  the  author.  It  is  as 
impossible  to  escape  this  eternal  necessity  as  it  is  to  paint  with  the 
brush  or  to  describe  with  the  pen  a  man  not  in  relation  with  the  physical 
laws  of  the  universe.  In  both  tasks  the  final  test  is  the  truth  with 
which  the  work  is  done,  and  the  impressiveness  of  the  lesson  depends 
far  more  on  the  way  in  which  the  characters  and  incidents  are  repre- 
sented than  on  the  energy  with  which  the  moral  is  urged.  No  book, 
for  instance,  is  so  full  of  profitable  instruction  as  is  life  itself,  yet  the 
lessons  of  experience  are  not  directly  didactic,  and  the  literature  that 
avoids  the  inculcation  of  moral  lessons  has  more  influence  than  that 


122  EPICS  IN  GENERAL. 

which  rests  on  the  supposition  that  teaching  is  necessary.  It  is  the 
same  error  that  is  made  by  writers  who  seem  to  think  that  by 
endowing  their  characters  with  more  than  human  qualities  and  by 
accumulating  impossible  incidents,  they  will  surely  attain  impressive- 
ness.  But,  after  all,  what  is  more  impressive,  more  solemn,  as  well  as 
more  instructive  than  life? 

Homer,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  early  Greeks,  can  not  be 
convicted  of  such  a  mistake.  The  same  objection  to  impossibilities 
that  characterized  their  religious  feelings  and  kept  their  ideas  of  their 
gods  within  what  we  may  call  finite  limits,  also  found  expression  in 
their  art  and  literature.  Formlessness  and  lack  of  bounds  had  no 
charm  for  them,  indeed  such  qualities  were  something  they  could  not 
conceive,  or  at  least  contemplate  with  any  thing  like  satisfaction. 
Homer  eschewed  exaggeration  and  impossibility;  here  at  least  he  is 
thoroughly  secure  from  attack.  The  wealth  of  the  material  that  he 
emploj'^ed  is  less  surprising  than  his  unfailing  artistic  sense  which 
knew  only  what  was  true.  In  both  respects  Shakspere  is  his  only 
rival  in  the  literature  of  the  whole  world.  Nowhere  else  do  we  find 
the  thorough  and  sympathetic  comprehension  of  the  human  heart  that 
marks  these  two  great  poets.  Homer  tells  his  story  by  representing 
the  determining  causes  within  the  minds  of  men,  by  disclosing  the 
secret  springs  within  the  hearts  of  his  characters.  And  since  he  does 
this  with  unequaled  psychological  knowledge,  the  rivalry  of  those 
successors  who  have  accumulated  external  incidents  without  real 
analysis  leaves  him  untouched.  What  might  be  hastily  judged  to  be 
a  tale  of  slaughter  is  a  deep  study  of  human  passions ;  the  adventures 
of  Odysseus  become  in  Homer's  hands  profound  pictures  of  the 
many-sidedness  of  human  life:  he  teaches  great  lessons  without 
preaching,  and  the  lessons,  too,  that  every  generation  has  to  learn 
anew  for  itself.     This  quality  is  what  gives  him  his  eternal  value. 

It  is  a  value,  it  must  also  be  remembered,  that  is  very  different  from  the 
quality  of  childishness  that  is  sometimes  ascribed  to  Homer.  Because 
we  find  a  frequent  repetition  of  conventional  epithets  after  a  fashion 
that  seems  to  betoken  simplicity,  it  is  affirmed  that  we  have  in  him 
the  poet  of  an  infantile  period.  But  the  remark  is  perhaps  mislead- 
ing, for  the  very  conventionality  of  the  epithets  indicates  an  antiquity 
of  petrifying  custom,  and  is  further  contradicted  by  the  ripeness  of 
reflection  and  observation  to  be  met  with  on  every  page.  The  ethical 
ripeness  of  the  poems  is  in  no  way  childlike ;  the  conditions  of  the 
civilization  are  those  of  comparative  immaturity  in  contrast  with  the 
later  growth  of  Greece  and  of  modern  times,  but  they  indicate  a  long 
and  important  past,  in  which  the  great  facts  of  life  have  appeared  as 
solemn  and  important  as  they  do  now.     If  Homer  were  merely  child- 


THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS.  123 

like,  he  would  be  read  only  in  the  nursery;  and  while  many  of  the 
circumstances  that  he  describes  find  in  the  young  their  heartiest 
admirers,  his  wisdom  delights  all,  and  it  is  a  wisdom  derived  only 
from  experience.  The  effort  to  attain  it  by  artifice  has  never  yet 
succeeded,  any  more  than  has  the  attempt  to  draw  ideal  scenes 
that  shall  be  greater  than  those  he  knew.  Yet,  as  we  saw,  his  truth- 
fulness once  seemed  ideal  to  his  imitators  as  it  now  does  to  some  of 
his  admirers. 

II.— THE   HOMERIC    HYMNS. 

Besides  the  two  great  epics  that  are  ascribed  to  Homer,  there  are 
other  m-uch  shorter  poems  which  bear  his  name,  being  attached  to  it 
probably  by  the  same  attraction  that  ascribes  all  sbrts  of  old  and  new 
jests  to  prominent  wits.  These  consist  of  a  collection  of  hymns  and 
of  a  few  shorter  poems  which  have  survived  the  destruction  that  has 
fallen  on  a  number  that  were  known  to  antiquity.  It  is  a  mere  form 
to  call  any  of  these  poems  Homer's,  even  on  the  supposition  that  a 
man  of  that  name  wrote  both  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  or  either  of 
them  ;  they  belong  to  different  writers  and  are  of  very  unequal  merit. 
Their  age  is  uncertain,  but  it  is  evident  that  they  belong  to  a  later 
period  than  the  epics.  The  hymns  are  of  the  nature  of  introductory 
innovations  composed  for  recitations  at  great  meetings  of  the  populace, 
when  the  bards  sang  in  rivalry,  or  at  the  opening  of  religious  feasts. 
They  were  not  liturgical  compositions,  but  rather  expressions  of  the 
fortunate  Hellenic  combination  of  literature  and  religion.  The  gods 
are  sung  by  the  bard :  Apollo,  and  Aphrodite  at  the  greatest  length, 
and  more  briefly  Ares,  Artemis,  Athene,  Here,  Demeter,  Hercules, 
Asklepios,  the  sons  of  Zeus,  Castor  and  Polydeuces,  Pan,  Zeus, 
Hestia  (the  Latin  Vesta),  the  Muses,  Helios  and  Selene.  Some 
of  the  short  hymns  are  simply  a  brief  address  to  the  gods,  with 
some  description  of  the  divinity,  mention  of  his  genealogy,  or  praise 
of  his  deeds  and  qualities.  The  longer  ones,  to  Pan  and  Dionysos,  are 
among  the  noteworthy  ones,  but  the  longest,  to  Apollo,  Hermes, 
Aphrodite  and  Demeter, are  the  most  important.  The  one  to  Apollo, 
in  which  scholars  have  detected  the  combination  of  two  separate 
hymns,  bears  the  mark  of  literary  mannerism  in  the  conduct  of  the 
various  subjects  of  which  it  treats.  The  first  part  contains  an  account 
of  the  god's  birth,  and  of  the  establishment  of  worship  on  the  island 
of  Delos ;  the  other  part, or,  more  properly,  the  other  hymn,  narrates 
Apollo's  establishment  of  the  Delphian  sanctuary  and  oracle,  a  fact 
that  gave  it  more  credit  than  its  literary  merit  deserves.  The  hymn 
to   Hermes    reads   like    any  thing  but   a   devotional   utterance,   and 


124  THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 

the  pranks  of  the  mischievous  young  deity  are  recounted  with  an 
approving  amusement  that  knows  nothing  of  reverence.  Nothing  can 
be  imagined  further  from  the  modern  feeling  than  the  apparent  inti- 
macy with  the  gods  that   fills  these  hymns.     The  simplicity  of  the 


APOLLO-KALLINIKOS. 


writer  is  far  removed  from  ribaldry  as  we  see  it  in  the  blasphemies  of, 
for  example,  those  French  writers  of  the  last  century  who  turned  the 
Bible  to  ridicule  ;  it  seems  like  sheer  light-heartedness  that  inspires  the 
poet.  Indeed  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  suppose  that  it  is  a  serious 
expression  of  religious  feeling,  if  we  remember  the  difference  between 
the  emotions  that  this  subject  produces  in  us  moderns  and  those  that 


ORIGIN   OF    THE   MYTHS ;  SURVIVAL  OF  A    CRUDE   AGE.         125 

appeared  at  all  times  among  the  Greeks.  With  us  these  are  full  of  a 
reverential  awe  which  is  in  good  measure  the  result  of  Semitic  influ- 
ences,  while  in  the  Greeks  we  continually  observe  a  jocund  compan- 
ionship with  their  various  deities,  whose  escapades  are  narrated  with 
unwearying  delight  and  amusement,  with  no  consciousness  of  irrev- 
erence or  disrespect.  Obviously  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  sheer 
love  of  scandal  could  have  contributed  to  the  formation  of  a  mythol- 
ogy of  this  sort ;  it  is  fairer  to  suppose  that  these  legends  grew  up  in 
a  state  of  society  in  which  the  occurrences  did  not  arouse  any  other 
feeling  than  one  of  admiration  for  the  craft  or  ability  that  they  dis- 
played ;  they  thus  prove  that  they  grew  into  shape  in  a  barbaric  time, 
as  the  existence  of  a  flint  arrowhead  proves  that  the  metals  were  not 
commonly  used  at  the  time  of  its  manufacture.  In  the  cunning  of 
Odysseus  we  see  a  survival  of  the  admiration  for  an  ingenious  hero, 
just  as  some  qualities  of  Achilles  represent  an  early  savageness  —  in 
neither  case  was  there  any  desire  to  ridicule  a  hero — and  the  mythol- 
ogy is  full  of  similar  relics  of  the  past.  Hence  it  is  possibly  more 
than  likely  —  if  one  may  speak  of  the  unknown  with  even  such  posi- 
tiveness  —  that  this  hymn  to  Hermes  is  a  fair  representation  of  an 
immoral  period  when  the  pranks  of  a  deity  were  legitimate  objects  of 
admiration,  just  as  the  coarser  crimes  which  abound  in  the  mythology 
carried  with  them  in  early  days  no  imputation  on  the  excellence  of 
the  gods,  although  later  these  incidents  became  a  serious  stumbling- 
block.  They  are  in  fact  to  be  regarded  as  traces  of  the  anthropomor- 
phism of  a  savage  period,  when  successive  violence  and  brutality  were 
admired  qualities,  and  we  should  look  at  them  not  as  fanciful  inven- 
tions, but  as  crude  attempts  at  a  scientific  explanation  of  the  universe. 
What  survives  as  romance  existed  as  apparent  fact,  just  as  the  bows 
and  arrows  with  which  early  men  slew  their  enemies  and  secured  food 
are  now  the  toys  of  children  or  idlers.  Otherwise  it  is  hard  to  see  how 
the  myths  came  into  existence,  especially  when  we  reflect  upon  the 
difficulty  of  comprehending  the  invention  of  incidents  discordant  with 
current  beliefs  and  feelings,  and  the  universality  of  the  survival  in 
later  times  of  old  emotions  and  habits.  The  tender  conservatism  of 
religion  especially  preserves  these  memorials  of  antiquity,  as  is  shown 
by  the  late  usage  of  flint  implements  by  Jews  and  Romans,  by  the 
robes  of  priests  that  make  traditional  and  solemn  the  customary  garb 
of  the  time  when  they  were  introduced,  and  the  language  and  forms 
of  the  ritual.  Indeed,  a  frivolous  person  might  say  that  the  present 
impressive  attire  of  the  Faculty  of  Harvard  College  upon  days  of 
ceremony  is  the  only  known  instance  of  uninherited  formality. 

In  the  hymn  to  Aphrodite,  which  was  written  quite  late,  w^e  find  the 
story,  of  Aphrodite's  love   for  Anchises,  to  w^hom  she  bore  ^Eneas, 


126 


THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 


told  in  a  similar  way,  with  as  little  modern  religious  feeling  for  the 
Greek  divinities  as  we  find  in  Hawthorne's  "  Wonder-Book."  On 
the  other  hand,  the  hymn  to  Demeter  is  marked  by  a  more  serious 
tone.  The  subject,  the  rape  of  Persephone,  indeed,  required  it,  and 
the  poet  supplied  it.  The  references  to  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  lent 
solemnity  to  the  serious  cast  of  the  poem. 


APHRODITE   AND   ANCHISES. 


Two  mock-heroic  poems  were  also  ascribed  to  Homer  ;  one  of  these, 
which  Aristotle  believed  to  be  the  work  of  that  poet,  was  the  Margites, 
an  amusing  treatment  of  a  foolish  "  simple  Simon,"  whose  feats  are 
said  to  have  been  very  much  like  those  recounted  in  the  folk-lore  of 
many  nations.  Unfortunately  only  six  lines  of  the  poem  have  come 
down  to  us.  The  Batrachomyomachia,  or  the  Battle  of  the  Frogs  and 
Mice,  enjoyed  less  reputation  among  the  Greeks  than  among  the 
Romans,  who  were  ready  to  be  pleased  with  any  thing  that  came  to 
them  from  the  older  literature.  It  is  a  parody  of  the  epic  composi- 
tions, and  while  parodies  often  thrive  when  the  original  flourishes,  this 
statement   is  especially  true  of   periods  when   any  form  of  composi- 


QUALITY  OF  THE   POEMS  —  PARODIES  OF   THE  EPICS.  127 

tion  is  the  exclusive  possession  of  a  single  class,  and  the  Greek  epic 
was  the  property  of  the  whole  people.  Doubtless  the  poem  was  a 
parody  of  the  attempts  made  in  an  uncongenial  time  to  continue  or 
to  revive  the  outgrown  epic.  The  artificial  humour  of  the  pom- 
pous names  of  the  heroes,  for  instance,  leaves  the  Homeric  poems 
untouched.  Yet  the  parody,  unamusing  as  it  is,  has  been  frequently 
imitated  in  later  times,  and  has  done  service  to  modern  literature  by 
justifying  a  certain  amount  of  frivolity  by  means  of  an  Homeric 
precedent.  The  handful  of  short  poems  that  have  been  ascribed 
to  the  same  writer  belong  to  uncertain  poets  of  an  early  period, 
who  made  use  of  the  hexameter  as  the  only  possible  form  of  poetical 
expression.  The  epic  machinery  controlled  even  the  lyric  verse. 
Thus  the  one  called,  "  Cuma.  Refusing  his  ofTer  to  eternize  their 
state,  though  brought  thither  by  the  Muses  "  may  easily  be  supposed 
to  be  the  work  of  some  later  poet  who  had  heard  the  old  tradition. 

EXTRACTS   FROM   THE    MINOR   HOMERIC   POEMS. 

HI. 

To  what  fate  hath  Father  Jove  given  o'er 

My  friendless  life,  born  ever  to  be  poor  ! 

While  in  my  infant  state  he  pleas'd  to  save  me, 

Milk  on  my  reverend  mother's  knees  he  gave  me, 

In  delicate  and  curious  nursery ; 

yEolian  Smyrna,  seated  near  the  sea, 

(Of  glorious  empire,  and  whose  bright  sides 

Sacred  Meletus'  silveK  current  glides,) 

Being  native  seat  to  me.     Which,  in  the  force 

Of  far-past  time,  the  breakers  of  wild  horse, 

Phriconia's  noble  nation,  girt  with  tow'rs ; 

Whose  youth  in  fight  put  on  with  fiery  povv'rs. 

From  hence,  the  Muse-maids,  Jove's  illustrious  Seed, 

Impelling  me,  I  made  impetuous  speed. 

And  went  with  them  to  Cuma,  with  intent 

T'  eternize  all  the  sacred  continent 

And  state  of  Cuma.     They,  in  proud  ascent 

From  off  their  bench,  refus'd  with  usage  fierce 

The  sacred  voice  which  I  aver  is  verse. 

Their  follies,  yet,  and  madness  borne  by  me. 

Shall  by  some  pow'r  be  thought  on  futurely. 

To  wreak  of  him  whoever,  whose  tongue  sought 

With  false  impair  my  fall.     What  fate  God  brought 

Upon  my  birth  I'll  bear  with  any  pain. 

But  undeserv'd  defame  unfelt  sustain. 

Nor  feels  my  person  (dear  to  me  though  poor) 

Any  great  lust  to  linger  any  more 

In  Cuma's  holy  highways  ;  but  my  mind 

(No  thought  impair'd,  for  cares  of  any  kind 

Borne  in  my  body)  rather  vows  to  try 

The  influence  of  any  other  sky. 

And  spirits  of  people  bred  in  any  land 

Of  ne'er  so  slender  and  obscure  command. 


128  THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 


FROM   THE   BATRACHOMYOMACHIA. 

Ent'ring  the  fields,  first  let  my  vows  call  on 

The  Muses'  whole  quire  out  of  Helicon 

Into  my  heart,  for  such  a  poem's  sake, 

As  lately  I  did  in  my  tables  take, 

And  put  into  report  upon  my  knees, 

A  fight  so  fierce  as  might  in  all  degrees 

Fit  Mars  himself  and  his  tumultuous  hand. 

Glorying  to  dart  to  th'  ears  of  every  land 

Of  all  the  voice-divided  ;  and  to  show 

How  bravely  did  both  Frogs  and  Mice  bestow 

In  glorious  fight  their  forces,  even  the  deeds 

Daring  to  imitate  of  Earth's  Giant  Seeds. 

Thus  then  men  talk'd  ;  this  seed  the  strife  begat : 

The  Mouse  once  dry,  and  'scaped  the  dangerous  cat, 

Drench'd  in  the  neighbour  lake  her  tender  beard. 

To  taste  the  sweetness  of  the  wave  it  rear'd. 

The  far-famed  Fen-affecter,  seeing  him,  said  : 

"  Ho,  stranger  !   What  are  you,  and  whence,  that  tread 

This  shore  of  ours  ?     Who  brought  you  forth  ?     Reply 

What  truth  may  witness,  lest  I  find  you  lie. 

If  worth  fruition  of  my  love  and  me, 

I'll  have  thee  home,  and  hospitality 

Of  feast  and  gift,  good  and  magnificent, 

Bestow  on  thee  ;  for  all  this  confluent 

Resounds  my  royalty  ;  my  name,  the  great 

In  blown-up  count'nances  and  looks  of  threat, 

Physignathus,  adored  of  all  Frogs  here 

All  their  days'  durance,  and  the  empire  bear 

Of  all  their  beings  ;  mine  own  being  begot 

By  royal  Peleus,  mix'd  in  nuptial  knot 

With  fair  Hydromedusa,  on  the  bounds 

Near  which  Eridanus  his  race  resounds. 

And  thee  mine  eye  makes  my  conceit  inclined 

To  reckon  powerful  both  in  form  and  mind, 

A  sceptre-bearer,  and  past  others  far 

Advanc'd  in  all  the  fiery  fights  of  war. 

Come  then,  thy  race  to  my  renown  commend." 

The  Mouse  made  answer  :  "  Why  inquires  my  friend  } 

For  what  so  well  know  rnen  and  Deities, 

Arid  all  the  wing'd  af^ecters  of  the  skies  ? 

Psicharpax  I  am  call'd  ;  Troxartes'  seed, 

Surnamed  the  Mighty-minded.     She  that  freed 

Mine  eyes  from  darkness  was  Lichomyle, 

King  Pternotroctes'  daughter,  showing  me, 

Within  an  aged  hovel,  the  young  light. 

Fed  me  with  figs  and  nuts,  and  all  the  height 

Of  varied  viands.     But  unfold  the  cause. 

Why,  'gainst  similitude's  most  equal  laws 

Observed  in  friendship,  thou  mak'st  me  thy  friend  } 

Thy  life  the  waters  only  help  t'  extend  ; 

Mine,  whatsoever  men  are  used  to  eat. 

Takes  part  with  them  at  shore ;  their  purest  cheat. 

Thrice  boulted,  kneaded,  and  subdued  in  paste. 

In  clean  round  kymnels,  cannot  be  so  fast 

From  my  approaches  kept  but  in  I  eat ; 

Nor  cheesecakes  full  of  finest  Indian  wheat, 


BA  TRA  CHOM  YOMA  CHI  A .  129 

That  crusty-weeds  wear,  large  as  ladies'  trains  ; 

Liverings,  white-skinn'd  as  ladies  ;  nor  the  strains 

Of  press'd  milk,  renneted  ;  nor  collops  cut 

Fresh  from  the  flitch  ;  nor  junkets,  such  as  put 

Palates  divine  in  appetite  ;  nor  any 

Of  all  men's  delicates,  though  ne'er  so  many 

Their  cooks  devise  them,  who  each  dish  see  deckt 

With  all  the  dainties  all  strange  soils  affect. 

Yet  am  I  not  so  sensual  to  fly 

Of  fields  embattled  the  most  fiery  crj% 

But  rush  out  straight,  and  with  the  first  in  fight 

Mix  in  adventure.     No  man  with  affright 

Can  daunt  my  forces,  though  his  body  be 

Of  never  so  immense  a  quantity, 

But  making  up,  even  to  his  bed,  access, 

His  fingers'  ends  dare  with  my  teeth  compress. 

His  feet  taint  likewise,  and  so  soft  seize  both 

They  shall  not  taste  th'  impression  of  a  tooth. 

Sweet  sleep  shall  hold  his  own  in  every  eye 

Where  my  tooth  take  his  tartest  liberty. 

But  two  there  are,  that  always,  far  and  near. 

Extremely  still  control  my  force  with  fear, 

The  Cat,  and  Night-hawk,  who  much  scathe  confer 

On  all  the  outways  where  for  food  I  err. 

Together  with  the  straits-still-keeping  trap. 

Where  lurks  deceitful  and  set-spleen'd  mishap. 

But  most  of  all  the  Cat  constrains  my  fear, 

Being  ever  apt  t'assault  me  everywhere  ; 

For  by  that  hole  that  hope  says  I  shall  'scape. 

At  that  hole  ever  she  commits  my  rape. 

The  best  is  yet,  I  eat  no  pot-herb  grass, 

Nor  radishes,  nor  coloquintidas. 

Nor  still-green  beets,  nor  parsley  :  which  you  make 

Your  dainties  still,  that  live  upon  the  lake." 

The  Frog  replied  :  "  Stranger,  your  boasts  creep  all 

Upon  their  bellies  ;  though  to  our  lives  fall 

Much  more  miraculous  meats  by  lake  and  land, 

Jove  tend'ring  our  lives  with  a  twofold  hand. 

Enabling  us  to  leap  ashore  for  food. 

And  hide  us  straight  in  our  retreatful  flood. 

Which,  if  you  will  serve,  you  may  prove  with  ease. 

I'll  take  you  on  my  shoulders,  which  fast  seize, 

If  safe  arrival  at  my  house  y'  intend." 

He  stoop'd,  and  thither  spritely  did  ascend. 

Clasping  his  golden  neck,  that  easy  seat 

Gave  to  his  sally,  who  was  jocund  yet. 

Seeing  the  safe  harbours  of  the  king  so  near, 

And  he  a  swimmer  so  exempt  from  peer. 

But  when  he  sunk  into  the  purple  wave. 

He  mourn 'd  extremely,  and  did  much  deprave 

Unprofitable  penitence  ;  his  hair 

Tore  by  the  roots  up,  labour'd  for  the  air 

With  his  feet  fetch'd  up  to  his  belly  close  ; 

His  heart  within  him  panted  out  repose. 

For  th'  insolent  plight  in  which  his  state  did  stand; 

Sighed  bitterly,  and  long'd  to  greet  the  land. 

Forced  by  the  dire  need  of  his  freezing  fear. 

First,  on  the  waters  he  his  tail  did  steer. 

Like  to  a  stern  ;  then  drew  it  like  an  oar. 

Still  praying  the  gods  to  set  him  safe  ashore  ; 


13°  THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 

Yet  sunk  he  midst  the  red  waves  more  and  more, 

And  laid  a  throat  out  to  his  utmost  height, 

Yet  in  forced  speech  he  made  his  peril  shght. 

And  thus  his  glory  with  his  grievance  strove  : 

"  Not  in  such  choice  state  was  the  charge  of  love 

Borne  by  the  bull,  when  to  the  Cretan  shore 

He  swum  Europa  through  the  wavy  roar, 

As  this  Frog  ferries  me,  his  pallid  breast 

Bravely  advancing,  and  his  verdant  crest 

(Submitted  to  my  seat)  made  my  support. 

Through  his  white  waters,  to  his  royal  court." 

But  on  the  sudden  did  appearance  make 

An  horrid  spectacle, — a  Water-snake 

Thrusting  his  freckled  neck  above  the  lake. 

Which  seen  to  both,  away  Physignathus 

Dived  to  his  deeps,  as  no  way  conscious 

Of  whom  he  left  to  perish  in  his  lake. 

But  shunn'd  black  fate  himself,  and  let  him  take 

The  blackest  of  it ;  who  amidst  the  fen 

Swum  with  his  breast  up,  hands  held  up  in  vain, 

Cried  Peepe,  and  perish 'd  ;  sunk  the  waters  oft. 

And  often  with  his  sprawlings  came  aloft. 

Yet  no  way  kept  down  death's  relentless  force, 

But,  full  of  water,  made  an  heavy  corse. 

Before  he  perish'd  yet,  he  threaten 'd  thus  : 

"  Thou  lurk'st  not  yet  from  Heaven,  Physignathus, 

Though  yet  thou  hid'st  here,  that  hast  cast  from  thee. 

As  from  a  rock,  the  shipwrack'd  life  of  me, 

Though  thou  thyself  no  better  was  than  I, 

O  worst  of  things,  at  any  faculty, 

Wrastling  or  race.     But,  for  thy  perfidy 

In  this  my  wrack,  Jove  bears  a  wreakful  eye ; 

And  to  the  host  of  Mice  thou  pains  shalt  pay, 

Past  all  evasion."     This  his  life  let  say, 

And  left  him  to  the  waters. 


And  first  Hypsiboas  Lichenor  wounded. 
Standing  th'  impression  of  the  first  in  fight. 
His  lance  did  in  his  liver's  midst  alight. 
Along  his  belly.     Down  he  fell ;  his  face 
His  fall  on  that  part  sway'd,  and  all  the  grace 
Of  his  soft  hairfiird  with  disgraceful  dust. 
Then  Troglodytes  his  thick  javelin  thrust 
In  Pelion's  bosom,  bearing  him  to  ground, 
Whom  sad  death  seized  ;  his  soul  flew  through  his  wound. 
Seutlaeus  next  Embasichytros  slew. 
His  heart  through-thrusting.     Then  Artophagus  threw 
His  lance  at  Polyphon,  and  struck  him  quite 
Through  his  mid-belly  ;  down  he  fell  upright. 
And  from  his  fair  limbs  took  his  soul  her  flight. 
Limnocharis,  beholding  Polyphon 
Thus  done  to  death,  did,  with  as  round  a  stone 
As  that  the  mill  turns,  Troglodytes  wound. 
Near  his  mid-neck,  ere  he  his  onset  found  ; 
Whose  eyes  sad  darkness  seized.     Lichenor  cast 
A  flying  dart  off,  and  his  aim  so  placed 
Upon  Limnocharis,  that  sure  he  thought 
The  wound  he  wish'd  him  ;  nor  untruly  wrought 
The  dire  success ;  for  through  his  liver  flew 


ORIGIN  OF    THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 


131 


The  fatal  lance  ;  which  when  Crambophagus  knew 
Down  the  deep  waves  near  shore  he,  diving-,  fled, 
But  fled  not  fate  so  ;  the  stern  enemy  fed 
Death  with  his  life  in  diving  ;  never  more 
The  air  he  drew  in  ;  his  vermilion  gore 
Stain'd  all  the  waters,  and  along  the  shore 
He  laid  extended. 


IV. 


While  the  genuineness  of  these  minor  poems  was  even  in  ancient 
times  frequently  doubted  or  denied,  it  was  yet  held  that  they  were 
probably  the  work  of  the  Homerides  or  successors  of  Homer.  At 
present  any  absolute  statement  concerning  their  origin  would  be 
shunned  by  the  prudent,  except  perhaps  that  they  belong  to  a  later 
age,  a  statement  that  does  not  err  on  the  side  of  positiveness, 
because  it  is  difficult  to  say  just  what  the  Homeric  age  was.  As  we 
shall  soon  see,  they  have  for  the  most  part  but  little  in  common  with 
the  poetry  of  Hesiod,  and  the  same  thing  is  true  of  what  are  called 
the  cyclic  poets,  whose  work  has  only  come 
down  to  us  in  fragments ;  indeed,  only  about 
sixty  lines  remain  of  all  their  epics. 

It  is  apparent  that  any  discussion  of  these 
epics  is,  to  a  great  extent,  work  in  the  dark. 
At  one  time  it  was.  held  that  a  number  of 
poets  banded  together  for  the  purpose  of,  as 
it  were,  engrossing  the  mythical  history  of 
Greece  in  a  series  of  epics  which  should  cover 
the  whole  ground  without  repetition,  but  this 
view,  according  to  which  epic  poetry  was 
catalogued  before  it  was  written,  is  now  gener- 
ally abandoned,  for  it  has  been  discovered  that 
the  authors  observed  no  such  conditions  as 
the  arrangement  implies,  and  men  have  become 
aware  that  in  no  conditions  that  can  be  con- 
ceived will  poets  agree  to  divide  their  Avork  in 
this  mechanical  way.  We  may  assume  that 
even  inferior  epic  poems  are  not  written  by  the 
job.  These  epics  were,  first,  the  Cypria,  which 
was  at  an  early  period  ascribed  to  ^om&x,^T,,,  so-cafe^^^vllus  0/ muo.-) 
though   this    was   subsequently  denied.     How 

the  poem  got  this  title  is  not  clear ;  it  has  been  suggested  that  its 
author  may  have  come  from  Cyprus  or  else  that  it  sang  mainly  of 
Aphrodite,  the  Cyprian  goddess.  Whatever  the  reason  may  have 
been,  the  poem  recounted  a  great   many  myths,  and   told  the  story 


132 


THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 


>»> 

ft  > 

ft  en 


of  the  Trojan  war  from  its 
remote  causes  up  to  the 
tenth  year  of  its  history. 
Second,  the  ^thiopis,  by 
Arctinus  of  Miletus,  who  is 
supposed  to  have  lived  at 
about  the  time  of  the  first 
Olympiad  (776  B.  c).  It  cov- 
ered the  ground  between 
the  death  of  Hector  and  that 
of  Achilles,  treating  of  the 
advent  of  the  Amazons  and 
Ethiopians  in  aid  of  Troy. 
The  poem  ended  with  the 
struggle  for  the  possession 
of  the  arms  of  Achilles  and 
the  suicide  of  Ajax.  Third, 
the  Little  Iliad,  by  Lesches, 
a  Lesbian  (about  Ol.  30), 
carried  the  recital  down  to 
the  fall  of  Troy.  Fourth, 
the  Nostoi,  in  five  books  by 
Agias  of  Trazen,  described 
the  homeward  journeys  of 
the  heroes,  except  of  course 
Odysseus.  Fifth,  the  Tele- 
eonia  dealt  with  the  adven- 
tures  of  Odysseus,  Tele- 
machus,  and  of  Telegonus, 
son  of  Odysseus  and  Circe. 
The  poem  opened  with  the 
burial  of  the  suitors ;  Odys- 
seus offers  sacrifices  to  the 
nymphs  and  then  sails  away 
to  Elis,  to  look  after  his 
herds,  and  is  hospitably  re- 
ceived by  Polyxenus,  who,  at 
parting,  gives  him  a  large 
drinking-cup  on  which  are 
represented  the  adventures 
of  Trophonius,  Agamedes 
and  Augeas.    After  returning 


134  THE  HOMERIC  HYMNS. 

to  Ithaca  he  performs  the  sacrifices  commanded  by  Teiresias,  and 
still  following  that  prophet's  commands,  goes  to  the  Thesprotians, 
and  marries  their  queen,  Callidice.  As  king  of  the  Thesprotians 
he  wages  war  with  the  Thracians,  but  Ares,  their  national  god, 
protects  and  defeats  Odysseus.  Callidice  dies,  and,  the  kingdom 
descending  to  Polypoites,  her  son  by  Odysseus,  the  old  Greek 
hero  returns  to  Ithaca.  Meanwhile  Calypso  has  sent  Telegonos 
— for  the  authorities  vary  as  to  whether  Calypso  or  Circe  was  his 
mother — to  seek  his  father.  He  lands  in  Ithaca,  and  as  he  is  wandering 
through  the  island  he  meets  Odysseus  without  recognizing  him,  and 
kills  him.  Telegonus  then  becomes  aware  of  his  error  and  carries  the 
corpse  to  his  mother,  as  well  as  Telemachus  and  Penelope  ;  she  makes 
both  the  survivors  immortal,  and  Telemachus  takes  Circe  for  his  wife, 
and  Telegonos  marries  Penelope. 

The  confusion  and  weakness  of  the  end  of  this  epic,  as  well  as  some 
of  the  earlier  incidents,  make  it  clear  that  the  author  drew  his  inspira- 
tion from  myths  that  had  grown  corrupt  with  time,  and  that  we  are 
far  removed  from  the  simplicity  of  the  Homeric  age.  All  of  these 
later  epic  poets  had  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  before  them  as  models, 
and  they  supplemented  what  had  been  omitted  by  the  older  poet,  with 
undoubted  zeal  but  with  less  original  fire.  Their  work  was  often 
admired  in  antiquity.  The  Sack  of  Troy,  for  instance,  by  Arctinus, 
which  contained  the  story  of  the  Trojan  horse  and  the  fate  of 
Laocoon,  was  closely  followed  by  Virgil  in  the  second  book  of  the 
^/Erteid  ;  and  other  epics,  such  as  the  Thebais,  furnished  a  vast  amount 
of  rnaterial  to  the  later  Greek  tragedians,  and  Ovid  made  liberal  use  of 
them  all  in  his  Metamorphoses.  But  of  all  these  poems  the  merest 
scraps  have  come  down  to  us,  only  enough  to  console  us  for  this  loss. 
If  one  could  fill  any  one  of  the  gaps  in  Greek  literature,  it  would  not 
be  the  cyclic  poems  that  would  be  called  for. 

While,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  these  epics  were  marked  by  the 
pallor  that  often  distinguishes  a  copy  from  the  original,  the  Homeric 
poems  abound  with  life.  Their  historic  value  cannot  be  determined, 
but  it  is  hard  to  conceive  that  they  should  not  reflect  an  actual  civili- 
zation either  existing  or  surviving  in  tradition,  because  otherwise  they 
would  have  had  no  meaning  to  those  who  first  listened  to  them.  In 
no  case  could  a  poet,  even  a  creative  poet,  as  those  men  are  called 
whose  intellectual  lineage  is  obscure,  have  wholly  invented  a  degree  of 
civilization  very  different  from  that  which  he  knew  from  legend  or  by 
experience.  For  one  thing,  the  words  would  not  have  existed  unless 
the  things  themselves  either  existed  or  had  existed.  Thus,  even  the 
most  original  genius  could  never  have  invented  castles,  for  instance, 
as  a  bit  of  poetical  scenery,  unless  he   had  seen   or  heard    of  actual 


LIMITATIONS  OF    THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY.  I35 

castles.  When  he  had  done  so,  he  might  have  decked  them  out  with 
extravagant  details,  such  as  fathomless  moats  and  cloud-hidden  tow- 
ers, but  the  mention  of  the  word  proves  the  existence  of  the  thing, 
for  the  imagination  is  closely  and  inevitably  tethered  to  facts.  When 
men  have  gone  astray,  as  in  the  Indian  epics,  it  has  been  only  in  the 
direction  of  magnifying  familiar  phenomena  that  they  have  erred; 
they  have  not  definitely  devised  anything  new.  The  properties  of 
various  objects  are  often  confused :  horses  fly  and  fish  speak,  but  more 
than  that  no  one  can  do.  To  expect  more  of  men  is  like  searching 
for  a  savage  who  uses  logarithms  or  has  invented  the  telephone. 
Moreover,  these  digressions  from  the  truth  may  be  instantly  detected, 
but  Homer  has  for  thousands  of  years  stood  this  test  not  only  with- 
out serious  loss,  but  with  ever  increasing  fame  for  vividness  and  accu- 
racy. That  Homer  had  ever  seen,  for  example,  doors  of  gold  and 
door-posts  of  silver  such  as  he  speaks  of  in  the  palace  of  Alcinous 
may  perhaps  be  doubted,  but  in  describing  this  unknown  land  he  only 
mentioned  something  that  he  had  seen  or  heard  of,  probably  the 
luxury  of  the  lonians,  with  ready  amplifications.  It  is  safe  to  extend 
the  inference  from  the  material  to  the  general  representation,  and  to 
believe  that  only  from  something  like  the  general  description  of  so- 
ciety could  the  poet  have  drawn  inspiration  for  his  account  of  the 
heroic  times  of  Greece.  This  view  especially  impresses  itself  upon 
the  reader  when  he  considers  how  prominent  are  the  qualities  that  the 
poet  celebrates  among  the  historical  Greeks,  as  well  as  the  corrobora- 
tion that  archaeological  investigation  gives  to  his  report. 

The  later  epics  belong  to  the  vanishing  heroic  period,  during  which 
the  early  civilization  was  transforming  itself  into  the  shape  in  which 
it  existed'  when  the  lyric  poetry  began  to  take  the  place  of  the  con- 
ventional epic.  With  advancing  culture  the  early  simplicity  disap- 
peared, yet  of  the  remote  past  we  have  other  remains. 


CHAPTER   v.— HESIOD. 

I. — All  Our  Positive  Information  about  This  Poet  Most  Vague — His  Boeotian  Origin  ; 
All  that  This  Implies  in  Comparison  with  the  Ionic  Civilization — The  Doric 
Severity  and  Conservatism — The  Devotion  to  Practical  Ends.  II. — The  Story  of 
Hesiod's  Life — His  "Works  and  Days"  Described. — Its  Thrifty  Advice  Com- 
bining Folk-lore  and  Farming. — The  "  Theogony,"  a  Manual  of  Old  Mythol- 
ogy— His  Other  Work — Its  General  Aridity. — Illustrative  Extracts. 

I. 

WHILE  the  Odyssey  portrays  a  tolerably  advanced  civilization  such 
as  we  find  repeated  in  the  most  flourishing  period  of  the  middle 
ages  and  in  some  eastern  countries,  we  find  Hesiod  describing  a  very 
different  state  of  things  in  a  very  different  way.  He,  too,  belongs  to 
a  remote  and  uncertain  time,  and  of  him  as  well  as  of  Homer  it  is 
certain  that  what  we  know  is  much  less  than  what  we  are  told,  and 
nothing  but  the  comparative  dullness  of  the  Hesiodic  poems  has  saved 
them  from  arousing  as  agitating  a  discussion  as  the  Homeric  poems 
have  done,  and  among  scholars  the  war  has  been  a  hot  one.  The 
absence  of  definite  and  trustworthy  information  has  had  the  usual 
result.  No  sooner  has  one  critic  fixed  him  securely  in  one  century 
than  a  more  critical  rival  has  followed  and  placed  him  a  century  or  two 
earlier  or  later,  so  that  Hesiod  swings  loose  between  the  very  indeter- 
minate period  to  which  Homer  is  said  to  have  belonged,  or  possibly  a 
century  later,  and  the  seventh  century  B.C.  At  some  time  in  this 
vague  age  were  written  the  poems  ascribed  to  Hesiod  ;  at  least,  the 
one  called  "Works  and  Days"  was  composed  then.  Hesiod  was  an 
vEolian  and  a  native  of  Boeotia,  a  part  of  Greece,  which  was  a  by-word 
for  the  dullness  and  stupidity  of  its  inhabitants.  The  soil  was  fertile, 
but  the  air  was  heavy  with  fogs,  and  those  who  anticipated  modern 
theories  by  crediting  the  atmosphere  with  a  direct  effect  upon  the 
intellect  found  in  the  mists  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  sluggish 
wits  of  the  Boeotians.  It  is  notorious  that  no  satisfactory  warrant  can 
be  found  for  many  of  these  local  prejudices  which  make  their  appear- 
ance in  all  countries  and  at  all  times,  and  are  generally  more  long 
lived  than  accurate.  In  the  Hesiodic  poems,  at  least,  we  see  very 
clearly  marked  the  differences  between  the  picturesque  life  of  the 
Ionic  race  with  its  foothold  in  Asia,  where  it  doubtless  met  and  pro- 


THE  LIFE  DESCRIBED   BY  HESIOD. 


137 


fited  by  older  civilizations,  and  the  Boeotian,  crowded  on  the  mainland, 
not  tempted  to  undertake  foreign  travel,  content  with  agricultural 
prosperity  and  proud  of  their  political  and  religious  conservatism. 
Obviously  the  conditions  in  which  they  lived  rendered  them  less  likely 
to  produce  poems  so  full  of  incident  and  varied  emotion  as  those  that 
the  Ionic  branch  produced.  The  Homeric  epics  bear  witness  to 
leisure  and  refinement  ;  the  Hesiodic  verse  is  rather  that  of  a  home- 


keeping,  hard-working  people,  with  a  great  deal  of  shrewd  sense  in 
worldly  matters  and  somewhat  rigid  faith  in  religion  ;  for  it  was  on 
the  mainland  that  priestcraft  established  itself  with  the  greatest 
formality.  The  Delphian  oracle  early  acquired  a  prominence  in  political 
as  well  as  religious  affairs.  Moreover,  the  political  conditions  were 
reflected  in  the  religions,  as  is  found  to  be  always  the  case  in  our 
study  of  history.  Thus  we  see  Christianity  forming  itself  into  an 
ecclesiastical  system  after  the  model  of  Roman  imperialism  ;  and  later, 
feudalism  appearing  in  the  church  as  well  as  in  society,  while  the 


138  HESIOD. 

Reformation  is  the  equivalent  in  religion  of  the  Renaissance.  It  may 
not  be  impossible  to  detect  a  contrast  between  the  different  ways  in 
which  the  lonians  and  Dorians  regarded  religious  questions  in  the 
literary  remains  of  the  two  races.  The  Homeric  poems,  as  we  have 
seen,  represented  the  gods  almost  as  allies  of  men ;  the  Dorians,  how- 
ever, appear  to  have  imagined  a  complicated  religious  system  bearing 
close  resemblance  to  their  political  condition.  Their  religion  was 
solemn  and  simple  ;  their  myths  were  not  preserved  almost  at  random, 
as  among  the  lonians,  they  were  worked  together  into  a  sort  of 
historic  relation  ;  they  were  assumed  to  refer  to  the  foundation  of 
some  lordly  house  or  to  belong  to  the  ritual  of  some  deity.  It  was 
here  that  what  might  be  called  a  theology  first  appeared,  and  religion 
became  an  important  part  of  civilization. 

The  contrast  between  the  life  portrayed  in  the  Homeric  poems  and 
that  which  Hesiod  narrated  rather  than  sang  is  most  vivid.  Homer 
describes  the  chiefs,  the  leaders  of  men,  possessed  of  all  heroic  quali- 
ties, while  Hesiod  busies  himself  with  the  humble  occupation  of  hard- 
worked  peasants  bound  together  in  simple  communities,  without  ideals 
or  indeed  any  other  thoughts  than  those  about  subsistence  and  a  few 
meagre  holidays.  The  difference,  as  it  is  further  portrayed,  in  reli- 
gion and  politics,  defines  the  distinct  social  conditions  of  the  main- 
land with  its  conservative,  undeveloped  maintenance  of  the  old  tradi- 
tions of  clan  life,  and  the  awakening  evolution  that  was  produced  by 
foreign  intercourse  and  varied  conditions.  Hesiod  describes  the  prose 
side,  as  we  may  call  it,  of  feudal  life ;  and  the  romantic  side  is  sung  by 
Homer,  who  saw  only  the  glory  and  bravery  of  the  leaders. 

In  the  cruder  civilization  the  older  forms  of  social  existence  were 
spreading  far  and  fastening  themselves  more  firmly  on  every  condition 
of  society.  The  rigidity  of  the  system  was  making  itself  deeply  felt. 
Young  and  old  were  closely  bound  together  for  the  discharge  of  po- 
litical and  military  duties.  Everywhere  there  was  evidence  of  rigid 
training,  which  was  based  mainly  on  military  gymnastics  and  on  music 
of  an  orchestral  kind.  The  main  point,  however,  was  the  close  union 
of  people  of  all  ages :  it  was,  to  use  modern  forms  of  expression,  col- 
lectivism that  prevailed  among  them  rather  than  individualism,  which 
is  always  a  later  growth.  Their  religious  feelings  had  the  solemnity 
of  their  political  system ;  even  at  the  present  day  we  see  it  in  the 
simple  majesty  of  their  temples.  This  seriousness  showed  itself  again 
in  their  language,  which  was  marked  by  brevity  and  concision.  It 
was  not  the  charm  of  life  that  fascinated  them,  their  attention  was 
confined  rather  to  social  and  political  duties.  Obviously,  in  a  race 
like  this,  literature  flourishes  less  than  among  an  active  people  at- 
tracted in  a  thousand  directions  by  the  manifold  charm  of  life.  Indeed, 


SOCIAL    CONDITION   OF  THE  DORIANS.  139 

it  may  almost  be  affirmed  that  it  is  when  the  individual  most  keenly 
feels  his  rights  and  powers,  that  letters  are  most  brilliant.  The  /Eo- 
lians,  of  which  the  Dorians  were  in  early  times  a  single  branch,  pos- 
sessed many  of  the  qualities  which  culminated  among  that  race  and 
some  of  those  of  the  lonians.  The  most  important  divisions  of  the 
vEolians  were  the  Boeotians,  Thessalians,  Elaeans  and  the  Lesbians,  and 
in  them  all  is  to  be  noticed  a  curious  indifference  to  the  intellectual  life 


GYMNASTIC   EXERCISES. 


in  the  rest  of  the  Greeks.  Their  early  aristocratic  regimen  survived 
long  especially  among  the  Boeotians  and  Thessalians,  and  only  the 
nobility  preserved  the  training  which  was  widespread  among  the 
Dorians.  The  lower  classes  were  kept  in  degradation.  In  the 
poems  of  Hesiod,  however,  we  find  the  simplicity  of  the  Dorian  reli- 
gion rather  than  the  later  degeneration  of  the  vEolians.  Many  poems 
are  indeed  the  earliest  memorials  of  the  hieratic  poetry  which  had 
grown  up  in  the  contemplation  of  religious  questions.  In  the 
Homeric  poems  the  gods  are  accepted  as  part  of  the  order  of  things 
with  unquestioning  simplicity,  but  there  is  a  difference  here  which  was 


14°  HESIOD. 

also  expressed  in  the  profounder  political  interests  of  the  people,  and 
there  was  demanded  an  explanation  that  should  satisfy  a  thoughtful 
people.  The  very  different  social  conditions  brought  forth  answers 
unlike  those  that  we  find  expressed  or  implied  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
and  probably  such  as  had  grown  up  in  a  distant  antiquity.  It  is  very 
clear  that  the  Hesiodic  poems  contain  collections  from  remote  periods 
and  possibly  distant  lands,  such  as  could  only  have  been  gradually 
accumulated.  To  the  ancients  they  were  a  storehouse  of  instructive 
legends  concerning  nature  and  religion  ;  a  worldly  interest  was  given 
them  by  the  genealogies  of  lordly  houses,  and  by  the  direct,  Poor 
Richard,  practical  advice  concerning  husbandry.  All  of  this  is  remote 
from  the  ethical  simplicity  and  undidactic  tone  of  the  heroic  epics,  but 
it  clearly  marks  a  time  when  life  was  beginning  to  be  complex. 

II. 

Although  the  time  at  which  Hesiod  lived  is  uncertain,  a  few  accounts 
of  his  life  have  come  down  to  us  in  his  poems.  According  to  these 
it  appears  that  his  father  came  from  Cyme  in  yEolia  and  settled  in 
BcEotia.  The  poet  was  born  in  Ascra,  and  in  his  youth  he  tended  his 
father's  sheep  on  Mt.  Helicon,  in  which  congenial  neighborhood  he 
determined  to  become  a  poet.  His  own  version  of  the  choice  asserts 
that  his  mind  was  made  up  by  a  direct  demand  from  the  Muses,  who 
appeared  in  person  and  gave  him  a  staff  of  bay  in  token  of  his  poetic 
functions.  At  a  later  date  was  acquired  this  art  of  prophesying  who 
should  be  poets.  Much  nearer  the  general  experience  of  mankind  is 
the  mention  of  a  lawsuit  between  himself  and  his  brother  Perses  about 
the  paternal  inheritance,  in  which — although  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  we  hear  only  Hesiod's  side — Perses  gained  his  case  by  tampering 
with  the  judges.  We  are  also  told  that  at  a  poetical  contest  he  won 
the  prize,  and  he  is  said  to  have  wandered  about  as  a  singer,  after  the 
custom  that  survived  the  decay  of  the  epic.  Further  tradition  says 
that  he  perished  by  violence  at  an  advanced  age. 

One  mythical  story  that  existed  in  antiquity  was  this,  that  once 
when  Homer  and  Hesiod  contended  for  a  prize  it  was  won  by  Hesiod. 
The  fact  is  now,  of  course,  believed  by  no  one,  but  it  has  been  sup- 
posed to  refer  to  the  success  of  Hesiodic  poetry  over  the  older  form. 

The  Works  and  Days  is  the  most  important  of  the  poems  ascribed 
to  Hesiod.  It  consists  of  but  eight  hundred  and  twenty-eight  lines, 
but  a  great  deal  is  compressed  into  this  moderate  compass.  The  first 
three  hundred  and  eighty-three  lines  are  rather  ethical  than  practical: 
the  poet  recommends  virtue  in  the  abstract  before  directing  its  con- 
crete application.     After  an  address  to  Zeus,  who  can  easily  overthrow 


PRECEPTS  OF   THE    ''WORKS  AND  DAYS."  Ml 

the  haughty  and  exalt  the  humble,  the  poet  tells  his  brother  that  there 
are  two  sorts  of  contest,  one  in  courts  of  law,  the  other  by  way  of 
rivalry  in  farming  and  manual  labor.  Shun  the  first,  and  try  not 
again,  by  bribing  the  judges,  to  rob  me  of  my  own  ;  rather  turn  thy 
mind  to  honest  gain.  Zeus  once  imposed  pain  and  toil  on  men,  and 
because  Prometheus,  to  make  their  existence  easier,  secretly  brought 
down  fire  from  heaven  to  the  dwellers  upon  the  earth,  he,  for  a  pun- 
ishment, sent  down  Pandora  with  the  fateful  box  enclosing  all  mis- 
fortune. Since  then  pain  and  misery  possess  the  world,  especially  in 
these  present  days  of  the  fifth,  the  iron  age,  when  vice,  godlessness 
and  injustice  combine  to  add  to  the  general  confusion.  Princes  are 
like  the  hawk  who  seizes  the  nightingale  and  in  answer  to  her  outcries 
says  he  is  the  stronger,  and  to  withstand  them  is  but  to  add  disgrace 
to  defeat.  But  only  that  city  flourishes  in  prosperous  peace,  where 
justice  is  dispensed  to  stranger  and  citizen ;  on  the  other  hand,  where 
the  authorities  are  bribed  to  pronounce  false  judgments,  Cronion 
sends  plagues  and  pests  and  famine ;  the  race  dies  out,  the  women 
become  barren,  war  ravages  land  and  country,  and  the  ships  are  sunk 
in  the  seas.  Countless  hosts  of  immortal  beings,  the  holy  messengers 
of  Zeus,  wander  over  the  earth,  hidden  in  a  mist,  and  watch  the  deeds 
of  men,  observing  whether  they  act  justly  or  wickedly.  Then  the 
people  suffer  for  the  misdeeds  of  their  rulers.  Animals  are  subject 
only  to  the  right  of  the  stronger,  but  the  gods  have  endowed  man 
with  the  sense  of  justice,  the  most  precious  of  his  possessions.  The 
road  to  evil,  O  Perses!  is  easy  and  near,  but  the  immortal  gods  have 
made  uprightness  almost  inaccessible  ;  the  path  to  virtue  is  steep  and 
hard  to  climb,  but  when  you  have  reached  the  top  it  is  easy  and 
smooth.  Work  is  agreeable  to  the  gods  and  carries  no  disgrace ;  but 
only  honest  gain  procures  lasting  benefit.  Beware  of  unkindness  to 
your  father  and  brother,  to  orphans  and  to  those  who  claim  your  pro- 
tection ;  pray  and  sacrifice  to  the  gods  with  clean  hands  and  an  un- 
stained heart.  Keep  on  good  terms  with  friends  and  neighbors  who 
may  be  of  service  to  you  :  invite  them  to  your  table,  and  give  them 
better  food  than  they  set  before  you.  Be  on  your  guard  against  the 
fascinations  of  your  wife,  for  whoever  confides  anything  to  a  woman, 
confides  in  a  deceiver.  Provide  for  sufficient  but  not  too  numerous 
descendants,  who  shall  receive  and  augment  your  possessions. 

These  few  hundred  lines,  with  their  occasional  exalted  turn  and 
their  frequent  utilitarianism  of  a  kind  that  indicates  along  experience, 
show  how  omnipresent  are  the  rules  of  morality  and  prudence.  The 
first  step  from  savageness  brings  with  it  the  perception  of  the  need  of 
those  virtues  which  are  almost  equally  rudimentary  in  an  advanced 
civilization.     The   earliest    records  of  even  the   least    civilized    races 


142 


HESIOD. 


abound  with  similar  moral  construction.  Almost  everywhere,  too, 
we  come  across  signs  of  a  remote  past,  as  in  Hesiod's  lament  over 
the  evil  days  on  which  he  has  fallen,  a  complaint  that  Homer 
frequently  uttered,  and  in  the  praise  of  a  small  family.  Even 
Hesiod's  civilization  bore  signs  of  a  long  past. 

While  the  poet  has  thus  established  his  thesis  that  virtue  is  the  best 
course,  and  that  man  must  work,  he  proceeds  to  make  clear  what  sort 
of  work  is  advisable  by  giving  those  directions  which  were  most  suited 


HAND   MILLS. 


HORSE  MILLS. 


to  an  agricultural  people  like  the  Boeotians.  He  describes  the  differ- 
ent occupations  of  the  year,  after  the  fashion  of  a  Farmers'  Almanac, 
which  also,  it  will  be  remembered,  inculcates  the  most  approved 
moral  sentiments.  First  secure  a  house,  tools,  and  good  servants; 
you  want  a  man  without  a  wife,  a  maid-servant  without  children. 
Then  make  ready  a  mill,  a  mortar,  and  two  plows  made  out  of  well- 
seasoned  oak  and  elm  wood,  which  you  will  cut  down  in  the  forest  in 
autumn.  Let  a  trusty  man  of  about  forty,  who  does  not  care  for  the 
pleasures  of  youth,  draw  the  furrows  with  two  nine-year-old  steers, 
after  he  has  eaten  eight  slices  of  bread  for  breakfast.     The  best  time 


HOMELY  PROVERBS  OF  HESIOD. 


143 


for  sowing  is  when  the  Pleiad  has  set  for  six  weeks ;  then  the  air  is 
cool  and  the  earth  is  softened  by  the  frequent  rains.  Following  the 
plow  must  come  a  boy  with  a  hoe  to  spread  the  earth  over  the  seed 
and  protect  it  from  the  birds.  Do  not  neglect  meanwhile  to  invoke 
the  subterranean  gods,  that  the  seed  may  swell  properly.  Thus 
arranging  everything  properly,  you  will  joyously  accumulate  a  store 
in  your  house  and  never  cast  envious  glances  at  your  neighbor ;  he 
rather  in  his  misfortune  will  envy  you.  But  if  you  sow  at  the  winter 
solstice,  you  will  have  but  a  meagre  harvest  to  carry  home  in  your 
basket.  Still  all  years  are  not  alike,  and  he  who  sows  late  may  get 
even  with  him  who  sowed  earliest,  if  he  will  only  observe  carefully 
and  sow  when  the  cuckoo  first  calls  from  the  sprouting  oak-leaves  and 
Zeus  sends  three  days  of  rain.  The  winter,  too,  is  put  to  profit  by 
the  intelligent  farmer.  He  goes  swiftly  by  the  warm  inn  and  the 
smithy's  forge,  for  the  man  who  idles  at  the  pot-house  sinks  into 
poverty.  In  good  season  you  must  warn  the  men  to  build  sheds 
against  the  winter  when  the  north-wind  dashes  up  the  waves  and  in 
the  highlands  scatters  oaks  and  pines  over  the  frozen  ground.  The 
cowering  animals  can  not  stand  the  cold  ;  the  frost  pierces  their  hairy 
coat  and  even  the  wild  beasts  seek  shelter.  Then  the  young  maiden 
gladly  lingers  in  the  comfortable  room  with  her  mother.  But  do  you 
wrap  yourself  up  in  your  long  cloak  and  cover  your  feet  with  thick  hides, 
with  the  hair  turned  inside,  throw  a  thick  cape  over  your  shoulders, 
put  on  your  head  a  fur  cap  lined  with  felt  to  keep  your  ears  from 
freezing  when  the  cold  north  wind  blows  in  the  morning  and  the  mist 
spreads  over  the  fields.  When  the  days  are  short  and  the  nights  are 
long,  man  and  beast  will  be  content  with  half  fare,  until  the  earth 
brings  forth  a  new  supply.  Sixty 
days  after  the  winter  solstice, 
hasten  to  trim  the  vine,  before  the 
swallow  returns.  When  the  snail, 
in  fear  of  the  Pleiads,  climbs  up 
the  young  plants,  sharpen  your 
sickle  for  the  harvest,  and  arouse 
your  workmen  from  their  shady 
seats  and  from  the  morning  sleep, 
for  now  you  must  be  busy  and 
carry  the  fruit  home.  The  morn- 
ing-hour is  a  third  of  the  day  and 
shortens  the  way  and  the  work. 
When,  the  thistle  is  in  bloom, 
and  the  cicala  sends  forth  its  shrill 
note  from  the  leafy  bower,  and  the  heat  of  the  dog-star  weakens  the 


WINE  JARS    FROM    POMPEII. 


144 


HESIOD. 


body,  then  refresh  yourself  in  the  pleasant  shade  of  the  rocks  with 
red  wine  diluted  with  water,  with  goat's-milk  and  the  flesh  of  cattle 
and  kids.  As  soon  as  Orion  has  appeared,  order  your  men  to  thresh 
and  winnow  your  corn,  and  collect  your  supply  in  sound  vessels.  When 
you  have  gathered  the  harvest,  get  some  sturdy  dogs  and  feed  them 
well,  that  they  may  protect  your  property  from  thieves.  Now  you 
may  let  your  men  rest  and  unyoke  your  steers,  until  Orion  and  Sirius 
reach  the  zenith.  Then  is  the  time  to  gather  your  grapes.  When 
this  task  is  done,  let  them  lie  for  ten  days  in  the  sun  and  for 
five  in  the  shade,  before  you  press  them.  .  When  the  autumn  rains 
have  begun  to  fall,  carry  wood  to  the  house  for  your  plowshare  and 
for  fuel.     Such  are  the  duties  of  the  farm.     But  if  you  care  to  follow 

the  sea,  observe  the  proper  time. 
As  soon  as  the  Pleiades  have  set 
and  the  winds  have  risen,  haul 
your  boat  well  up  on  the  shore, 
and  make  it  fast  with  stones  ;  do 
not  let  the  rain-water  lie  in  it  to 
rot  its  timbers ;  carry  all  the  rig- 
ging into  the  house,  and  hang 
the  sweeps  and  the  rudder  in  the 
smoke.  Toward  the  end  of  the 
summer,  about  fifty  days  after 
the  nights  have  begun  to  grow 
long,  the  air  is  pleasant  and  the 
sea  smooth  for  a  voyage.  Then  you  must  make  your  boat  ready, 
drawing  it  down  to  the  water,  and  carefully  arranging  its  cargo  ;  but 
be  sure  not  to  delay  your  return  until  the  autumn  winds  and  storms 
overtake  you.  The  sea  is  also  safe  in  the  spring  when  the  first  leaves 
are  sprouting  on  the  fig.  But  it  is  always  dangerous  to  follow  the 
sea,  and  farming  is  preferable :  death  in  the  waves  is  a  terrible  thing. 
Did  not  men  set  the  love  of  gain  above  life  itself,  no  one  would 
venture  on  the  stormy  sea.  Consequently  do  not  trust  all  your 
possessions  to  a  boat  ;  keep  the  greater  part -at  home  :  be  moderate  in 
all  things. 

After  thus  giving  directions  for  both  sea  and  shore,  the  author 
returns  to  the  consideration  of  domestic  questions,  and  notably  to  the 
very  important  one  of  the  choice  of  a  wife.  The  husband  must  be 
not  much  over  thirty ;  the  wife  an  honorable  maiden  from  the  neigh- 
borhood, who  shall  be  rather  under  twenty.  A  virtuous  wife  is  an 
inestimable  treasure,  but  an  extravagant  one  whitens  her  husband's 
hair  before  its  time.  Be  true  and  upright  to  your  friend  ;  never  be  the 
first  to  quarrel  with  him,  and  when  you  have  fallen  out  with  him,  be 


From  Thasos, 


From  Knidos. 


SUPERSTITIONS   OF  HESIOD'S  POEMS.  I45 

ready  to  make  peace.  Hospitality  is  a  duty,  but  it  must  be  practised 
with  caution.  Do  not  be  prone  to  fault-finding,  and  reproach  no  one 
with  his  poverty.  Do  not  despise  the  club-feasts  ;  they  are  pleasant 
and  cheap.  Then  follows  a  medley  of  precepts  for  various  incidents 
of  daily  life :  that  one  must  utter  a  propitiatory  prayer  before  fording 
a  river,  that  one  must  not  pare  his  nails  at  a  banquet  after  a  sacrifice, 
etc.,  etc.,  all  this  part  being  a  curious  collection  of  folk-lore  such  as 
survives  to-day  in  the  prejudice  against  sitting  down  thirteen  at  table, 
and  against  spilling  salt.  Of  the  same  sort  is  the  list  of  the  unlucky 
and  lucky  days  of  the  month :  thus,  the  eleventh  is  a  good  day  for 
shearing  sheep  ;  the  twelfth  for  reaping  corn,  and  the  seventh  is  another 
very  lucky  day,  while  the  fifth,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  very  dark  one. 
Blessings  and  curses  are  thus  mingled  for  very  obscure  reasons. 
Sometimes  we  see  some  ground  for  the  difference,  as,  for  example, 
the  seventeenth  is  a  fortunate  date  for  threshing  corn,  because,  in  one 
month,  that  was  the  feast  day  of  Demeter;  but  often  no  reason  at  all 
was  given.  The  whole  statement  is  interesting  as  a  record  of  the 
superstitions  that  are  probably  the  oldest  memorials  of  human 
ingenuity,  and  are  certainly  the  most  widespread.  Here  at  least  we 
touch  a  chord  that  the  Greeks  had  in  common  with  every  race. 
Everywhere  else  they  were  superior ;  here  the  simplest  note  is 
touched,  and  one  has  an  almost  malicious  pleasure  in  finding  that 
race  regarding  these  old  saws  and  snatches  of  proverbial  wisdom  as 
little  less  than  inspired  truths.  This  poem  became  a  text-book  for 
schools  among  the  later  Greeks,  and  was  held  in  high  honor  for  many 
generations  as  an  instructor  in  practical  life,  and  its  influence  has  been 
felt  in  modern  times  as  the  progenitor  of  didactic  poetry,  a  form  of 
composition  that  has  done  much  to  give  literature  a  bad  name  as  an 
artificial  thing.  Yet,  it  is  only  the  third-hand  didactic  poems  that  are 
artificial ;  the  original  was  a  natural  expression  of  current  learning 
and  wisdom  ;  its  form,  the  hexameter  verse,  was  the  sole  instrument 
at  the  author's  command. 

Its  real  modern  equivalent  is  to  be  found  in  some  of  Franklin's 
Poor  Richard  writings  and  in  the  Old  Farmer's  Almanacs.  Indeed 
the  resemblance  is  very  striking,  because  both  the  old  Greek  poem 
and  the  more  recent  books  of  rustic  lore  are  made  up  of  proverbs. 
The  extracts  below  from  the  Works  and  Days  will  make  this  clear. 
Even  the  modern  works  of  which  mention  has  been  made  fail  to  wear 
a  deeper  air  of  hoary  tradition  than  do  the  musty,  humdrum  bits  of 
wisdom  with  which  Hesiod  decks  his  aged  poems.  They  were  sung  by 
rhapsodists  in  remote  antiquity,  and  held  an  exalted  position  as  rivals 
of  the  Homeric  lays.  They  were,  in  fact,  the  prose  of  those  early 
days.    Their  main  importance  we  may  take  to  have  been,  not  so  much 


146  HESIOD. 

the  utilitarian  value  of  the  advice,  as  the  ethical  dignity  which  under- 
lies these  simple  adages.  And  to  us,  while  the  aesthetic  delight  to  be 
got  from  their  perusal  is  small,  they  are  of  interest  as  the  earliest  utter- 
ances of  men  whose  future  development  can  be  closely  followed  in 
political  and  literary  history.  They  are,  too,  the  earliest  examples  of 
the  popular  poetry  of  antiquity,  as  distinguished  from  the  romantic. 

Yet  this  division  of  popular  and  romantic,  it  must  be  remembered, 
is  one  that  is  employed  only  for  our  convenience  ;  the  poets  sung  in 
the  way  most  suited  to  their  message  and  their  habits,  with  no  conscious 
perception  of  the  school  to  which  they  have  been  assigned  by  later 
critics.  In  Homer  we  have  pictures  of  an  active,  warlike  society,  in 
Hesiod  the  arid  representations  of  a  peaceful,  hard-working  people,  in 
whose  hands  poetry  acquired  all  the  simplicity  of  prose,  as  well  as  its 
more  essential  qualities.  Yet  if  Hesiod  fails  to  charm  the  reader  who 
seeks  solely  aesthetic  delights,  he  yet  makes  good  this  apparent  defi- 
ciency by  the  aid  he  gives  to  the  student  of  history  and  sociology  from 
his  records  of  an  early  time  and  people  who  knew  no  other  adventures 
than  those  of  bad  weather,  droughts  and  floods,  and  whose  most  bitter 
enemy  was  their  unlimited  superstition. 

Another  famous  poem  that  is  ascribed  to  Hesiod,  and  possibly  by 
its  superior  importance  helped  to  keep  up  the  authority  of  the  Works 
and  Days,  is  the  Theogony.  It  is  of  moderate  length,  only  1,022  lines, 
but  it  was  as  much  a  sacred  book  among  the  Greeks  as  any  that 
belongs  to  their  bequest  to  posterity.  Like  some  of  the  sacred  books 
of  other  nations,  it  is  rather  a  history  of  the  beginning  of  the  world 
and  of  the  gods  than  an  appeal  in  behalf  of  the  religious  sentiment; 
and  that  the  history  is  incomplete  and  fragmentary  only  adds  to  its 
likeness  to  the  general  class.  The  poem  itself  contains  not  only  the 
earliest  statement  that  has  come  down  to  us,  but  also  the  earliest  state- 
ment known  to  the  Greeks  themselves.  Just  as  the  Works  and  Days 
condensed  into  fitting  expression  the  practical  experience  that  had  been 
slowly  amassed  by  many  generations  of  tillers  of  the  soil,  and  gave 
utterance  to  the  wisdom  that  long  attrition  had  worn  down  to  proverbs 
and  adages,  so  did  the  Theogony  contain  current  myths  of  uncertain 
antiquity  and  the  religious  lore  of  centuries. 

Even  in  the  Odyssey  we  find  religious  traditions  sung  by  the  bards, 
and  it  was  probably  from  old  hymns  and  shorter  legends  that  the 
Theogony  was  able  to  draw  the  tolerably  complete  collection  of  stories 
that  gave  it  its  fame.  Hesiod  begins  with  a  cosmogony.  The  begin- 
ning of  things  was  chaos,  the  origin  of  which  is,  naturally  enough,  left 
obscure ;  then  appear  the  earth,  Tartarus,  or  the  nether-world,  and 
Eros,  the  principle  or  god  of  love.  Here  at  once  we  have  confusion, 
in    this    introduction    of  the   god  among  these   inanimate   creations, 


HESIOD'S  "  THEOGONY."  147 

and  in  the  fact  that  no  further  use  is  made  of  him.  In  the  old  tradi- 
tion Eros  is  the  principle  that  formed  the  world,  but  here  he  is  thrust 
into  the  story  and  then  left  inactive,  doubtless  because  Hesiod  con- 
fused some  of  the  stories  that  he  had  heard,  which,  however,  are 
repeated  by  other  authorities.  Then  follows  the  separation  of  night 
and  day;  the  earth  produces  the  heavens  and  the  seas,  earth,  seas  and 
heavens  being  the  three  immediate  objects  that  face  every  human  being. 
The  account  of  the  generation  of  the  gods  is  much  fuller,  and  we  are 
told  that  the  heavens  and  earth  produced  the  Titans,  the  oldest  race 
of  divine  beings,  from  whom  ace  descended  the  younger  race  of  the 
sons  of  Kronos,  who  attain  power  only  by  severe  struggles.  The 
genealogy  of  the  abundant  deities,  which  concludes  with  a  list  of  the 
goddesses  who  selected  human  beings  for  their  mates,  shows  a  curious 
survival  of  a  very  old  and  barbarous  theology,  made  up  of  a  medley 
of  lust  and  cruelty,  that  gradually  lost  authority  with  the  Greeks  as 
their  civilization  ripened.  Possibly  it  is  fair  to  explain  some  of  the 
exclusive  devotion  of  the  Greeks  to  artistic  and  intellectual  matters  by 
the  crudity  of  their  obsolescent  religious  system,  which  left  them  free 
to  follow  the  natural  tendency  of  men  towards  their  own  individual 
development,  and  finally  left  them  shattered.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
grand  religious  conceptions  of  the  Hebrew  race  were  found  in  connec- 
tion with  an  almost  entire  absence  of  the  qualities  that  adorned  the 
Greeks,  and  has  made  them  a  firm  unit  in  the  face  of  every  trial.  We 
see  again  in  the  artistic  and  religious  revival  that  accompanied  the 
Renaissance  how  the  corruption  and  meagreness  of  the  religious  senti- 
ment of  the  middle  ages  fell  away  from  the  men  who  were  intoxicated 
by  the  discovery  of  antique  culture,  and  left  them  free  to  follow  their 
literary  and  artistic  tastes,  until  the  Reformation  and  the  Catholic  re- 
vival nipped  the  new  civilization  and  greatly  modified  the  direction  of 
its  growth. 

Yet  these  myths  held  a  singular  authority  among  the  Greeks,  as  the 
earliest  and  in  most  respects  the  final  statement  of  the  groundwork  of 
their  religion.  The  later  versions  of  the  old  stories  stand  very  much 
under  the  influence  of  the  Hesiodic  theogony ;  what  differed  from  it 
failed  to  secure  general  acceptance  and  survived  only  in  remote  places. 
Hesiod,  by  collecting  the  abundant  material  and  putting  it  into  an  im- 
pressive shape,  secured  for  himself  a  position  that  corresponded  with 
that  which  Homer  won  by  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  The  two  names 
stand  together  in  the  obscure  beginning  of  Greek  literature,  baffling 
the  scholars  who  try  to  make  too  positive  statements  about  their  work. 
Of  their  great  influence,  however,  proofs  abound.  Naturally  many 
writings  by  different  hands  drifted  to  Hesiod,  as  many  miscellaneous 
poems  had  gathered  about  Homer's  name.     Thus  there  is  one  called 


148  HESIOD. 

the  Shield  of  Heracles,  which  bears  a  strong  likeness  to  the  Homeric 
description  of  the  Shield  of  Achilles  in  the  eighteenth  book  of  the 
Iliad.  It  lacks,  however,  the  merit  of  the  original,  and  is  made  up  of 
awkward  imitations.  Other  poems  that  were  ascribed  to  Hesiod  have 
been  lost.  Some  of  these  were  probably  the  work  of  his  followers, 
the  same  men  who  inserted  lines  of  their  own  into  such  part  of  his 
work  as  came  down  to  us.  The  later  importance  of  Hesiod  is  not  to 
be  determined  by  the  poetic  quality  of  his  work,  but  rather  by  the 
abundance  of  legends  which  he  had  collected  from  the  past,  and  from 
his  statement  of  the  early  traditions  that  went  to  the  formation  of  his 
explanation  of  the  universe  and  the  story  of  the  gods.  Historians, 
poets,  philosophers,  were  compelled  to  go  back  to  him  for  material 
wherewith  to  work,  and  for  their  wants  he  was  without  a  rival. 

HESIOD. 

Suffer  thy  foe  thy  table  ;  call  thy  friend 

In  chief  one  near,  for  if  occasion  send 

Thy  household  use  of  neighbours,  they  undrest 

Will  haste  to  thee,  where  thy  allies  will  rest 

Till  they  be  ready.     An  ill  neighbour  is 

A  curse  ;  a  good  one  is  as  great  a  bliss. 

He  hath  a  treasure,  by  his  fortune  sign'd. 

That  hath  a  neighbour  of  an  honest  mind. 

No  loss  of  ox  or  horse  a  man  shall  bear 

Unless  a  wicked  neighbour  dwell  too  near. 

Just  measure  take  of  neighbours,  just  repay. 

The  same  receiv'd,  and  more,  if  more  thou  may, 

That, after  needing,  thou  may'st  after  find 

Thy  wants'  supplier  of  as  free  a  mind. 

Take  no  ill  gain  ;  ill  gain  brings  loss  as  ill, 

Aid  quit  with  aid  ;  good  will  pay  with  good  will. 

Give  him  that  hath  given ;  him  that  hath  not,  give  not ; 

Givers  men  give  ;  gifts  to  no  givers  thrive  not ; 

Giving  is  good,  rapine  is  deadly  ill ; 

Who  freely  gives,  though  much,  rejoiceth  still ; 

Who  ravins  is  so  wretched,  that,  though  small 

His  first  gift  be,  he  grieves  as  if  'twere  all. 

Little  to  little  added,  if  oft  done. 
In  small  time  makes  a  great  possession. 
Who  adds  to  what  is  got,  needs  never  fear 
That  swarth-cheek'd  hunger  will  devour  his  cheer  ;  ' 
Nor  will  it  hurt  a  man  though  something  more 
Than  serves  mere  need  he  lays  at  home  in  store  ; 
And  best  at  home,  it  may  go  less  abroad. 
If  cause  call  forth,  at  home  provide  thy  rode. 
Enough  for  all  needs,  for  free  spirits  die 
To  want,  being  absent  from  their  own  supply. 
Which  note,  I  charge  thee.     At  thy  purse's  height. 
And  when  it  fights  low,  give  thy  use  his  freight  ; 
When  in  the  midst  thou  art,  then  check  the  blood  ; 
Frugality  at  bottom  is  not  good. 
Even  with  thy  brother  think  a  witness  by, 
When  thou  would'st  laugh,  or  converse  liberally ; 
Despair  hurts  none  beyond  credulity. 


149 


FROM    "WORKS   AND   DAYS." 

Two  plows  compose,  to  find  the  work  at  home, 

One  with  a  share  that  of  itself  cloth  come 

From  forth  the  plow's  whole  piece,  and  one  set  on ; 

Since  so  'tis  better  much,  for,  either  gone. 

With  th'  other  thou  mayest  instantly  impose 

Work  on  thy  oxen.     On  the  laurel  grows. 

And  on  the  elm,  your  best  plow-handles  ever  ; 

Of  oak  your  draught-tree  ;  from  the  maple  never 

Go  for  your  culter  ;  for  your  oxen  chuse 

Two  males  of  nine  years  old,  for  then  their  use 

Is  most  available,  since  their  strengths  are  then 

Not  of  the  weakest,  and  the  youthful  mean 

Sticks  in  their  nerves  still ;  nor  will  these  contend, 

With  skittish  tricks,  when  they  the  stitch  should  end, 

To  break  their  plow,  and  leave  their  work  undone. 

These  let  a  youth  of  forty  wait  upon. 

Whose  bread  at  meals  in  four  good  shivers  cut. 

Eight  bits  in  every  shive  ;  for  that  man,  put 

To  his  fit  task,  will  see  it  done  past  talk 

With  any  fellow,  nor  will  ever  balk 

In  any  stitch  he  makes,  but  give  his  mind 

With  care  to  his  labour.     And  this  man  no  hind 

(Though  much  his  younger)  shall  his  better  be 

At  sowing  seed,  and,  shunning  skilfully. 

Need  to  go  over  his  whole  work  again. 

Your  younger  man  feeds  still  a  flying  vein 

From  his  set  task,  to  hold  his  equals  chat. 

And  trifles  work  he  should  be  serious  at. 

Take  notice,  then,  when  thou  the  crane  shalt  hear 

Aloft  out  of  the  clouds  her  clanges  rear, 

That  then  she  gives  thee  signal  when  to  sow, 

And  Winter's  wrathful  season  doth  foreshow. 

And  then  the  man  that  can  no  oxen  get. 

Or  wants  the  season's  work,  his  heart  doth  eat. 

Then  feed  thy  oxen  in  the  house  with  hay ; 

Which  he  that  wants  with  ease  enough  will  say, 

"  Let  me,  alike,  thy  wain  and  oxen  use." 

Which  'tis  as  easy  for  thee  to  refuse. 

And  say  thy  oxwork  then  importunes  much. 

He  that  is  rich  in  brain  will  answer  such  : 

"  Work  up  thyself  a  wagon  of  thine  own  ; 

For  to  the  foolish  borrower  is  not  known 

That  each  wain  asks  a  hundred  joints  of  wood  ; 

These  things  ask  forecast,  and  thou  shouldst  make  good 

At  home  before  thy  need  so  instant  stood." 


BOOK  II.-THE  LYRIC  POETRY. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

The  Hexameter  as  an  Expression  Adapted  to  a  Feudal  Period,  when  Comparative 
Uniformity  Prevailed — Changing  Circumstances,  with  Added  Complexity  of  Life, 
Saw  New  Forms  of  Utterance  Introduced  into  Literature — These,  However,  had 
Already  Enjoyed  a  Long,  if  Unrecognized,  Life  among  the  People  :  Such  were 
Liturgical,  as  well  as  Popular,  in  Their  Nature,  and  Run  Back  to  Primeval 
Savageness. 

WHAT  we  know  of  the  poetry  of  Hesiod  makes  it  clear  that  the  hex- 
ameter had  become  the  approved  form  of  Hterary  expression,  even 
for  verse  which  differed  greatly  from  the  broad  flow  of  the  early. epic. 
Yet  the  change  in  the  subject  and  manner  of  treatment  foreboded  a 
corresponding  change  in  the  manner  of  utterance,  for  a  race  so  many- 
sided  as  the  Greek  could  not  fail  to  seek  for  novelty.  Homer  and 
Hesiod,  although  probably  not  contemporary,  show  us  two  sides  of  the 
shield,  the  noble  and  the  democratic  ;  the  later  political  modifications 
are  represented  in  the  abundant  lyric  poetry.  Indeed,  it  may  not  be 
fanciful  to  see  in  the  rule  of  the  hexameter  a  reflection  of  the  general 
uniformity  of  the  heroic  age,  just  as  the  monotony  of  the  mediaeval 
epics  represents  the  formal  society  of  feudalism,  or  the  sway  of  the 
heroic  verse  throughout  Europe  in  the  last  century  expresses  a  notable 
harmony  in  the  general  direction  of  thought.  Around  the  heroic  age, 
as  about  every  period  in  which  an  aristocracy  is  dominant,  there  gath- 
ered a  certain  amount  of  conventionality ;  and  in  such  conditions 
whatever  form  seems  best  is  universally  adopted,  because  it  is  part  of 
a  system  that  carries  the  authority  of  the  whole  into  every  part.  Thus, 
the  heroic  verse  in  England  was  used  for  philosophical  poetry,  for 
humorous  verse,  for  amorous  epistles,  for  religious  discussions ;  literary 
etiquette  enforced  this  one  form,  as  social  etiquette  enforced  the  wig, 
and  among  the  first  signs  of  literary  revolt  was  the  attempt  to  make 
use  of  other  verse.  And  while  every  complicated  form  is  of  course 
made  up  of  numberless  crude  fragments,  we  observe  that  every  early 
society,  all  new  civilization,  is  forced  to  control  itself  by  continual 
reference  to  rigid  rules,  and  that  only  long  practice  secures  simplicity, 


ORIGIN  OF  GREEK  LYRIC  POETRY.  151 

just  as  an  adult  forgets  the  countless  rules  that  are  forever  dinned  into 
children. 

In  Greece,  with  the  political  changes  that  began  in  the  eighth  cen- 
tury before  Christ,  we  find,  as  we  have  said  above,  similar  changes  in 
the  poetry.  Already  Hesiod,  who  yet  makes  use  of  the  old  form, 
speaks  of  himself,  recounts  his  fortunate  meeting  with  the  muses,  and 
speaks  of  his  father  and  brother  as  well,  while  Homer's  personality  is 
as  absent  from  his  poems  as  is  Shakspere's  from  his  plays.  Yet  obvi- 
ously it  is  in  the  appearance  of  lyric  poetry  that  the  new  feeling  of 
individuality  finds  its  completest  expression.  The  very  essence  of  a 
lyric  is  the  personal  cry,  and  when  it  began  to  be  heard  in  Greek  litera- 
ture the  epic  was  sinking  into  the  same  state  of  artificiality  that  it  has 
reached  in  the  hands  of  some  modern  poets.  To  seek  for  the  first 
lyric  song  is  like  seeking  for  the  first  sigh.  It  is  obvious  that  mothers 
must  have  sung  lullabies  to  their  children,  and  that  men  and  women 
must  have  lightened  their  work  by  song.  One  might  as  well  imagine 
that  the  first  words  of  infancy  are  a  discussion  of  the  binomial  theorem 
as  that  the  first  poetic  utterance  of  the  Greeks  was  the  smooth  hexa- 
meter of  the  Homeric  poems.  Yet  in  them  we  find  that  none  of  the 
singers  have  any  other  subject  than  the  myths  belonging  to  the  Tro- 
jan circle.  Even  the  Sirens  with  their  melodious  voice  told  Odysseus 
that  they  knew  everything  that  the  Argives  and  Trojans  endured  in 
vast  Troy  by  the  will  of  the  gods  ;  but,  after  all,  this  may  be  only  a 
proof  of  another  fascinating  quality,  their  tact  in  choosing  the  subject 
which  Odysseus  would  have  been  most  anxious  to  hear  celebrated,  and 
possibly  they  varied  their  subject  for  different  listeners  ;  otherwise  they 
would  surely  have  belied  their  reputation.  Great  and  widespread  as 
was  the  popularity  of  the  hexameter,  we  must  necessarily  suppose  that 
some  other  compacter  style  of  verse  was  employed  for  stilling  refrac- 
tory children.  It  is  impossible  to  show  that  the  Greek  lyric  poetry 
grew  up  from  the  folk-songs,  but  it  is  well  to  notice  that  the  most 
usual  subjects  of  the  popular  poetry  were  the  lament  and  the  love-song, 
as  they  were  of  the  lyric  verse.  We  do  not  know  the  measures  to 
which  the  folk-songs  were  composed.  The  Linos  song,  mentioned 
above,  seems  to  have  been  sung  at  the  gathering  of  the  grapes,  and  to 
have  been  a  mournful  lay  for  the  death  of  the  summer,  which  was 
personified  as  a  beautiful  youth.  This  form  of  nature-worship  assumed 
various  appearances  in  different  regions ;  it  is  closely  allied  with  the 
lament  for  Adonis,  that  for  Hyacinthus,  and  with  the  Phrygian  festival 
in  memory  of  Attis,  all  of  which  are  of  Asiatic  origin.  Homer  also 
makqs  mention  of  the  marriage-song  or  epithalamion,  which  appears 
to  have  been  sung  by  two  choruses  of  men  and  women. 

The  qualities  of  these  early  forms  of  choral  poetry  carry  us  back  to 


152 


THE  LYRIC  POETRY. 


a  remote  past  when  bands  of  kinsmen,  who  owned  all  their  property 
in  common,  took  part  together  in  all  the  ceremonies  of  life  and  reli- 
gion, after  a  fashion  that  still  exists  among  North  American  Indians 
and  other  savage  races.  Many  of  these  old  conditions  maintained 
themselves  among  the  Greeks,  and  especially  among  the  conservative 
Dorians,  until  a  late  date,  such  as  the  bands  of  warriors.  Their  survival 
in  literature  is  apparent  in  their  choral  poetry,  that  depended  on  the 
union  of  song,  dance,  and  music  for  its  full  expression  ;  and  it  was  in 
this  combination  that  its  main  success  lay.  Throughout,  it  was  the 
state,  as  distinguished  from  the  individual,  that  was  the  object  of  their 
enthusiasm  ;  their  festivals  were  occasions  of  general  rejoicing,  combin- 


DANCING   SATYR   AND  MAENAD   OR   PRIESTESS   OF   DIONYSUS. 


ing  religious  and  political  significance,  in  which  groups  divided  by  sex, 
age,  and  social  condition  took  part.  This  tendency,  inherited  from 
conditions  familiar  to  all  early  civilizations,  became  part  of  their  liter- 
ary triumphs,  as  in  the  complicated  poems  of  Stesichorus  and  his 
rivals,  while  it  also  showed  itself  in  the  rigid  and  complicated  system 
of  Pythagoras.  This,  however,  leads  us  far  from  our  present  subject, 
which  is  concerned  with  the  remotest  antiquity.  We  must  not  let  the 
literary  reverence  that  we  feel  for  the  marvellous  work  of  the  Greeks 
blind  us  to  its  probable  origin  in  the  survival  of  old  savage   rites  and 


ORIGIN  OF    THE  LYRIC  POETRY.  '53 

festivals.  Our  notions  of  literary  work,  which  we  inherit  from  centuries 
of  artificial  composition,  naturally  tend  to  persuade  us  that  in  the 
past,  as  later,  poems  took  their  rise  anywhere  except  from  such  crude 
beginnings,  and  that  the  form  is  as  remote  as  the  thought  from  any  of 
the  qualities  of  barbarism.  There  is  a  desperate  feeling  that  at  least 
the  Greeks  created  something  out  of  nothing,  even  if  the  art  is  now 
lost.  Yet  the  close  connection  between  all  the  conventionalities,  reli- 
gious and  festive,  of  wild  races,  makes  it  clear  that  in  the  union  of 
song,  dance,  and  music  of  the  perfected  Greek  choral  song,  we  have 
the  survival  of  old  solemnities  that  belonged  to  all  savage  races  ;  that 
the  famous  Pyrrhic  dance  finds  its  nearest  likeness  in  a  Red  Indian 
war-dance ;  and  that  the  common  belief  in  the  exclusiveness  of  the 
classics  is  not  legitimately  established,  and  cannot  wholly  maintain 
itself  in  the  presence  of  the  rapidly  accumulating  mass  of  evidence 
about  uncivilized  peoples.  The  theory  of  the  miraculous  powers  of 
genius  is  simply  a  superfluous  hypothesis  when  confronted  by  such 
testimony,  which,  however,  yet  fails  to  explain  why  the  Greeks  made 
so  much  out  of  so  little. 

Besides  these  forms,  which  were  almost  of  a  liturgical  character,  there 
were  those  sung  by  men  and  women  at  various  occupations,  such  as 
work  in  the  fields,  while  tending  their  herds,  pressing  wine,  grinding 
corn,  etc.,  as  well  as  lamentations  at  funerals,  songs  at  the  birth  of 
infants,  lullabies,  lays  of  beggars — the  list  is  endless.  One  of  these  last 
was  the  swallow-song,  sung  by  boys  in  spring  as  they  wandered  begging 
from  house  to  house,  a  custom  that,  we  are  told,  owed  its  origin  to  one 
Cleobules,  when  there  happened  to  be  need  of  a  general  collection  for 
the  benefit  of  paupers.  Another  class  consisted  of  scolia,  or  drinking- 
songs,  which  were  sung  at  feasts.  These,  however,  cannot  be  said  to 
have  belonged  to  really  popular  poetry,  fof  the  privilege  of  sitting 
after  meals  and  listening  to  songs  was  one  that  obviously  belonged  to 
only  a  few  men  of  leisure.  It  is  easy,  however,  to  suppose  that  some 
of  the  best  of  these  verses  may  have  found  their  way  to  the  common 
people. 


CHAPTER  I.— THE  EARLIER  LYRIC  POETS. 

I. — The  Influence  of  Religion  on  the  Early  Growth  of  the  Lyric  Poetry — The  Tradi- 
tional Origins  :  Orpheus  and  Musasus — The  Importance  of  Music — Its  Condition 
in  Early  Times — Its  Use  as  an  Aid  to  Poetry — The  Traditional  Olympus,  the 
Father  of  Music.  II. — Callinus  and  the  Elegy — Its  Use  by  Archilochus,  and 
the  Growth  of  Individuality — The  Value  of  the  New  Forms  as  Expressions  of  the 
Political  Changes  Then  Appearing.  III. — Simonides  and  His  Denunciation  of 
Women — His  Melancholy — The  Meagreness  of  the  Lyrical  Fragments  Impedes 
Our  Knowledge — The  Extent  of  Our  Loss  Conjectured. 

I. 

WHILE  the  existence  of  song  among  the  people  is  thus  shown,  it 
will  have  been  noticed  that  many  of  their  verses  had  a  religious 
significance,  and  it  is  probably  from  the  religious  songs  that  this  lyric 
poetry  derived  its  origin.  We  may  conjecture  that  at  an  early  period 
there  was  no  chasm  between  profane  and  religious  poetry  and  that 
every  observation  of  nature  was  the  observation  of  a  mysterious  divine 
force.  Throughout  civilization  we  notice  the  gradual  limitation  of 
religion  to  spiritual  things,  and  in  early  Greece  with  the  attainment  of 
luxury  there  came  the  representation  of  human  life  after  the  methods 
that  had  previously  been  employed  for  religious  purposes.  It  is  easy 
to  see  that  the  expression  of  thanksgiving  to  a  god  for  a  victory  might 
extend  to  celebrating  the  bravery  of  successful  warriors,  and  when 
Napoleon  said  that  God  was  on  the  side  of  the  heaviest  battalions  he 
uttered  what  mankind  had  long  known  to  be  true,  had  known  indeed 
ever  since  war  had  begun.  The  oldest  priestly  poet  was  said  to  have 
been  Orpheus,  who  carries  us  back  to  a  remote  connection  between  the 
Thracians  and  the  Greeks.  The  Orphic  Mysteries  were  a  secret  wor- 
ship of  Dionysus,  the  god  of  wine,  and  they  appear  to  have  spread 
from  Pieria,  which  lay  between  Thessaly  and  Macedonia,  to  the  river 
Hebrus  in  Thrace,  and  later  to  have  existed  in  Boeotia  and  the  island 
Lesbos.  The  Thracians  were  in  immemorial  time  devoted  to  music 
and  song,  so  that  Orpheus,  the  founder  of  the  mysteries,  is  famous  as 
a  singer.  Probably  the  celebration  of  the  mysteries  was  accompanied 
by  vocal  and  instrumental  music.  To  Epimenides,  who  lived  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  seventh  century  before  Christ,  were  ascribed  various 
poems  of  religious  import.     Musaeus,  on  the  other  hand,  and   Eumol- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  POEMS— ORIGINS. 


155 


pus,  as  was  said  above,  were  mythical  poets  who  belong  in  the  chaotic 
past  and  are  said  to  have  carried  the  mysteries  into  Attica.  To  both 
were  ascribed  religious  poems,  and  Musaeus  bears  the  same  mythical 
relation  to  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries  that  Orpheus  bears  to  the  Orphic. 
In  the  time  of  Aristophanes  and  of  Plato  these  poems  were  regarded 
as  genuine  memorials  of  very  remote  antiquity,  but  later  they  lost  this 
fame.  Olen  again  had  the  reputation  of  being  the  earliest  writer  of 
hymns,  which  belonged  from  unknown  times  to  the  worship  of  the 
Delian  Apollo.     But  one  might  as  well  try  to  draw  a  map  of  the  An- 


THE  DIONYSUS  CHILD, 


tarctic  continent  as  to  make  a  history  of  this  remote  antiquity,  where 
the  most  careful  erudition  of  modern  scholars  can  only  grope  in  a 
blinding  fog.  It  is  a  hopeless  task  to  write  history  without  facts.  All 
that  we  can  know  is  that  religious  poetry  was  in  the  hands  of  priests  at 
a  very  early  period.  It  is  also  known  that  this  poetry  was  accom- 
panied by  music.  At  the  religious  festivals  there  were  dances,  songs 
and  music,  games  and  contests  of  athletic  skill,  all  being  habits  which 
we  shall  find  surviving  in  historic  times.  That  this  blending  of  sacred 
and  profane  rites  might  easily  lead  to  the  extension  of  song  and  music 


156 


7'HE  EARLIER  LYRIC  POETS. 


is  evident.     We  see  a  similar  occurrence  in  the  growth  of  the  modern 
drama  from  the  mediaeval  religious  mysteries. 

It  is  hard  for  us  to  comprehend  the  importance  of  music  among  the 
Greeks  ;  their  eager  and  curious  minds  found  no  ancient  languages  or 
history  or  scientific  work  awaiting  them,  and  the  education  of  youth 
consisted  almost  entirely  of  physical  training  and  of  mental  and  moral 
instruction  under  the  influence  of  music.  Music  was  expected  to  be 
a  valuable  means  of  forming  the  character,  and  not  a  luxury,  as  all 
artistic  appreciation  is  with  us  moderns.  The  passions  of  the  young 
were  not  to  be  awakened,  but  controlled,  purified,  and  brought  into 
complete  harmony  by  this  art.     All  the   religious   festivals,  various  as 


GODS  AND  PRIESTS  OF  THE  ELEUSINIAN   MYSTERIES. 
(From  a  Relief-Vase  froin  Cumte  at  Petersburg.) 

they  were,  were  alike  in  the  prominence  given  to  music,  which 
was  either  refining  or  inspiring  or  exciting.  Such  at  least  was  the 
division  made  by  philosophers.  Just  what  was  meant  by  these  words 
is  obscure  ;  all  we  know  is  that  great  store  was  set  by  the  music,  but 
exactly  what  the  music  was  is  lost  in  obscurity.  With  the  vocal  and 
instrumental  music  the  dance  was  closely  connected,  as  we  shall  see  in 
the  discussion  of  the  Greek  drama.  While  all  this  remote  history  was 
obscure  even  to  those  Greeks  whose  works  have  come  down  to  us, 
many  of  the  statements  which  satisfied  them  have  proved  too  vague 
and  evidently  inaccurate  to   suit   modern  scholars.     Yet   it   is   known 


GREEK  MUSICAL  INSTRUMENTS. 


157 


that  the  favorite  instruments  used  were  the  flute,  and,  for  strings,  the 
lyre,  of  which  last  various  modifi- 
cations are  mentioned.  The 
syrinx,  or  shepherd's  pipe,  was  the 
common  property  of  the  whole 
Indo-European  race.  String  in- 
struments were  also  familiar  in 
the  same  remote  antiquity  as  the 
flute,  but  it  was  from  Phrygia 
that  there  came  renewed  impulse 
to  playing  the  flute,  and  it  grew 
at  about  the  time  of  the  first 
Olympiad  to  share  much  of  the 
prominence 


DOUBLE  FLUTES   AND  SHEPHERD'S   PIPES. 


^ 


*4.^ 


J 


of  stringed  instruments.  The  singer  accom- 
panied himself  on  the  guitar,  or  some  instru- 
ment of  that  kind  ;  only  later  arose  the  custom 
of  playing  upon  it  without  song.  For  obvious 
reasons,  the  flute  was  always  played  by  another 
person  than  the  singer,  and  those  who  performed 
on  it,  except  in  Boeotia,  were  foreigners ;  for  the 
Greeks  were  unwilling  to  play  upon  the  instru- 
ment, because  the  practice  compelled  some  dis- 
tortion of  the  features,  and  so  offended  this 
people  with  their  keen  love  of  beauty.  Often 
both  the  flute  and  stringed  instruments  were 
employed. 

The  main  use  of  music  was  to  serve  as  an  aid 
FLUTES.  ^Q    poetry  ;  thus  it  was  used    first    in    religious 

ceremonies,  and  at  an  early  date  it  was  employed 
in  connection  with  profane 
verse.  The  flute  accom- 
panied the  formulas  of 
prayer,  and  in  time  it  ac- 
companied festive  songs ; 
later  the  flute  and  stringed 
instruments  were  used  to- 
gether. Music,  song,  and 
dance  were  combined  to 
accompany  poetry,  to 
which,    however,     they  flutes. 

were  always    subordinate. 

The  father  of  music,  as  Homer  was  the  father  of  poetry,  was  Olym- 


.15^  THE   EARLIER   LYRIC  POETS. 

pus,  a  Phrygian,  who  is  said  to  have  lived  towards  the  end  of  the  eighth 
century  before  Christ.  This  was  the  season  when  the  Phrygian  civili- 
zation flowered,  and  from  that  country  Greece  received  the  most  im- 
portant elements  of  its  musical  culture.  We  read  that  Midas,  the 
Phrygian  king,  received  the  reciters  of  the  Homeric  poems  at  his 
court,  and  the  Greeks  derived  what  they  could  get  from  their  neigh- 
bors. It  was  as  a  composer  for  the  flute  that  Olympus  was  famous. 
It  was  under  the  influence  of  the  Phrygian  music  that  the  use  of  the 
flute  became  prominent  in  religious  ceremonies.  Thence  it  swiftly 
spread  to  profane  poetry.  The  flute  was  used  to  accompany  the  elegy ; 
the  iambic  poetry  was  sung  in  connection  with  stringed  instruments; 
while  the  songs  employed  either  or  both. 


II. 

These  divisions  of  the  poetry  that  made  their  appearance  when  the 
impersonal  epic  was  fading  away  were  not  hard  and  fast  divisions,  but 
were  the  various  forms  used  almost  equally  by  different  writers.  The 
elegy  is  simply  a  poem  written  in  alternate  hexameters  and  pentam- 
eters, each  pair  of  which  was  called  a  distich.  The  origin  of  this  form 
was  long  sought  for  by  the  Greeks,  and  they  commonly  named  Cal- 
linus,  an  Ephesian  poet  who  is  said  to  have  lived  about  720  B.C.,  as 
its  inventor.  It  may  at  least  be  agreed  that  he  was  the  first  to  use  this 
measure  of  whom  any  mention  has  come  down  to  us.  As  we  should 
naturally  expect,  in  what  few  fragments  of  his  work  have  been  spared 
by  time,  and  in  what  we  are  told  about  him,  there  are  traces  of  the 
surviving  influences  of  the  expiring  epic  to  match  this  variation  of  the 
familiar  measure.  Thus,  in  one  of  his  elegies  he  appears  to  have 
treated  a  part  of  the  Trojan  story,  and  in  the  longest  bit  of  his  work 
that  has  reached  us,  a  fragment  of  but  twenty-one  lines,  we  are 
reminded  quite  as  much  of  the  epic  poetry  as  of  the  later  similar 
elegies.  Yet  it  is  dangerous  to  build  too  much  on  so  uncertain  a 
foundation,  for  that  Callinus  wrote  the  elegy  is  open  to  grave  doubt ; 
and  even  if  the  fragment  of  the  poem  attributed  to  him  is  genuine,  we 
lack  the  earlier  steps  that  led  up  to  the  comparatively  complete  form 
in  which  we  find  even  the  earliest  elegies. 

Almost  simultaneous  with  the  date  assigned  to  Callinus  is  the  appear- 
ance of  Archilochus,  who  made  use  of  the  form  already  employed  and 
carried  it  to  a  fuller  development.  While  Callinus  may  have  rested  on 
the  earlier  epic,  Archilochus  at  least  speaks  out  freely  in  his  own  per- 
son ;  attacking  his  enemies  and  by  no  means  sparing  his  own  faults. 
We  know  that  he  was  born  in  the  island  of  Paros,  and  was  the  son  of 


BEGINNINGS  OF  LYRIC  POETRY— ARCHILOCHUS, 


159 


Telesiphos,  a  man  of  position  who  was  deputed  by  the  Parians  to  found 
a  colony  in  Thasos.  Yet  Archilochus  was  driven  by  poverty  to  lead- 
ing a  life  of  adventure,  as  a  mercenary  soldier  and  as  a  colonist  at 
Thasos,  without  much  profit.  In  Paros  he  was  betrothed  to  Neobule, 
a  daughter  of  Lycambes,  who  later  revoked  his  assent  to  the  match, 
and  thus  aroused  the  indignation  of  the  rejected  lover,  who  expressed 
his  wrath  in  the  most  violent  manner.  His  revengeful  satires,  written 
in  the  iambic  metre,  are  said  to  have  driven  both  Lycambes  and  his 
daughter  to  hang  themselves.  This  statement,  whether  true  or  not, 
at  least  proves  the  bitterness  of  his 
attack,  which  the  few  fragments 
that  survive  painfully  attest.  Yet 
in  antiquity  his  literary  skill  was 
warmly  admired,  and  he  was 
frequently  placed  by  the  side  of 
Homer  as  an  early  and  wonderful 
poet,  although,  on  the  other  hand, 
some  condemned  his  asperity. 
What  the  Greeks  felt  was  gratitude 
to  the  man  who  first  spoke  out  what 
was  in  his  soul,  thus  indicating 
the  way  in  which  their  literature 
was  to  attain  its  highest  triumph. 
The  change  from  the  vagueness  of 
the  obsolescent  epic  to  the  expres- 
sion of  personal  feeling  was  like 
that  which  men  felt  at  the  end  of 
the  last  century  when  the  romantic 
poets  turned  their  backs  on  philo- 
sophic and  didactic  verse  and  gave 
utterance  to  their  own  emotions, 
their  hopes  and  fears.  In  the  few 
bits  that  eluded  the  timidity  of  the 
monks  who  were  repelled  by  the 
coarseness  of  Archilochus,  we  see  what  was  destined  to  be  the  great 
charm  of  the  lyric  poetry  of  Greece — its  absolute  directness.  The 
light  came  directly  from  the  poet's  heart  ;  in  modern  times  it  is 
too  often  refracted  by  passing  through  foreign  culture.  Burns  in 
Scotland  and  Giinther  in  Germany  almost  alone  among  modern 
poets  speak  with  the  classic  directness.  And  as  they  both  were 
the  perfected  representations  of  forgotten  predecessors,  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  believe  that  Archilochus  had  not  the  work  of  earlier  men 
behind    him,   by   whom  the  measures  that   he  used  were  brought  to 


ARCHILOCHUS, 


i^'O  THE  EARLIER  LYRIC  POETS. 

something  like  his  vigor.  His  undoubted  coarseness  is  more  like  a 
survival  of  original  savagery  than  an  invention  of  his  own,  if,  indeed,  a 
man  ever  invents  any  thing.  Certainly  this  hypothesis  is  more  tenable 
than  the  contrary  one,  that  he  devised  the  various  measures  which  he 
handled  with  such  uniform  skill.  His  satires,  hymns,  none  of  which 
have  reached  us,  elegiacs,  etc.,  show  his  versatility,  and  in  some  of  the 
fragments  we  find  abundant  evidence  of  the  intensity  and  the  appro- 
priate expression  of  his  feelings.  In  the  variety  and  acerbity  of  his 
poems  we  see  reflected  the  confusion  of  his  times,  when  a  restless  spirit 
was  impelling  the  Greeks  to  found  new  colonies  and  there  was  a  gen- 
eral severing  of  older  ties. 

The  following  translation,  with  a  few  extracts  given  below,  will  show 
what  we  know  of  his  qualities  : 

Oh  !  heart,  my  heart,  see  thou  yield  not,  but  bear 

Thyself  unflinchingly  before  the  foe, 

With  breast  held  firm  to  meet  the  hostile  spear. 

Then,  if  thou  conquer,  joy  not  overloud  ; 

Nor,  if  thou'rt  vanquished,  shalt  thou  seek  thy  home. 

Express  thy  joy  but  with  a  modest  voice  ; 

And  sink,  o'erwhelmed  with  grief,  upon  the  ground  ; 

Nor  be  unseemly  with  thy  woe  o'ercome, 

But  measure  in  thy  joy  and  grief  be  found. 

It  may,  indeed,  be  asserted  that  every  time  of  political  change  is 
accompanied  by  an  overhauling  of  the  current  literary  methods,  not 
necessarily  as  a  result,  but  as  a  simultaneous  product  of  men's  altering 
opinions  and  feelings.  The  equable,  placid  artistic  beauty  of  the 
Homeric  poems  is  as  unmistakably  an  indication  of  a  period  of  polit- 
ical repose  as  is  a  wheat-field  of  the  existence  of  agriculture ;  and  the 
nature  of  the  early  civilization  of  the  heroic  times  may  be  gathered 
from  the  glory  that  is  cast  upon  the  brave  leaders  and  the  insignificance 
of  common  men.  We  see  an  aristocracy  rejoicing  in  its  best  qualities, 
and  yet  undisturbed  by  popular  revolution,  quite  as  distinctly  as  we 
see  in  Pope's  poems  the  social  importance  of  men  of  education  and 
refinement,  or  the  general  content  that  characterized  the  middle  ages 
in  the  epics  of  that  period.  At  the  first  dawn  of  Greek  civilization,  as 
we  see  it  reflected  in  Homer,  the  king  ruled  by  divine  right,  without 
question  ;  this  submission,  however,  gave  way  to  indifference,  which 
was  in  time  followed  by  antipathy,  and  at  the  period  when  the  posses- 
sion of  power  was  sought  by  an  oligarchy  or  contested  by  despots  we 
find  the  literature  expressing,  not  merely  excited  political  or  martial 
feeling,  but  also  the  new  importance  of  the  individual,  as  we  see  it 
again  finding  utterance  at  the  beginning  of  the  Renaissance  after  the 
long   reign    of  the    middle  ages,   during  which  men  had  drawn  types 


POLITICAL    CONDITIONS  REFLECTED   IN    THE  POEMS.  i6i 

rather  than  characters  in  their  poetry,  as  they  had  done  in  their  painting ; 
for  portraiture,  it  will  be  remembered,  only  began  with  the  Renaissance. 
A  similar  change  occurred  with  the  outbfreak  of  the  Romantic  revival 
towards  the  end  of  the  last  century,  when  the  representation  of  man 
in  the  abstract  gave  way  to  the  more  vivid  delineation  of  intenser  per- 
sonal feeling.  And,  since  politics  and  letters  are  but  part  of  human 
interest,  we  may  see  elsewhere  indications  of  similar  change  in  the 
new  advance  of  colonization  and  the  making  over  of  mercantile  condi- 
tions at  both  of  these  important  eras,  as  we  see  it  in  the  geographical 
reconstruction  of  Greece  at  the  expiration  of  the  heroic  age.  While 
these  lie  outside  of  our  attention,  the  changes  in  the  music  and  mea- 
sures that  accompanied  this  development  of  Grecian  life  find  their 
diminished  counterpart  in  modern  times.  The  growth  of  the  elegiac 
metre,  the  use  of  anapaetic  and  iambic  metres,  as  well  as  the  musical 
variations,  all  of  which  came  into  prominence  at  this  time,  were  the 
natural  expression  of  the  general  change,  and  are  such  as  invariably 
accompany  a  period  of  revolution. 


III. 

Simonides,  the  son  of  Crines,  of  Samos,  who  carried  a  colony  to  the 
island  of  Amorgos,  belongs  to  this  list  of  early  lyric  poets.  He  wrote 
two  books  of  elegies  treating  of  Samian  archaeology,  which  have  not 
come  down  to  us.  What  we  have  of  his  work  consists  of  some 
fragments  of  his  iambics  in  the  Ionic  dialect,  all  but  two  being 
mere  scraps.  One  of  these,  consisting  of  one  hundred  and  eighteen 
lines,  treats  of  the  usual  subject  of  the  satirist,  the  faults  of  women, 
after  a  fashion  that  recalls  Hesiod,  very  much  as  Archilochus  recalls 
Homer. 

When  the  world  was  created,  woman  was  lacking,  but  soon  she  ap- 
peared and  was  endowed  with  various  qualities  of  animals  and  inani- 
mate things :  one  has  those  of  the  fox ;  another  of  the  dog,  and  never 
holds  her  peace;  a  third  of  clay;  the  next  of  the  sea,  and  is  conse- 
quently changeable.  One,  however,  is  sprung  from  the  bee,  and  from 
this  industrious  ancestry  inherits  a  few  attractive  domestic  qualities. 
This  artificial  genealogy  bears  all  the  marks  of  antiquity,  and  already 
Hesiod  in  the  Theogony  had  compared  the  idle  and  pleasure-seeking 
women  to  the  drones  of  the  hive.  This  semi-facetious  denunciation  of 
the  female  sex  was  then  already  classic,  and  it  acquired  added  charm, 
not  merely  from  the  new  form  in  which  it  was  expressed,  but  from  its 
keener  application  to  the  modified  society  of  these  later  days.  In  the 
heroic  age  the  position  of  women  had  been  a  tolerably  exalted  one  ; 


SATIRES    UPON    WOMEN— MISERY  OF    THE    WORLD.  163 

but  now  they  had  lost  that,  and  had  become  subordinate  to  the  men, 
and  had  thereby  become  exposed  to  abuse,  for  no  one  ever  lived  who 
praised  his  slaves.  They  now  began  to  be  regarded  in  some  quarters 
as  the  original  cause  of  all  misfortune,  as  necessary  evils,  and  conse- 
quently as  legitimate  objects  of  satire  and  malevolence.  This  opinion 
was  not  universal,  however;  for  although  among  the  lonians  the  cus- 
tom grew,  spreading  among  them,  perhaps,  from  their  oriental  neigh- 
bors, of  shutting  up  the  women  in  their  separate  quarters,  and  the 
Dorians  kept  them  under  somewhat  strict  control,  the  ^olians,  on  the 
other  hand,  allowed  them  greater  freedom,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  some 
of  the  richest  gems  of  lyric  verse  were  composed  by  women  of  that 
race,  as  well  as  of  the  Doric,  while  there  are  no  women  poets  among 
the  lonians. 

The  other  fragment  of  Simonides  is  a  melancholy  expression  of  the 
misery  of  the  world,  another  subject  almost  as  trite  as  the  manifold 
faults  of  women.  This  wail  is.  uttered  in  a  didactic  poem  addressed  to 
his  son,  in  which  the  worn  father  tries  to  convey  some  of  the  lessons 
of  life,  and  to  show  the  emptiness  of  all  things,  that  all  effort  is  vain, 
and  the  world  is  wholly  bad.  In  short,  Simonides  is  far  from  being 
an  optimist.  What  we  notice  in  him  is  rather  the  instructive,  didactic 
tone  of  his  writings,  which  is  very  different  from  the  personal  feeling 
and  noteworthy  vigor  of  Archilochus.  A  few  other  scattered  frag- 
ments also  convey  the  same  impression.  And  it  must  be  remembered 
in  the  consideration  of  all  these  lyric  poets  that  we  have  to  judge  of 
nearly  all  from  the  smallest  amount  of  testimony,  for  what  is  left  is 
but  the  meagrest  proportion  of  what  existed.  For  centuries  every 
feast  in  every  city  of  Greece  and  its  many  colonies  was  celebrated  in 
song;  and  this  abundant  production  was  but  part;  for  what  we  may 
call  the  unoflficial  poetry,  that  which  was  expressive  of  the  writer's 
own  feelings  and  emotions,  was  quite  as  great  in  quantity.  Much  of 
it  was  naturally  of  only  temporary  interest  and  soon  fell  out  of  sight, 
especially  when  the  later  forms  of  composition,  and  especially  the 
drama,  became  its  successful  rival.  The  lyric  poetry  may  be  said  to 
have  enjoyed  unbroken  popularity  until  about  the  beginning  of  the 
Peloponnesian  War,  and  then  to  have  lost  ground.  Much  had  been 
lost  when  the  Alexandrian  critics  began  to  collect  and  edit  the  work  of 
the  earlier  time,  yet  the  amount  that  existed  was  enormous.  Seneca 
tells  us  that  Cicero  said  that,  if  he  were  to  live  two  lives,  he  should  be 
unable  to  read  all  the  Greek  lyric  poets.  While  the  Romans  read  the 
lyrics,  they  preferred  the  Alexandrian  elegies,  which  have  shared  the 
same  fate,  and  what  was  once  an  enormous  collection  is  now  scarcely 
more  than  a  mass  of  ruins,  and  for  chance  lines  we  are  often  indebted 
to  the  wish  of  some  grammarian  to  show  us  some  rare  or  noteworthy 


164  THE  EARLIER  LYRIC    POETS. 

use  of  some  phrase  or  word.  Those  who  have  survived  most  com- 
pletely owe  their  escape  from  annihilation  to  the  employment  of  their 
writings  as  text-books  for  children  or  to  some  lucky  chance.  Hosts  of 
names  are  gone  beyond  all  chance  of  recovery;  only  of  Theognis  and 
Pindar  have  we  anything  like  a  full  text. 


J'    s 
WOMEN     CRUSHING     CORN, 


CHAPTER  II.— THE  LYRIC  POETS  {Continued). 

I. — Tyrtasus,  and  His  Patriotic  Songs  in  Behalf  of  Sparta — In  Contrast,  the  Amorous 
Wail  of  Mimnermus  —Solon  in  Athens,  as  a  Law-giver,  and  as  a  Writer  of  Elegies 
Mainly  of  Political  Import.  II. — The  Melic  Poetry,  and  its  Connection  with 
Music  and  Dance — The  Growth  of  Music  ;  the  Different  Divisions — Alcman, 
Alcasus,  Sappho,  Erinna,  Stesichorus,  Ibycus — Anacreon,  and  His  Vast  Popular-' 
ity.  III. — The  Elegiac  Poetry — Phocylides  and  His  Inculcation  of  Reasrnable- 
ness — Xenophanes  and  His  Philosophical  Exposition — Theognis  and  His  Polit- 
ical Teachings — Simonides,  His  Longer  Poems  and  His  Epigrams — Bacchylides, 
Lasus,  Myrtis,  and  the  Predecessors  of  Pindar — Translations  of  Some  Lyrical 
Poems. 

I. 

THE  variety  of  the  subjects  treated  was  very  great.  Ardent  patriot- 
ism finds  utterance  in  the  work  of  Tyrtaeus,  son  of  Archembrotus, 
who  flourished  in  Sparta  about  680  B.C.  He  was  by  birth  an  Athenian, 
and  was  invited  to  Sparta,  so  the  story  runs,  in  accordance  with  the 
command  of  the  Delphian  oracle  at  the  time  of  the  second  Messenian 
war,  for  in  Sparta  the  arts  of  refinement  were  so  little  cultivated  that 
the  country  was  obliged  to  import  its  poets,  just  as  England  and  Amer- 
ica get  their  musicians  from  Germany.  Tyrtaeus  at  once  received 
the  right  of  citizenship,  and  devoted  his  talents  to  the  service  of  his 
adopted  home.  Before  his  arrival,  the  war  had  been  more  than  uncer- 
tain ;  the  Spartans  had  suffered  many  defeats,  but  Tyrtaeus  took 
charge  of  their  forces  and  led  them  to  victory.  This  was  not  his  only 
service ;  besides  winning  fame  as  a  general,  he  composed  elegies  and 
lyrical  war-songs  that  filled  the  Spartans  with  patriotic  enthusiasm. 
The  elegies  bore  a  great  likeness  to  what  is  ascribed  to  Callinus, 
so  much  so,  indeed,  that  the  later  poet  has  been  credited  with  the  long 
elegy  of  his  predecessor.  They  are  earnest  appeals  to  the  bravery  of 
the  Spartans ;  their  main  subject  is  a  simple  one — the  glory  of  death 
for  one's  country.  To  die  in  the  van  fighting  for  home  is  the  happiest 
fate  that  can  befall  a  brave  man.  With  this,  in  the  first  elegy,  he  com- 
pares the  wretched  existence  of  the  coward  who  escapes  and  begs  his 
bread  from  door  to  door,  with  father,  mother,  wife,  and  children.  Such 
a  man  knows  only  misery  ;  he  never  receives  respect,  pity,  or  honor  ; 
hence  let  us  fight  for  our  country,  our  children,  our  wives ;  let  us  not 
fear  to  die ! 


X 


'^-^ 


■^;» 


1 66  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

Let  no  one  take  flight !  Especially  let  no  young  man  run  away. 
Those  advanced  in  years  may  retreat,  but  it  is  disgraceful  if  an  older 
man  lies  dead  before  a  younger  one,  if  the  gray-haired  veteran  breathes 
his  last  in  the  dust.     As  Campbell  translates  it  : 

"  Leave  not  our  sires  to  stem  the  unequal  fight, 
Whose  limbs  are  nerved  no  more  with  buoyant  might ; 
Nor,  lagging  baci<\vard,  let  the  younger  breast 
Permit  the  man  of  age  (a  sight  unblest) 
To  welter  in  the  combat's  foremost  thrust,  | 

His  hoary  head  dishevelled  in  the  dust. 
And  ven;>rable  bosom  bleeding  bare. 
But  youth's  fair  form,  though  fallen,  is  ever  fair, 
V  And  beautiful  in  death  the  boy  appears, 

\        The  hero  boy,  that  dies  in  blooming  years : 
In  man's  regret  he  lives,  and  woman's  tears ; 
More  sacred  than  in  life,  and  lovelier  far. 
For  having  perished  in  the  front  of  war." 

This  exaltation  of  the  immortal  beauty  of  the  youth  dead  in  battle 
is  a  peculiarly  Greek  touch,  and  it  had  appeared  in  Homer.  Callinus, 
too,  had  already  said  that  a  hero,  when  he  died,  left  the  whole  people 
to  mourn  him,  and,  living,  is  likened  to  the  demigods;  but  here,  for 
Campbell's  version  alters  the  Greek  directness,  the  youth  who,  when 
living,  is  admired  by  men  and  loved  by  women,  is  beautiful  even  fall- 
ing in  the  foremost  line. 

In  the  next  elegy,  once  more  the  Spartans  are  urged  to  bravery,  and 
the  exact  method  of  fighting  is  described.  He  mentions,  too,  the  vary- 
ing fortunes  of  the  Spartan  armies,  now  victorious,  now  beaten. 

The  third  elegy  celebrates  the  importance  of  bravery,  and  the  insig- 
nificance of  every  other  form  of  merit  in  comparison  with  it.  Strength, 
speed,  beauty,  wealth,  power,  eloquence,  fame  of  any  other  kind,  are 
as  nothing  if  the  man  have  not  bravery,  if  he  be  not  bold  in  fight,  and 
dare  not  look  grim  death  in  the  eye,  and  do  not  aim  at  the  opposing 
foe.  This  is  virtue,  this  is  the  highest  gain  for  man,  an  honor  for  him 
and  a  blessing  for  the  city  and  all  its  inhabitants,  when  a  man  stands 
firm  in  the  foremost  rank  and  thinks  not  of  flight.  If  he  falls,  he  and 
his  whole  race  become  famous  ;  if  he  survives,  he  receives  every 
honor. 

Tyrtaeusalso  wrote  a  political  elegy,  the  Eunomia,  or  Sound  Govern- 
ment, as  we  may  call  it,  of  which  unfortunately  only  little  is  left  us, 
the  longest  fragment  consisting  of  only  ten  lines.  It  seems  from  these 
to  have  been  a  historical  sketch  of  the  past  of  the  Spartan  state,  and 
to  have  contained  much  political  instruction  for  the  time  at  which  it 
was  written,  about  the  35th  Olympiad.  The  author's  aim  was  to 
encourage   the  firmness  of  the  Spartans   by  recounting    their  early 


MARTIAL  VERSE  OF  TYRTMUS— LOVE-SONGS  OF MIMNERMUS.       167 

struggles  and  glories  and  the  varying  fortunes  of  their  war  with  the 
Messenians.  It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  we  have  not  the  whole 
poem,  which  was  perhaps  the  very  first  in  which  historical  description 
and  political  reflection  found  expression  in  Greek  literature.  There  was 
this  advantage  for  Sparta  in  having  no  literary  past,  that  Tyrtaeus  had 
free  ground  in  which  to  work. 

One  other  form  of  composition  that  he  employed  was  that  of  martial 
songs.  The  Spartans  had  for  a  long  time  charged  in  battle  with  the 
accompaniment  of  music  ;  later  they  had  used  songs  adapted  to  these 
melodies,  and  it  was  songs  of  this  sort  that  Tyrtaeus  wrote.  The  long- 
est fragment  ran  something  like  this  : 

March  on,  ye  soldiers  of  Sparta, 
Ye  children  of  noble  fathers, 
.    On  your  left  arm  holding  your  shields. 
Swinging  your  lances  with  boldness, 
Without  regard  for  your  lives. 
For  such  is  the  custom  in  Sparta. 

Very  diflFerent  from  the  patriotic  vigor  of  Tyrtaeus  is  the  pensive, 
amorous  strain  of  Mimnermus  of  Colophon  in  Ionia,  who  flourished  a 
very  little  later  than  the  Spartan  poet.  In  the  Ionic  colonies  life  was 
easy  and  sweet  ;  they  were  the  home  of  luxury  and  refinement,  and  in 
the  absence  of  political  independence-for  Colophon  had  fallen  under 
Lydian  control-men's  minds  naturally  turned  to  the  enjoyment  of  the 
present.  Mimnermus  is  said  to  have  been  a  flute-player,  and  thus  to 
have  been  naturally  led  to  elegiac  composition ;  his  method  was 
determined  by  the  interests  of  his  surroundings.  It  is  said  that  the 
inspiration  of  his  poetry  was  his  love  for  the  female  flute-player 
Nanno,  and  his  poems  about  her  were  a  model  for  the  later  writers 
of  love-songs.  He  was  regarded  as  the  originator  of  the  love-eleg>'', 
but  too  little  of  his  work  is  left  to  enable  us  to  decide  about  the 
method  of  his  treatment.  In  the  fragments  that  remain  we  find  his 
constant  lamentations  over  the  brevity  of  youth.  He  bids  his  hearers 
to  gather  rosebuds  while  they  may,  to  make  the  best  use  of  their 
short  playing-time,  for  the  gods  grant  no  return  of  strength  and  youth. 
Certainly  no  contrast  is  more  vivid  than  that  between  Tyrtaeus's  com- 
mand to  the  young  to  die  in  battle  and  Mimnermus's  soft  injunctions 
to  them  to  make  the  most  of  their  tender  years  and  to  enjoy  all  the 
pleasures  that  life  can  give.  What  Mimnermus  denounces  is  not  cow- 
ardice, but  simply  old  age — he  must  have  been  well  on  in  years  when 
he  wrote,  for  youth  is  sweetest  when  it  is  gone  ;  the  young  know  its 
bitterness  too  well — and  he  chose  his  sixtieth  year  as  the  age  at  which 
he  wished  to  die.     Doubtless  he  lived  to  be  much  older. 

Mimnermus  did  not  confine  himself  to  these  lighter  subjects,  how- 


1 68  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

ever ;  he  wrote  also  about  the  estabHshment  of  the  Ionic  colonies  on 
the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  and  of  their  struggles  with  their  neighbors, 
but  it  was  the  expression  of  his  own  feelings  that  gave  him  his  name. 

Just  as  the  poems  of  Tyrtaeus  make  clear  to  us  the  affairs  of  Sparta 
at  the  time  of  the  second  Messenian  War,  and  those  of  Mimnermus 
expose  the  voluptuousness  of  the  Ionic  colonies,  so  do  those  of  their 
contemporary,  Solon,  throw  light  upon  an  important  part  of  Athenian 
history,  and  afford  us  the  first  example  of  Athenian  literature.  While 
Sparta  was  contesting  for  military  supremacy,  and  colonies  in  Asia 
Minor  were  declining  into  oriental  luxury,  Athens  was  laying  the  foun- 
dations of  its  future  political  and  intellectual  supremacy.  Here,  how- 
ever, as  elsewhere, we  regret  the  meagreness  of  the  material  that  is 
left  to  us,  and  while  we  have  of  Solon  much  more  than  of  both  the 
others,  it  is  true,  as  Grote  has  said,  that  "  there  is  hardly  anything  more 
to  be  deplored  amid  the  lost  treasures  of  the  Grecian  mind  than  the 
poems  of  Solon  ;  for  we  see  by  the  remaining  fragments  that  they 
contained  notices  of  the  public  and  social  phenomena  before  him, 
which  he  was  compelled  attentively  to  study,  blended  with  the  touch- 
ing expression  of  his  own  personal  feelings  in  the  post,  alike  honor- 
able and  difficult,  to  which  the  confidence  of  his  countrymen  had 
exalted  him."  Solon  was  above  all  things  a  statesman  who  conveyed 
political  instruction  through  his  elegies,  and  his  importance  to  the 
Athenian  state  is  well  known  ;  it  was  not  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
him  who  made  the  laws  if  he  made  the  songs.  He  was  born  at  about 
the  time  of  the  35th  Olympiad,  of  a  good  family ;  but  poverty 
fortunately  compelled  him  to  travel  about  on  business,  and  his  roving 
life  brought  him  into  communication  with  the  most  celebrated  men  of 
his  day.  When  he  returned  to  Athens,  he  made  himself  conspicuous 
by  his  efforts  to  recover  Salamis,  for  so  long  as  that  island  remained 
in  the  possession  of  Megara  it  was  impossible  for  Athens  to  develop 
into  a  seaport.  Plutarch  tells  us  that  the  Athenians  forbade  any 
renewal  of  the  proposal  to  capture  Salamis,  but  that  Solon,  in  his 
indignation,  pretended  to  be  mad,  and,  appearing  suddenly  in  the 
market-place,  recited  his  elegy  on  Salamis  to  a  great  concourse  of  the 
people ;  of  this  poem  but  a  few  lines  have  been  spared,  wherein  he 
bids  his  fellow-citizens  to  rise  and  fight  for  the  lovely  isle  of  Salamis. 
The  success  of  this  ruse  made  him  conspicuous ;  but  his  fame  was 
most  firmly  established  when  he  was  made  archon,  and  granted  extra- 
ordinary powers  for  the  revision  of  the  Athenian  constitution.  It  was 
during  his  lifetime,  and  in  great  measure  as  a  result  of  his  intelligent 
direction,  that  the  foundations  of  the  future  greatness  of  Athens  were 
laid.  What  especially  concerns  us  here  is  the  reflection  of  his  political 
wisdom  in  his  poetry,  which  was  the  vehicle  he  chose  for  the  expression 


SOLON'S  PRINCIPLES— RICHES.  169 

of  his  solicitude  for  his  countrymen.  What  we  notice  is  his  temper- 
ate wisdom.  Without  partisanship  he  directed  the  hot  poHtical  inter- 
ests of  the  Athenians,  holding  a  middle  course  between  the  aristocratic 
and  radical  extremes,  yet  not  allying  himself  with  the  intermediate 
party,  and  securing  the  respect  of  all.  He  seems,  too,  to  have  perceived 
the  impotence  of  laws  that  did  not  rest  upon  the  deliberate  decision 
of  the  people ;  and,  like  the  other  seven  sages,  as  they  were  called,  he 
did  his  best  to  establish  a  gound  ethical  core  in  the  hearts  of  his 
countrymen.  Thus  in  the  longest  piece  of  his  work,  the  only  one  that 
has  reached  us  in  a  complete  form,  he  begins  with  the  wish  that  Zeus  and 
the  Muses  will  hear  his  prayers,  and  grant  him  blessings  and  happiness 
from  the  gods  and  reputation  among  men.  Then  he  goes  on  to  say 
that  only  what  is  honestly  acquired  is  of  benefit,  that  unholy  earnings 
remain  for  but  a  short  time.  Even  if  the  divine  Nemesis  seems  to 
delay  or  to  overlook  wrong-doing,  it  is  sure  to  overtake  the  evil-doer  at 
last,  and  although  he  may  himself  escape,  his  children  or  his  children's 
children  will  suffer,  "Zeus  seeth  all  things,  and  like  a  wind  scattering 
the  clouds,  which  shakes  the  deep  places  of  the  tumultuous  sea  and 
rages  over  the  fertile  land,  and  rises  at  last  to  heaven,  the  home  of  the 
gods,  and  makes  the  sky  clear,  whereupon  the  sun  bursts  forth  in  glory, 
and  the  clouds  are  gone — such  is  the  vengeance  of  Zeus."  Let  no  one 
then  judge  from  the  present  alone  or  indulge  in  foolish  hopes.  Yet 
such  is  human  nature ;  the  coward  deems  himself  a  hero ;  the  ill- 
favored  imagines  that  he  is  beautiful.  Whatever  a  man's  occupation 
— and  Solon  gives  a  line  or  two,  to  describing  the  diverse  occupations 
of  his  contemporaries :  the  mariner,  the  husbandman,  the  artisan,  the 
seer,  the  physician — the  issue  lies  in  the  hands  of  the  gods ;  all  our 
pains  may  be  of  no  avail,  and  our  foolish  actions  may  bring  us  rich 
reward.  The  elegy  then  concludes  with  saying  that  all  our  efforts  are 
for  wealth,  which  is  often  ruinous,  and  we  blindly  overlook  the  perils 
with  which  Zeus  has  involved  its  possession. 

This  lesson,  which  is  as  true  and  as  necessary  here  to-day  as  it  was 
in  Greece  six  centuries  before  Christ,  is  one  that  other  thoughtful 
teachers  there,  as  elsewhere,  have  never  been  tired  of  preaching  to  men 
who  have  seen  in  wealth  the  one  great  power  of  the  world.  In  the 
case  of  Solon  it  had  a  genuine  significance,  and  was  far  from  being  the 
wail  of  a  hopelessly  impoverished  moralist  whose  denunciation  of 
riches  is  mere  regret  for  their  absence ;  he  had  modified  the  constitu- 
tion by  substituting  property  for  birth  as  the  basis  x>f  representation, 
and  thus  he  recognized  and  approved  the  new  importance  of  material 
prosperity  ;  but  he  sought  to  control  it  and  to  keep  it  subordinate  to 
uprightness.  There  is  scarcely  one  of  the  sages  who  does  not  denounce 
ill-gotten  gain.     Theognis  expressed  the  same  sentiments  and  foretold 


1 7°  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

the  sure,  though  possibly  delayed,  wrath  of  Zeus.  He  who  acquires 
wealth  honorably  will  keep  it ;  he  who  grows  rich  by  injustice  or 
covetousness,  though  at  first  it  may  seem  to  be  of  advantage,  will 
find  it  turn  to  ashes.  Men  are  deceived,  however,  because  the  gods 
do  not  always  punish  the  crime  the  moment  that  it  is  committed  ; 
one  man  pays  in  person,  another  leaves  misfortune  to  fall  upon  his 
children,  a  third  escapes  justice  by  death. 

This  utterance  regarding  the  certainty,  of  punishment  is  something 
that  all  mankind  has  at  all  times  been  ready  to  see,  at  least  with  regard 
to  others'  sins ;  it  is  a  frequent  saying  in  early  Chinese  literature ; 
among  the  Asiatics  it  became  the  main  principle  of  Buddhism,  which 
established  a  rigid  debit  and  credit  account  of  human  actions,  and  is 
now  among  civilized  races,  under  the  guise  of  heredity,  receiving 
careful  scientific  examination,  such  as  awaits  every  human  thought 
and  action.  To  the  more  thoughtful  Greeks  of  this  time  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  life  appeared  to  be  the  direct  acts  of  jealous  and  revengeful 
deities.  Life  was  above  all  things  uncertain,  "  No  mortal  is  wholly 
happy,  all  upon  whom  the  sun  shines  are  wretched,"  Solon  said.  Yet 
although  the  wicked  flourish  and  the  upright  suffer,  we  would  not  ex- 
change with  them,  or  barter  virtue  for  wealth,  for  virtue  is  a  lasting 
possession,  and  wealth  slips  from  one  man  to  another.  Elsewhere  he 
says  that  the  man  with  much  silver  and  gold,  and  who  owns  large 
estates,  is  no  richer  than  he  who  has  just  enough,  for  no  one  can  take 
his  superfluous  wealth  to  the  grave  or  buy  exemption  from  death,  dis- 
ease, or  old  age.  In  all  of  these  poems  we  notice  the  pensiveness  of 
a  man  who  sees  the  complexity  of  life. 

Much  of  his  poetry  is  devoted  to  conveying  sound  political  instruc- 
tion ;  thus  in  an  elegy  on  Athens,  in  which  he  begins  by  declaring  that 
city  to  be  under  the  special  charge  of  the  gods,  and  that  Pallas  will 
never  desert  it,  he  goes  on  to  show  how  the  citizens  alone  can  accom- 
plish its  ruin  by  their  misdeeds,  and  he  ends  by  warning  them  to 
abandon  evil  ways  and  to  seek  righteousness.  Other  fragments  teach 
the  same  lesson. 

In  general  what  we  have  left  of  the  work  of  Solon,  incomplete  as  it 
is,  indicates  the  turmoil  of  change  and  the  introduction  of  new  condi- 
tions of  life.  The  city  of  Athens  as  we  see  it  portrayed  in  his  elegies, 
presents  a  picture  of  factional  disturbance  which  had  to  be  allayed 
and  unified  by  tyranny  and  foreign  war.  The  strong  rule  of  the 
tyrants  had  its  good  results  in  their  encouragement  of  art  and  letters, 
and  in  Solon's  manly  utterances  we  may  detect  an  early  indication  of 
the  warlike  spirit  which  was  afterwards  to  do  so  much  for  Greece.  In 
the  awkwardness  of  his  execution  we  may  notice  the  lingering  of  old 
conditions  that  had  been  outgrown  elsewhere,  for  literary  movements 


MELIC  POETRY  :     SPECIFIC  CHARACTERISTICS.  171 

are  as  irregular  as  isothermal  lines,  and  the  freedom  of  the  Athenians 
protected  them  from  the  overripe  cultivation  that  is  expressed  by 
Mimnermus  and  others. 

Indeed,  the  study  of  these  bits  of  the  early  Athenian  literature  suf- 
fices to  show  that  here  at  least  the  whole  force  of  the  people  was  some- 
thing that  awaited  a  later  time  to  show  its  full  development.  Its  very 
crudity  is  capable  of  indicating  promise  ;  the  perfect  possession  of  lit- 
erary powers  might  have  foretold  decay  rather  than  greater  perform- 
ance. 

While  the  elegy  had  thus  been  growing  up  in  various  parts  of  Greece, 
especially  in  the  Ionic  colonies  and  in  Athens,  what  was  called  the 
melic  poetry  had  begun  and  advanced  to  equal  importance  among  the 
Doric  races.  To  define  melic  poetry  as  lyric  would  not  be  exact,  be- 
cause it  would  omit  an  important  component  of  the  melic  verse,  to 
wit,  its  relation  to  music.  As  matters  stand,  we  have  but  a  mere 
fragment  left  from  which  to  construct  one  of  the  most  important  parts 
of  Greek  literature,  and  it  would  be  exactly  as  possible  to  reconstruct  a 
modern  opera  from  the  text  as  it  is  for  us  to  form  a  definite  notion  of 
the  melic  poetry  from  the  scraps  of  verse  that  alone  survive.  Of 
Pindar  alone  do  we  possess  a  tolerably  complete  collection,  but  what 
we  have  of  his  work  is  far  from  covering  the  whole  ground,  for  there 
were  many  developments  of  this  form  of  composition  which  he  did 
not  touch.  The  great  variety  of  the  melic  poetry  expressed  countless 
individual  and  local  differences,  yet, unlike  modern  lyric  poetry,  it  was 
not  primarily  an  expression  of  personal  feeling  for  which  the  poet 
could  choose  whatever  form  of  utterance  best  suited  him  ;  it  was  not  a 
modification  of  popular  poetry,  as  we  understand  the  phrase,  but 
rather  the  secularization  of  forms  that  were  connected  with  religious 
pomp  and  ceremony,  from  which  poets  derived  a  good  part  of  their 
models.  The  epic  modulated  itself  into  the  elegy,  the  descriptive 
parts  of  the  earlier  verse  falling  away  in  favor  of  the  personal  utter- 
ances, after  a  fashion  which  we  see  going  on  about  us  in  the  modern 
epic,  the  novel,  wherein  description  holds  every  year  a  less  important 
place  than  the  study  of  character,  a  change  from  the  general  to  the 
particular  which  is  an  inevitable  accompaniment  of  every  form  of 
growth.  The  iambic  verse,  as  we  see  it  in  Archilochus,  remained  most 
completely  the  favorite  method  of  expression  for  ridicule  or  discussion, 
and  although  it  was  accompanied  by  music,  the  author  and  composer 
were  different  persons.  This  form,  which  became  the  dramatic  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  choral  part  of  the  plays,  never  attained  among 
the  Greeks  the  general  importance  of  the  melic  poetry.  In  this  form, 
the  three  arts  of  music,  poetry,  and  dance  were  combined  in  an  impres- 
sive whole.     The  contests  in  gymnastics,  song,  and  dance  were  held 


i72  THE   LYRIC  POETS. 

under  religious  auspices,  and  maintained  their  solemnity  and  impor- 
tance by  the  speedy  adaptations  of  what  was  already  established  in 
the  sacred  rites.  These  ceremonies  thus  rendered  great  service  to 
what  speedily  became  an  important  part  of  the  literary  development. 
It  is  this  close  connection  between  the  words  and  the  music  which  is 
lost  for  us.  The  various  festal  occasions  encouraged  the  growth  of 
orchestral  dancing  in  Sparta,  where  the  musical  and  poetic  impulse 
was  slighter  than  elsewhere,  so  that  these  two  aids  to  the  delight  of 
men  were  brought  in  by  Terpander  of  Lesbos,  who  introduced  the 
seven-string  harp  in  the  place  of  an  inferior  instrument.  In  poetry  he 
further  developed  the  already  existing  nomos,  or  hieratic  poem,  into  a 
more  complicated  form,  which  he  accompanied  with  music.  He  had 
various  successors,  Kapion,  Clonas,  Polymnestus,  Sakadas,  and 
Echembrotus,  whose  names  are  about  all  that  we  know  of  them.  The 
next  step  was  the  growth  of  the  paean,  which  was  distinguished  from 
the  nomos  by  being  sung  by  a  chorus  instead  of  a  single  performer. 
The  nomos  consisted  mainly  of  hexameters,  singly  or  in  combination 
with  the  pentameter  ;  now  we  find  more  complex  forms.  It  was  in  the 
hands  of  Thaletas  that  this  change  seems  to  have  taken  place.  His 
date  was  about  the  28th  Olympiad,  and  some  of  the  modifi- 
cations which  he  wrought  were  already  familiar  in  his  home,  the  island 
of  Crete.  Xenodamus  and  Xenopritos  are  the  names  of  two  of  his 
successors.  A  third  was  Alcman,  of  whom  alone  fragments  have 
reached  us,  but  what  fragments !  They  are  almost  without  exception 
nothing  but  the  merest  scraps  that  owe  their  preservation  to  the  fact 
that  a  line  here  or  a  line  there  was  quoted  by  some  grammarian  in 
later  times  to  illustrate  some  matter  of  which  he  happened  to  be  treat- 
ing. It  was  from  these  widely  scattered  sources  that  the  industry  of 
modern  editors  has  rescued  many  of  the  most  valuable  of  the  gems  of 
Greek  literature.  Yet  just  where  we  want  more  we  have  but  a  few 
words,  only  fortunate  in  that  anything  is  spared  to  us.  The  bits  of 
Alcman  are  marked  with  extreme  simplicity;  thus  he  says:  "And 
created  three  seasons,  summer,  winter  and  autumn,  and  the  fourth  was 
spring,  when  everything  blooms,  but  there  is  not  enough  to  eat,"  a 
touch  that  describes  the  period  of  the  year  before  the  new  crops  are 
gathered  with  more  vividness  than  do  purely  picturesque  epithets. 
Elsewhere,  he  says  that  he  is  contented  with  simple  fare,  such  as  the 
common  people  eat.  Indeed,  he  is  fond  of  talking  about  himself ;  he 
boasts  that  he  is  no  rustic  boor,  no  Thessalian,  but  that  he  is  sprung  from 
lofty  Sardis.  The  odd  lines  that  belong  to  him  attest  great  variety 
in  the  use  of  metres,  which,  however,  are  naturally  less  complicated 
than  those  of  later  times.  He  was  the  first  of  what  may  be  called 
the    classic    lyric    poets,    and  for   more  than  two  centuries  his  work 


174  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

lived  in  the  memory  of  the  Greeks  ;  and  even  when  his  fame  was 
diminished  by  new  candidates  for  the  popular  favor  he  was  by  no 
means  forgotten.  One  of  the  few  fragments  of  any  length  may  be 
read  in  the  following  translation: 


"  Stillness  upon  the  mountain-heads  and  deep  abysses, 

The  cliffs  of  ocean  and  each  gloomy  cave  ; 
And  quiet  reigns  throughout  the  craggy  forests, 

Where  fiercest,  wildest  beasts  are  wont  to  rave  I 
All  living  things  upon  this  dark  earth  nourished, 

Even  the  swarms  of  busy  bees,  are  still ; 
In  purple  depths  of  ocean  sleep  sea-monsters, 

And  merry  winged  birds  forget  to  trill." 


Certainly  one  does  not  associate  verse  of  this  sort  with  ancient 
Sparta ;  yet  even  Sparta  was  a  part  of  Greece,  and  after  its  success 
in  the  Messenian  War  it  enjoyed  a  short  breathing-time,  in  which  it 
saw  that  life  had  other  charms  than  perpetual  military  drill.  But 
its  flowering  time  was  short,  and  probably  the  tender  touches  of 
Alcman  soon  sank  into  insignificance  by  the  side  of  the  martial  spirit 
of  Tyrtaeus.     Poetry  soon  sought  another  home  outside  of  Sparta. 

Of  Arion  we  know  scarcely  more  than  that  our  knowledge  of  him 
is  very  scanty.  He  is  said  to  have  perfected  the  dithyramb,  a  song  in 
honor  of  Dionysus,  but  his  work,  like  that  of  the  contemporaries  of 
Alcman,  has  long  since  perished. 

While  the  Dorians  had  thus  been  developing  the  melic  poetry,  it 
has  been  shown  that  they  derived  the  impetus  from  without.  Terpan- 
der  came  from  Lesbos,  and  it  was  in  this  island  that  the  art  now 
reached  its  highest  perfection.  Mitylene,  the  principal  city  of  Lesbos, 
had  attained  considerable  importance  by  its  commerce,  and  with  wealth 
there  had  come  the  opportunity  for  intellectual 
growth.  It  was  under  these  favoring  conditions 
that  the  melic  poetry  of  the  Lesbians  flourished. 
The  two  important  names  are  those  of  Alcaeus 
and  Sappho,  who  were  contemporaries  of  Solon. 
In  the  work  of  Alcaeus  we  see  reflected  the 
distracted  political  condition  of  the  island  ;  he 
was  an  adherent  of  the  nobles,  who  were  in  con- 
ALc^us.  fljct  with  the  populace,  and  at  first  an  admirer  of 

(Lesbian  Coin.)  •"•  •         i      i 

Pittacus,  who  afterwards  seized  the  rems  of  gov- 
ernment and  won  the  poet's  hatred.  Alcaeus  was  banished,  but  after- 
wards, although  he  took  up  arms  against  the  tyrant,  he  was  forgiven,  and 
was  permitted  to  return  to  Lesbos,  where  he  became  reconciled  to  the 
new  conditions.      Yet  he  is  a  complete  representative  of  the  older 


ALC^US;    TRACES  OF  HIS  POETRY  IN  HORACE— SAPPHO.        175 

spirit  of  chivalry  that  survived  longer  among  the  ^Eolians  than  else- 
where, and  he  expressed  his  opinions  with  distinctness  and  vigor. 
The  frequent  references  of  the  later  writers  of  antiquity  attest  this, 
and  his  comparison  of  the  state  to  a  ship  soon  became,  what  it  has 
remained,  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  literary  allusion.  Yet  there  is 
nothing  commonplace  in  the  fragment  that  contains  the  comparison. 
"  I  cannot  understand  the  direction  of  the  wind  ;  waves  come  rolling 
in  from  all  directions ;  we  are  carried  amongst  them  in  the  dark  ship, 
struggling  with  the  fierce  tempest.  The  hull  is  leaking ;  the  sails  are 
torn  and  hanging  in  shreds ;  the  anchors  are  dragging."  Thus  he 
described  the  civic  disturbances,  taking  an  image  that  was  familiar  to 
the  seafaring  Lesbians.  We  know  that  he  served  as  a  soldier,  and  in 
another  fragment  we  have  an  incomplete  account  of  his  equipment ;  his 
house,  he  tells  us,  shimmers  with  brass ;  the  whole  building  is  adorned, 
in  honor  of  the  god  of  war,  with  brilliant  helmets,  from  which  float 
the  white  horsetails,  ornaments  for  the  hedds  of  warriors ;  on  hidden 
pegs  hang  shining  greaves,  a  protection  against  the  strong  dart ;  new 
cuirasses  of  linen  and  hollow  shields  are  placed  about,  with  Chalcidian 
swords  and  many  tunics  and  jerkins.  He  sang  of  hospitality  as  well 
as  military  life.  One  fragment  is  interesting  because  Horace  has  trans- 
lated it  almost  word  for  word  in  the  ninth  ode  of  the  first  book.  '*  The 
rain  is  pouring,  there  is  a  fierce  storm  outside  ;  the  streams  are  frozen, 
.  .  .  drive  out  the  winter,  heap  wood  on  the  fire,  mixing  a  draught  of 
wine  with  a  generous  hand,  and  wrap  your  head  in  soft  wool."  There 
are  other  traces  of  the  work  of  Alcaeus  in  Horace,  little  as  we  have  of 
the  poems  of  the  Greek  poet,  and  perhaps  it  is  not  fanciful  to  detect 
in  both  a  community  of  interest  in  political  matters  and  in  the  plea- 
sures of  life.  What  Alcaeus  lacked,  from  the  comparative  insignificance 
of  the  civil  strife  in  a  small  Greek  island,  is  more  than  made  up  by  his 
being  first  in  the  field.  The  strong  political  interests  of  the  Cohans 
rendered  them  unsusceptible  to  the  formal  compositions  of  the  Dorians, 
which  rested  on  an  established  order  of  things,  and  the  Lesbian  luxury 
suggested  the  praise  of  pleasure.  Alcaeus  did  not  neglect  this  subject ; 
but  Sappho,  his  contemporary,  far  excelled  him  here.  Alcaeus  wrote 
a  number  of  odes  to  the  gods,  and  as  it  were,  covered  the  ground 
in  various  directions ;  but  Sappho  in  a  single  field,  the  love  song, 
sounded  a  note  that  has  ever  won  the  highest  praise  for  grace  and 
vividness.  The  ancients  entitled  her  the  poetess,  as  they  called 
Homer  the  poet.  Aristotle  quoted  a  statement  that  made  her  the 
equal  of  Homer  and  Archilochus,  Plato  styled  her  the  tenth  muse, 
and  it  will  be  noticed  that  it  is  not  with  other  women  that  she  is 
compared. 

Of  Sappho'  s  life  and   character  various  conflicting  accounts  have 


176 


THE   LYRIC  POETS. 


come  down  to  us.  Her  exceptional  eminence  appears  to  have  made 
her  the  object  of  an  extraordinary  amount  of  abuse  in  later  times 
when  men  had  lost  their  appreciation  or  comprehension  of  a  civilization 
different  from  their  own,  and  the  freedom  that  women  had  enjoyed 
among  the  Cohans  became  synonymous  with  unbridled  license  in  the 
minds  of  later  Attic  comedians,  who  lived  in  a  state  of  society  wherein 
women  were  caged  as  in  the  East,  Moreover,  the  impossibility  of  their 


SAPPHO. 
(From  the  bronze  0/  Herculaneum.') 


turning  current  events  and  prominent  contemporaries  to  ridicule 
exposed  distinguished  persons  of  the  past  to  every  form  of  contempt. 
Such  at  least  is  the  defense  that  is  offered  against  the  many  calumnies, 
as  they  are  called,  that  have  gathered  about  her  name.  Whatever  may 
have  been  her  character  or  her  habits,  there  is  no  division  of  opinion 
regarding  the  quality  of  her  writing,  for  every  one  who  has  read  the 
few  lines  she  has  left  has  fallen  under  the  charm  of  her  wonderful 
verse.  It  is  not  unmeaning  rapture,  but  mere  description,  to  say  of  it 
that  it  has  the  rare  stamp  of  perfection  in  its  compact  beauty  and  vivid 
accuracy.  It  would  be  a  small  volume  that  should  hold  only  the  very 
best  lines  ever  written,  and  it  would  contain  many   of  hers  that  have 


CULTURE  REPRESENTED   BY  SAPPHO.  177 

come  down  to  us  in  pieces,  like  the  extracts  in  Johnson's  Dictionary, 
rent  from  their  context,  mere  scraps  and  shreds,  yet  quivering  with  the 
emotion  of  a  sensitive,  rich  nature.  Her  works  survived  until  certainly 
the  third  century  of  our  era,  and  probably  much  later,  and  then  they 
succumbed,  not  to  the  ordinary  accidents  of  time  or  to  general  indif- 
ference, but  to  the  violent  hatred  of  men  in  authority,  who  looked  on 
the  songs  of  Greek  lyric  poets  as  the  Puritans  looked  on  plays.  At 
some  undetermined  time  they  were  burned  by  official  order,  and,  it  is 
said,  the  poems  of  Gregory  Nazianzen  were  circulated  in  their  stead. 
We  are  not  told  how  even  an  imperial  government  enforced  this  part 
of  their  literary  despotism. 

The  date  of  Sappho  is  about  610  B.C.  Of  her  life  scarcely  anything 
authoritative  is  known  beyond  the  fact  that  she  was  a  native  of  Lesbos. 
In  the  islands  of  the  ^gean,  Greek  culture,  or,  more  exactly,  the 
^olian  culture,  flourished  for  a  brief  season  with  a  greater  fervency 
than  it  did  anywhere  at  the  time  on  the  mainland.  Possibly  the  prob- 
lems of  the  swiftly  growing  civilization  were  more  readily  solved  in 
the  comparative  isolation  of  these  insular  towns,  with  their  handful  of 
inhabitants,  than  where  the  numbers  were  greater  and  more  perplexed 
by  various  aims  and  feelings.  At  any  rate  the  lyric  passion  that  in- 
spired the  songs  of  the  .^olians  burned  with  greater  brilliancy  and 
keener  personal  fervor  than  in  other  parts  of  Greece,  where  it  was  util- 
ized for  the  furtherance  of  patriotism  or  social  virtue.  With  them  it 
was  pure  song,  while  among  the  Dorians,  their  only  rivals,  one  sees  the 
traces  of  the  spirit  that  was  helping  to  form  a  great  state.  In  both, 
however,  the  melic  poetry  was  the  direct  expression  of  an  important 
period,  one  of  change  between  the  heroic  age  and  that  of  the  greatest 
brilliancy  of  Greece,  after  the  Persian  wars  ;  and  then  the  melic  poetry 
was  lost  in  the  glory  of  the  drama,  which  was  built  up  on  its  variety 
and  earnestness.  The  difference  between  the  two  sorts  of  poetry  will 
be  noticed  as  well  as  the  points  of  likeness;  the  drama  belonged  to  the 
whole  people,  but  the  melic  poetry  was  the  possession  of  men  who 
had  not  yet  attained  what  we  may  call  national  ideas.  Especially,  as 
has  been  said,  is  this  true  of  the  ^Eolians. 

In  the  bits  of  Sappho's  work  that  are  left  us  we  feel  most  intensely 
the  nature  of  the  poet.  The  translations,  however  careful  and  exact, 
are  pallid  by  the  side  of  the  unequalled  original ;  yet  even  in  them  we 
may  find  a  trace  of  the  original  charm.     Thus : 

"  Evening,  thou  bringest  all  that  light-bringing  morning  hath  scat- 
tered ;  thou  bringest  the  sheep,  thou  bringest  the  goat,  thou  bringest 
the  child  to  the  mother." 

This  fragment,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  imitated  and  enlarged 
by  Byron  in  one  of  the  stanzas  (CVII.)  at  the  end  of  the  third  canto 


178  THE   LYRIC  POETS. 

of  Don  Juan,  where  he,  as  it  were,  tries  to  show  how  many  stops  he 
has  to  his  flute.     This  is  his  rendering : 

"  O  Hesperus  !  thou  bringest  all  good  things — 

Home  to  the  weary,  to  the  hungry  cheer, 
To  the  young  bird  the  parent's  brooding  wings, 

The  welcome  stall  to  the  o'erlabour'd  steer. 
Whate'er  of  peace  about  our  hearthstone  clings, 

Whate'er  our  household  gods  protect  of  dear, 
Are  gather'd  round  us  by  thy  look  of  rest ; 
Thou  brings't  the  child,  too,  to  the  mother's  breast." 

No  better  example  of  the  difference  between  the  best  work  of  the 
ancients  and  the  common  quaHties  of  the  moderns  could  be  found  than 
this.  Sappho  says  what  she  has  to  say  with  absolute  directness  and 
simplicity,  without  a  superfluous  word,  with  no  trace  of  artifice;  and 
Byron  lets  the  two  lines  of  the  original  grow  into  eight,  in  which 
rhyme  and  a  long  complicated  stanza  enforce  the  statement,  which  is 
already  burthened  by  such  additional  statements  as  that  the  steer 
was  o'erlabored.     Moreover,  the  two  lines, 

"  Whate'er  of  peace  about  our  hearthstone  clings, 
Whate'er  our  household  gods  protect  of  dear," 

are  exactly  in  the  line  of  modern  workmanship ;  we  have  no  house- 
hold gods,  and  only  know  them  as  literary  creations;  yet  we  should 
be  wretched  without  them  ;  poetry  without  conventionalities  would 
be  very  baffling  and  strange. 

What  appears  in  these  two  lines  of  Sappho  is  the  constant  mint- 
mark,  as  here  again  : 

"  As  the  sweet-apple  blushes  on  the  end  of  the  bough,  the  very  end  of  the 
bough,  which  the  gatherers  overlooked,  nay,  overlooked  not,  but  could  not 
reach." 

And  this : 

"  As  on  the  hills  the  shepherds  trample  the  hyacinth  under  foot  and  the 
purple  flower  [is  pressed]  to  earth." 

These  two  bits  were  welded  together  by  D.  G.  Rossetti  in  this 
version  : 

I. 

"  Like  the  sweet  apple  which  reddens  upon  the  topmost  bough, 
A-top  on  the  topmost  twig, — which  the  pluckers  forgot  somehow, — 
Forgot  it  not,  nay,  but  got  it  not,  for  none  could  get  it  till  now. 

II. 

"  Like  the  wild  hyacinth  flower  which  on  the  hills  is  found. 
Which  the  passing  feet  of  the  shepherds  for  ever  tear  and  wound. 
Until  the  purple  blossom  is  trodden  into  the  ground." 


SA  PPHO  —  TRA  NSLA  TIONS. 


179 


The  English  version  next  given  offers  but  a  faint  description  rather 
than  a  representation  of  the  Greek : 

"  The  moon  has  set,  and  the  Pleiades  ;  if  is   midnight,  the  time  is  going 
by,  and  I  sleep  alone." 

Elsewhere  what    in    the    original    is   a    cry,  is  turned  into  a  mere 
statement  by  translation,  as  here  : 

"  Men  I  think  will  remember  us  even  hereafter." 

And  here  : 

"  And  round  about  the  cool    [water]  gurgles  through   apple-boughs,  and 
slumber  streams  from  quivering  leaves," 

when  possibly  breeze  should  be  read  rather  than  water,  for  often  even 
the  fragments  come  to  us  in  fragments. 

Only  two  of  her  poems  reach  us  complete  or  in  any  length.    One 
of  them  is  thus  admirably  rendered  by  Thomas  Wentworth  Hlgginson  : 


APHRODITE    IN 
CHARIOT. 


"  Beautiful-throned,  immortal  Aphrodite, 
Daughter  of  Zeus,  beguiler,  I  implore  thee, 
Weigh  me  not  down  with  weariness  and  anguish, 
O  thou  most  holy  ! 

Come  to  me  now,  if  ever  thou  in  kindness 
Hearkenedst  my  words, — and  often  hast  thou  hearkened- 
Heeding,  and  coming  from  the  mansions  golden 
Of  thy  great  Father, 


Yoking  thy  chariot,  borne  by  thy  most  lovely 
Consecrated  birds,  with  dusky-tinted  pinions, 
Waving  swift  wings  from  utmost  height  of  heaven 
Through  the  mid-ether ; 

Swiftly  they  vanished,  leaving  thee,  O  goddess, 
Smiling  with  face  immortal  in  its  beauty. 
Asking  why  I  grieved,  and  why  in  utter  longing 
I  had  dared  call  thee  ; 


Asking  what  I  sought,  thus  hopeless  in  desiring, 
Wildered  in  brain,  and  spreading  net  of  passion — 
Alas,  for  whom  }  and  saidst  thou,  '  Who  has  harmed  thee  i 
'  O  my  poor  Sappho  ! 

'  Though  now  he  flies,  erelong  he  shall  pursue  thee  ; 
'  Fearing  thy  gifts,  he  too  in  turn  shall  bring  them  ; 
'  Loveless  to-day,  to-morrow  he  shall  woo  thee, 
'Though  thou  shouldst  spurn  him.' 

Thus  seek  me  now,  O  holy  Aphrodite ! 
Save  me  from  anguish  ;  give  me  all  I  ask  for ; 
Gifts  at  thy  hand  ;  and  thine  shall  be  the  glory, 
Sacred  Protector  ! " 


l8o  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

The  other  has  not  come  to  us  in  a  complete  state,  but  more  fully 
than  the  rest ;  here  is  a  literal  translation  : 

"  That  man  seems  to  me  peer  of  the  gods,  who  sits  in  thy  presence,  and 
hears  close  to  him  thy  sweet  speech  and  lovely  laughter  ;  that  indeed  makes 
my  heart  flutter  in  my  bosom.  For  when  I  see  thee  but  a  little,  I  have  no 
utterance  left,  my  tongue  is  broken  down,  and  straightway  a  subtle  fire  has 
run  under  my  skin,  with  my  eyes  I  have  no  sight,  my  ears  ring,  sweat  bathes 
me,  and  a  trembling  seizes  all  my  body  ;  I  am  paler  than  grass,  and  seem  in 
my  madness  little  better  than  one  dead.  But  I  must  dare  all,  since  one  so 
poor " 

The  measures  that  she  used  were  various ;  the  most  common,  and 
the  one  that  bears  her  name,  the  Sapphic,  may  be  seen  in  Mr.  Higgin- 
son's  rendering  above.  While  the  amount  that  we  have  of  her  work 
is  so  little,  it  is  more  than  probable  that  much  of  it  is  translated  in 
Catullus's  poems.  So  much  at  least  may  be  said  of  the  epithalamia 
or  wedding-songs,  yet  many  other  kinds  are  spoken  of  with  admiration 
by  the  ancients,  such  as  epigrams,  elegies,  iambics,  monodies,  and 
hymns.  Of  odes  she  is  said  to  have  composed  nine  books,  and  some 
of  these  are  thought  to  have  been  directly  translated  by  Horace. 

While  Sappho  was  thus  readily  first  among  the  women  who  com- 
posed poetry  at  this  time,  it  is  known  that  she  had  many  compan- 
ions and  rivals  in  this  art  and  the  accompanying  music,  although  none 
of  these  attained  anything  at  all  comparable  with  her  eminence.  Yet, 
of  the  other  women,  one  whose  name  has  survived  is  Erinna,  not  an 
.^olian,  but  an  inhabitant  of  the  Dorian  island  of  Telos.  The  state- 
ment that  she  was  one  of  the  circle  that  surrounded  Sappho  seems  to 
rest  on  but  faint  authority.  We  are  told  of  her  that  she  composed  a 
poem  of  moderate  length  in  hexameters,  combining  the  new  grace  of 
Sappho  with  the  long-established  qualities  of  the  epic  writers.  A  few 
of  her  poems  have  been  gathered  into  the  Anthology.  Her  date  is 
extremely  uncertain. 

Another  famous  name  is  that  of  Stesichorus  of  Himera,  who 
flourished  between  630  and  550  B.C.  His  family  is  said  to  have  come 
from  a  Locrian  colony  in  Sicily.  One  tradition  indeed  asserted  that 
he  was  a  son  of  Hesiod,  which  may  also  be  interpreted  as  meaning 
that  he  had  some  close  relation  with  the  Hesiodic  school  of  poetry. 
Yet  the  meagre  crumbs  that  are  left  of  the  twenty-six  books  of  his 
poetry  do  not  give  us  the  means  to  form  a  definite  opinion  concerning 
his  work,  and  there  is  little  left  for  us  to  do  except  to  record  the  ver- 
dict of  antiquity.  This  especially  praised  the  Homeric  quality  to  be 
found  in  his  lyrical  treatment  of  the  old  myths.  It  appears  that  he 
took  his  material  from  many  varied  sources  ;  he   treated  the  story  of 


THE    CYCLIC  POETS;  THE    TROJAN  MYTH  IN  THEIR  HANDS.     iSi 

the  Argonaut,  and  the  Theban  and  Trojan  myths,  following  Hesiod 
and  the  cyclic  poets,  or  other  authorities,  as  seemed  best.  There  are 
some  indications  that  in  a  poem  on  the  destruction  of  Troy  he  men- 
tioned the  Italiote  tradition  of  ^neas's  'wanderings.  With  what  a 
free  hand  he  treated  the  old  myths  we  can  see  from  the  three  opening 
lines  of  his  ode  on  Helen,  which  run  thus :  "  That  story  is  not  true ; 
you  did  not  sail  away  in  the  well-oared  ship ;  you  did  not  go  to  the 
Trojan  town."  The  tradition  runs  that  he  had  composed  a  poem  in 
which  he  had  spoken  slightingly  of  the  heroine,  who  revenged  herself 
by  making  him  blind  ;  she  was,  however,  mollified  by  this  recantation 


THE    FLIGHT   OF  yENEAS. 
{From  a  Black  Vase  painting^ 

and  freed  him  of  his  affliction.  A  similar  story,  it  is  curious  to  note, 
is  told  of  an  Icelandic  Skald,  who,  in  a  spirit  of  mistaken  economy,  sent 
the  same  complimentary  song  to  two  different  girls.  The  conception 
of  an  unreal  Helen  is  ascribed  to  Hesiod  ;  and  the  whole  disposition 
to  alter  the  myths  is  a  proof  that  they  had  lost  some  of  their  original 
authority,  or  at  least  that  there  were  varying  authorities  for  the  same 
story  that  came  to  the  light  in  the  general  growth  of  Greek  civiliza- 
tion. What  was  yet  more  novel,  for  we  have  no  means  of  deciding 
the  extent  to  which  the  cyclic  poets  modified  the  Homeric  myths,  was 
the  complicated  form  which  he  gave  to  his  lyric  exposition  of  epic 
subjects.  Recitation  was,  as  we  have  seen,  succeeded  by  musical  ren- 
dering, and  to  the  strophe  and  antistrophe  he  added  the  epode,  thus 
bringing  the  lyrical  form  to  the  perfection  in  which  it  was  used  by 
Pindar  and  the  tragedians. 


1 82  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

Ibycus,  a  native  of  Rhegium,  who  flourished  a  trifle  later  than 
Stesichorus,  passed  his  life  at  the  court  of  Polycrates  of  Samos.  An 
important  part  of  his  work  seems  to  have  been  a  treatment  of  mythical 
subjects  like  that  of  Stesichorus,  and  some  pieces  have  been  assigned 
to  both  at  different  times ;  the  greater  part,  however,  was  love-poetry, 
in  which  he  followed  the  famous  ^Eolian  lyric  writers.  We  have  too 
little  of  his  verse  left  to  judge  of  his  merit,  but  in  antiquity  his  repu- 
tation was  high. 

These  fragments  may  perhaps  illustrate  some  of  his  traits  : 

Oh  !  cherished  darHng  of  the  bright-haired  graces, 

Euryalus,  sweet,  blue-eyed  youth  ! 
Both  gentle-eyed  Persuasion  'mid  the  roses, 

And  Venus  nurtured  you  in  truth. 

Once  more  do  Love's  dark  eyes  gaze  into  mine. 

With  melting  glances,  and  he  me  beguiles 

To  Aphrodite's  net,  with  charming  wiles  ; 
Yet  at  his  coming  doth  my  heart  repine. 

As  an  old  race-horse  trembles,  drawing  near 

The  course  where  erst  he  won  the  victory  dear, 
And  weak  with  age  the  contest  would  decline. 

Anacreon  was  another  poet  who  also  lived  at  the  court  of  Polycrates, 
and  apparently  at  the  same  time  with  Ibycus,  although  we  have  no 
information  on  which  to  base  an  opinion.  Anacreon  was  born  in  the 
Ionian  city  of  Teos.  His  life  was  one  of  vicissitude.  Teos  was  con- 
quered by  the  Persians  at  the  beginning  of  their  advance ;  its  inhabi- 
tants abandoned  their  old  home  and  betook  themselves  to  Abdera  in 
Thrace,  whence  Anacreon  went  to  Samos  in  compliance  with  an  invi- 
tation of  Polycrates,  Just  how  many  years  he  remained  with  his 
powerful  friend  is  not  known,  but  it  was  probably  soon  after  the  fall  of 
the  tyrant  that  he  went  to  Athens.  This  city  was  already  a  home  of 
refinement,  and  doubtless  afforded  him  sympathetic  society.  Indeed 
Hipparchus  of  Athens  is  said  to  have  sent  a  ship  to  bring  the  poet 
to  his  new  home,  which  was  vying  with  other  places  in  tempting  men 
of  genius  to  reside  within  its  walls.  What  became  of  him  after  the 
murder  of  Hipparchus  is  not  known,  and  is  for  us  unimportant.  The 
story  of  his  life  is  valuable  as  showing  the  growing  interest  and  jealous 
rivalry  of  different  cities  in  behalf  of  literary  cultivation.  Naturally 
enough,  men  who  are  much  sought  after  soon  adapt  themselves  to 
what  they  readily  think  are  very  proper  conditions,  and  Anacreon  sang 
the  praises  of  love  and  wine  as  readily  in  one  court  as  in  another. 
This  facility  is  remarkable,  but  the  reader  is  more  struck  with  his  lit- 
erary skill  than  by  more  genuine  qualities.  Where  Sappho,  for  instance, 


ANACREON:  HIS  LITERARY  EXCELLENCE— COLDNESS.  183 

appears  sincere,  Anacreon  seems  accomplished  ;  he  is  the  master  of 
many  forms  ;  he  lent  literary  refinement  to  the  old  popular  poetry  of 
the  lonians,  and  became  a  model  for  future  singers.  His  very  smooth- 
ness leaves  us  untouched.     His  conviviality  was  cold  and  deliberate ; 


■ 

^1 

^H 

^ 

3v^B 

^^v 

.t^K 

^m--.^ 

^V 

"-M^ 

^K|l 

■r 

kn&.^ifefV' 

0|[p9 

^E 

s^^^^r^ 

1?";;^^ 

^^KT 

\ 

"^^J^H 

^^^^pf . 

1 

I 

^^P^^^m 

^ 

■i 

ilj 

^K^ 

J 

5 

^^B 

^p^l^^ 

!^^| 

HKj  f  f  ^^^^H 

"^^ 

H 

j^^fPH 

'^^j^g 

P' 

^i/-vl#  ^^ 

teai«8ESS^!^^IJ 

ggs^g 

>- 

- ' '    '  'mml^^^m 

ANACREON. 


with  five  parts  of  wine  he  tells  us  that  he  was  accustomed  to  take  ten 
parts  of  water,  and  this  dilution  afTects  his  poetry.  Prudence,  how- 
ever commendable,  does  not  inspire  poetical  enthusiasm,  and  a  man 
whose  bitterest  grief    is  that    gray  hairs    will    render    him    unlovely 


i«4  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

can  scarcely  awaken  profound  sympathy.  Anacreon  sang  such  subjects 
with  untiring  grace,  but  without  passion,  and  without  mention  of  what 
was  serious  in  his  Hfe. 

It  was  this  literary  excellence  which  inspired  admiration  and  imita- 
tion in  later  times,  for  real  feeling  eludes  the  skill  of  the  copyist,  who 
may  yet  learn  any  verbal  trick ;  and  while  the  best  men  defy  artificial 
rivalry,  those  whose  main  charm  is  technical  skill  are  sure  to  be  com- 
plimented by  others  who  try  to  do  the  same  thing  more  cleverly. 
Anacreon  early  received  this  attention,  and  many  Anacreontic  songs, 
since  lost,  were  written  at  an  early  day.  Others,  composed  in  the 
fourth  century  of  our  era,  for  a  time  aroused  great  admiration  among 
the  moderns ;  it  was  these  that  Thomas  Moore  translated,  and  it  is 
this  fictitious  Anacreon  who  stood  for  a  representative  Greek  lyric 
poet  at  the  revival  of  Greek  studies  towards  the  end  of  the  last 
century.  Men  are  always  ready  to  prefer  third-rate  work  to  what 
is  really  excellent,  and  it  is  only  gradually  that  the  best  part  of  Greek 
literature,  as  of  other  literatures,  has  attained  its  proper  place. 

III. 

While  the  melic  poetry  had  been  growing,  the  elegiac  poetry,  with 
its  lessons  of  wisdom,  had  not  been  neglected.  Phocylidesof  Miletus 
was  one  who  chose  this  measure  and  wrote  a  number  of  proverbial 
sayings,  a  few  of  which  have  come  down  to  us.  He  appears  to  have 
flourished  about  the  6oth  Olympiad,  or  540  B.C.  The  fragments 
indicate  very  moderate  poetic  ability ;  indeed,  their  quality  almost 
compelled  the  speedy  introduction  of  prose,  for  the  contrast  between 
the  melic  verse  with  its  marvellous  charm,  and  the  arid  severity  of 
many  of  the  elegiacs,  is  most  striking.  The  prosaic  quality  called 
for  congenial  prose.  In  one  piece  that  survives,  he  repeats 
the  old  legend  that  one  woman  is  descended  from  the  dog, 
another  from  the  bee,  others  from  the  pig  and  the  horse.  Elsewhere, 
he  asks  of  what  use  is  nobility  unaccompanied  by  kindness  in 
heart  or  deed.  Again,  he  urges  that  young  men  be  accustomed  to 
honorable  things.  His  lessons  are  true,  but  they  do  not  lack  obvious- 
ness. The  recommendation  that  men  first  seek  a  competence  and  then 
virtue,  outdoes  Franklin  at  his  worst,  but  violent  condemnation  of  it, 
without  knowing  the  context,  would  be  unwise.  One  thing  is  certain, 
the  ancients  much  admired  Phocylides,  and  Aristotle  quotes  with 
admiration  his  statement  that  the  middle  classes  are  in  many  respects 
the  best  off,  and  that  he  should  like  to  be  in  the  middle  rank  in  a 
state.  He  also  said  :  "  A  small  city,  built  upon  a  rock,  and  well  gov- 
erned, is  better  than  Nineveh  in  its  madness,"  which  is  a  clear  expres- 


XENOPHANES— DECRIES  ATHLETIC  GAMES. 


185 


sion  of  the  Greek  interest 
in  separate  small  cities, 
and  of  their  noncompre- 
hension  of  federal  union. 
All  that  they  demanded 
was  moderate  size  and 
sound  government. 

Xenophanes,  a  native 
of  Colophon,  who  is  better 
known  as  the  founder  of 
the  Eleatic  school  of 
philosophy,  has  left  some 
verses  that  present  a  dif- 
ferent view  of  life  from 
that  of  Phocylides.  In- 
stead of  practical  wisdom, 
he  praises  the  intellectual 
simplicity  of  the  Ionic 
race,  endeavoring  to  show 
its  superiority  to  the  culti- 
vation of  physical  qualities 
that  were  made  so  much 
of  by  the  rest  of  the 
Greeks.  Thus  he  says  that 
whoever  wins  in  a  foot- 
race, boxing,  wrestling,  or 
chariot  race,  receives  all 
kinds  of  honors,  prece- 
dence at  festivals,  a  purse 
of  money,  and  public  sup- 
port. This  is  his  reward, 
even  if  the  horses  have 
done  it.  "Yet  he  is  of 
less  value  than  I ;  my 
wisdom  is  better  than  the 
strength  of  horses  or  men. 
All  this  is  foolish,  it  is 
not  proper  to  prefer 
strength  to  wisdom.  Of 
what  use  is  all  this  physical 
skill?  It  secures  no  better 
government.  The  delight 
of  winning  a  contest  is  a 


^ 


si 


S 


i86 


THE  LYRIC  POETS. 


brief  one,  and  in  no  way  helps  to  fill  the  granaries  of  a  city."  In 
another  elegy  he  describes  the  proper  conditions  of  what  seems  remote 
when  we  call  it  a  banquet,  but  is  familiar  to  us  as  a  dinner — flowers, 
agreeable  perfumes,  wine,  and  fresh  waters,  brown  bread,  cheese,  and 
honey,  await  the  guests,  who  begin  the  meal  with  song  and  prayer  and 
the  wish  to  attain  justice.  They  shall  not  drink  to  excess,  but  shall 
converse  about  virtue  and  honor,  not  about  the  fights  of  the  Titans 
and  giants,  and  the  Centaurs,  the  fancies  of  former  generations,  which 
are  of  no  use,  while  it  is  always  well  to  have  respect  for  the  good  that 
the  gods  have  done. 

Not  only  is  this  poem  interesting  as  a  statement  of  the  moderation 
and  intellectual  interest  of  a  cultivated  Greek  ;  it  also  serves  to  illustrate 
one  side  of  the  poet  which  is  otherwise  only  known  to  us  by  tradition, 
namely,  his  incredulity  concerning  the  antiquated  mythology  of  the 
Greeks.  He  wrote  a  long  poem,  of  a  philosophical  nature,  in  which 
he  is  said — for  the  poem  has  not  come  down  to  us — to  have  expressed 
his  belief  in  a  single  god,  and  a  trace  of  his  thought  appears  in  this 
elegy.  Certainly,  the  Greek  mind  at  this  time  was  far  from  slumber- 
ing in  inaction  when  statesmen,  soldiers,  philosophers,  and  courtiers 
rivalled  one  another  in  the  composition  of  verse.  The  philosophical 
poems  of  Xenophanes,  it  may  be  added,  had  long-lived  influence ;  his 
success  in  treating  the  subject  in  verse  made  that  an  authorized  con- 
ventional form  for  the  expression  of  philosophic  speculation  for  both 
Greek  and  Latin  writers,  and  from  them  it  descended  to  modern  men, 
who  continued  the  habit,  with  varying  success,  or  rather  with  unvary- 
ing ill-success,  until  the  end  of  the  last  century.  Yet  the  mention  of 
interest  in  philosophy  brings  us  dangerously  near  the  beginnings  of 
prose,  and  it  is  necessary  first  to  treat  of  some  of  the  great  poets  who 
have  not  yet  been  mentioned. 

One  of  these  is  Theognis,  a  contemporary  of  Phocylides,  and  like 
him  a  writer  of  elegies.  There  is  this  important  difference,  however, 
that  while  we  have  but  a  few  lines  of  Phocylides,  there  remain  very 
nearly  fourteen  hundred  verses  of  Theognis.  The  fullness  of  this 
collection  is  doubtless  due  in  good  measure  to  the  value  placed  upon 
these  poems  as  a  means  of  instruction  for  youth.  The  compilation  of 
moral  saws  includes,  however,  more  than  the  poems  of  Theognis. 
References  may  be  found  to  events  too  widely  distant  to  be  included 
in  one  man's  life,  and  poems  of  Solon,  Tyrtaeus,  and  others  are  in  the 
collection,  sometimes  as  separate  pieces,  sometimes  detached  lines  are 
imbedded  in  one  of  Theognis's  pieces.  From  the  collection  various 
attempts  have  been  made  to  write  the  author's  life,  and  some  indus- 
trious critics  have  built  up  a  record  of  his  actions  which  rivals  in  com- 
pleteness the  recent  biographical  accumulation  that  has  grown  up  about 


THEOGNIS— POLITICAL  PRECEPTS— MORALS.  187 

Goethe.  Other,  more  industrious,  critics  decline  to  accept  these 
minute  statements  which  are  built  upon  scanty  references  that  are 
found  here  and  there  in  the  poems.  It  at  least  appears  that  Theognis 
was  a  native  of  Megara  in  Greece,  that  he  belonged  to  the  old  aristo- 
cratic party  which  had  held  power  for  a  long  time.  But  the  contrast 
between  the  wealth  of  the  few  and  the  poverty  of  the  many  excited 
revolt ;  the  populace  rose  successfully,  banished  the  aristocracy,  and 
confiscated  their  estates.  Theognis  suffered  with  the  nobles  and 
shared  their  exile,  being  welcomed  in  Euboea,  Sicily,  and  Sparta  by 
those  who  agreed  with  his  political  sentiments.  At  length  he  returned 
to  Megara,  where  he  lived  in  poverty,  trying  to  reconcile  himself  to  the 
change  in  affairs. 

The  poems  that  incontestably  belong  to  Theognis  were  addressed 
to  a  young  friend,  Kyrnus,  whom  he  endeavored  to  instruct  in  politi- 
cal matters.  The  relation  between  the  two  appears  to  have  been  almost 
that  of  teacher  and  pupil,  for  Theognis  built  up  nearly  a  complete 
system  of  political  advice  in  which  the  elder  draws  many  lessons  from 
his  varied  experience.  He  continually  called  the  nobles  the  good,  and 
ordinary  citizens  the  bad,  with  which  we  may  compare  the  later  use  of 
great  and  vulgar,  employing  these  terms  not  merely  as  vague  defini- 
tions, but  with  a  distinct  sense  of  their  accuracy.  The  poems  were 
written  after  the  author's  return  to  Megara,  and  he  cannot  conceal  his 
surprise  at  the  altered  condition  of  affairs ;  the  rustics  who  in  old  times 
scarcely  ventured  into  the  city  are  now  in  control,  and  the  aristocracy 
have  no  scruples  against  marrying  a  rich  girl  of  the  lower  classes ; 
money  has  acquired  a  power  which  has  distinguished  it  in  other  lands  at 
later  times,  and  Theognis  is  not  without  admiration  of  it,  for  he  is 
never  tired  of  lamenting  his  own  poverty.  Yet  his  political  precepts 
do  not  breathe  a  revengeful  spirit ;  he  advises  the  safe  middle  course 
and  condemns  wanton  action.  He  preferred  the  safety  of  the  city  to 
the  narrower  benefit  of  party  success. 

The  collection  as  it  stands  contains  many  other  elegies  on  the  gen- 
eral conduct  of  life,  in  which  the  familiar  lessons  of  experience  are 
told  in  a  neat  form.  In  fact  they  compose  a  tolerably  complete  manual 
of  the  view  of  the  world  current  at  the  time  ;  it  is  an  admirable  expres- 
sion of  popular  social  wisdom.  This  quality  gave  it  great  popularity  ; 
Theognis  said  what  discreet  men  thought  and  listened  to  with  sympa- 
thetic comprehension.  His  method  is  commendable ;  he  lacks,  to  be 
sure,  the  higher  poetic  qualities,  but  he  is  no  less  valuable  as  an  ex- 
ponent of  the  ethical  standard  of  his.  day.  His  excellence  brought 
him  great  fame,  and  in  Athens  he  enjoyed  especial  popularity.  Eurip- 
ides and  Sophocles  made  much  use  of  him,  and  he  was  admired  and 
quoted  by  Socrates,  Xenophon,  Plato  and  Aristotle.    The  compilation 


1 88  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 

had  the  good  fortune  to  be  used  as  a  school-book  during  the  Byzantine 
period,  and  so  escaped  the  fate  that  befell  the  elegies  of  most  of  the 
other  writers. 

This  use  of  the  poems  was  very  different  from  that  for  which  they 
were  originally  intended.  Theognis  composed  at  least  the  lyric  lines 
to  be  sung  at  club-dinners,  where  a  number  of  companions  met,  and 
after  feasting  admitted  flute-players,  to  whose  music,  or  with  the 
accompaniment  of  the  lyre,  short  songs  were  sung.  These  brief  lays 
repeated  the  incessant  lament  over  the  uncertainty  and  mutability  of 
life,  the  universal  subject  of  the  minor  poetry  of  all  nations.  Even 
Theognis  relaxes  his  severer  mood  to  affirm  that  the  best  thing 
for  man  would  be  never  to  have  been  born. 

Yet  it  was  not  here  that  the  poetry  of  this  time  found  its  ultimate 
expression,  but  rather  in  the  richer  melic  verse  that  was  far  aloof  from 
any  relation  with  prose  in  subject  and  treatment,  and  indeed  remote 
from  the  expression  of  merely  personal  feeling.  Simonides  of  Ceos 
is  probably  the  completest  master  of  this  form.  He  was  born  556  B.C., 
the  year  in  which  Stesichorus  died.  His  birthplace,  Ceos,  one  of 
the  Cyclades,  is  near  Attica,  so  that  he  was  early  exposed  to  the  in- 
fluence of  Athens,  whither  he  betook  himself  after  a  short  visit  to 
Italy  and  Sicily.  In  this  new  home  he  enjoyed  the  friendship  of  the 
sons  of  the  tyrant  Peisistratos,  and  after  their  overthrow  he  found  a 
welcome  in  Thessaly.  When  the  Persian  wars  broke  out  Simonides 
returned  to  Athens  and  sang  the  successes  of  the  Greeks  against  the 
invaders,  his  elegy  about  Marathon  winning  a  prize  over  one  composed 
by  ^schylus,  the  tragedian.  The  second  Persian  war  inspired  him 
anew,  and  he  wrote  various  poems  in  commemoration  of  the  Greek 
triumphs.  At  this  period  he  stood  at  the  height  of  his  fame  ;  he  was 
intimate  with  the  most  eminent  citizens  of  Athens,  and  well  known 
throughout  the  Greek-speaking  world.  When  about  eighty  years  old 
he  accepted  an  invitation  to  the  court  of  Hiero,  the  tyrant  of  Syracuse, 
a  famous  patron  of  letters,  who  gathered  about  him  the  most  eminent 
poets  of  his  time.  Pindar  and  ^schylus  also  partook  of  his  hospital- 
ity.    Here  Simonides  died  466  B.C. 

We  are  told  on  good  authority  that  he  was  avaricious,  and  the  posi- 
tion of  a  poet  at  this  time  certainly  laid  the  way  open  for  the  accusa- 
tion, even  if  it  were  not  corroborated  by  direct  evidence.  In  order  to 
succeed,  the  poet  was  dependent  on  a  patron,  who  could  be  most  surely 
pleased  by  flattery.  Despots  are  certainly  averse  to  the  frank  utter- 
ance of  political  sentiments,  and  possibly  indifferent  to  the  expression 
of  a  poet's  personal  feelings ;  their  own  importance,  however,  seldom 
becomes  wearisome  to  them.  Consequently,  at  the  courts  of  the  des- 
pots  of  this  period,  the   melic  poetry,  shunning  politics  and  personal 


SIMONIDES—A   MASTER   OF  PATHOS.  189 

sentiment,  sought  safety  in  celebrating  public  events,  very  much  as  in 
Italy  and  England  masques  were  composed  to  convey  flattery  and 
glory  to  rulers  who  took  a  heavy  toll  from  the  literature  they  patron- 
ized. The  love  poems  of  the  M.d\\z  school  were  not  repeated  ;  they 
were  as  dead  as  ballad  poetry  at  the  court  of  Elizabeth  ;  the  whole 
movement  was  in  the  direction  of  a  sort  of  abstract  splendor  and 
grace.  Fortunately  for  Simonides,  however,  he  enjoyed  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  great  Greek  uprising  against  the  Persian  invaders ;  indeed, 
his  excellence  shows  how  much  was  at  stake,  in  literature  alone,  in 
this  momentous  struggle  between  Europe  and  Asia.  The  epigrams  of 
Simonides  attest  his  skill  and  eloquent  power.  It  was,  however,  in 
the  more  complicated  paeans,  hyperchemes,  which  were  poems  accom- 
panied with  song  and  dance,  with  an  attempt  to  give  a  dramatic  rep- 
resentation of  the  subject,  so  that  the  resemblance  to  masques  becomes 
at  once  clear,  that  he  is  said  to  have  excelled  even  himself,  but  unfor- 
tunately very  little  of  this  part  of  his  work  has  come  down  to  us.  Of 
a  choral  song  on  the  victory  at  Artemisium  we  have  a  few  lines  in 
which  we  may  see  the  quality  that  antiquity  with  one  consent  ascribed 
to  Simonides,  namely,  emphasis  by  means  of  simplicity.  The  com- 
pact beauty  of  the  Greek  eludes  successful  translation,  but  something 
of  its  value  may  be  found  in  this  rendering : 

Thermopylae  !  when  there  your  heroes  fell, 

Giving  them  death,  you  also  glory  gave ; 

Your  soil  shall  be  their  altar  and  their  grave  ; 
Of  their  fair  death  your  name  shall  ever  tell, 
Such  dying  should  to  praise,  not  tears,  impel 

E'en  those  who  loved  them,  and  their  deeds  still  save 

From  all-destroying  time  their  memory  brave. 
This  grave  their  home  and  monument  as  well. 
And  let  Leonidas  himself  attest 
Their  courage,  who  with  them  finds  glorious  rest. 

The  whole  of  this  poem,  if  it  could  by  any  chance  be  recovered, 
would  make  much  clear  that  is  now  obscure  in  the  history  of  Greek 
melic  poetry.  The  scanty  lines  that  alone  remain  of  these  long, 
majestic  poems  serve  but  to  tease  us  like  vanishing  memories  which 
continually  elude  our  attention.  Yet  what  we  have  shows  us  some  of 
the  qualities  of  his  style,  the  way  in  which  he  worked  with  simple 
means  rather  than  by  adventurous  experiment.  We  see  too  that  he 
was  a  master  of  pathos,  Catullus  attests  the  reputation  that  Simon- 
ides enjoyed  for  the  possession  of  this  quality  when  he  says  "Moestius 
lacrymis  Simonideis" — sadder  than  the  tears  of  Simonides — and  we  have 
a  beautiful  example  of  its  power  in  the  famous  lament  of  Danae. 
Acrisius,  the  father  of  Danae,  had  enclosed  her  and  her  boy  Perseus  in 
a  carved  chest  and  set  them  adrift  on  the  sea  in  a  dark  night : 


190 


THE  LYRIC  POETS. 


While  now  about  that  casket  rich  the  storm 
Rose  raging,  and  the  whirling,  foaming  sea 
Tossed  her,  all  fearing,  with  tear-drenched  cheek ; 
About  her  Perseus  wound  the  tender  arms. 
And  murmured,  "  Oh  !  my  child,  what  grief  is  mine. 
And  yet  thy  baby  heart  can  sleep  and  find 
Repose  in  this  brass-bound  and  joyless  house, 
Whose  cruel  darkness  scarce  a  ray  can  pierce. 
Yet  art  thou  undisturbed  by  the  waves'  crash, 


ACRISIUS  PUTS   DANAE   AND    PERSEUS   IN  THE  CHEST. 
(Frotn  a  vase  painting.) 

And  storm  winds  shriek  above  thy  curly  head, 
While  thou  liest  sleeping  with  thy  lovely  face 
Upon  thy  crimson  mantle  pillowed  soft. 
But  if  this  terror  breaks  in  through  thy  dreams, 
If  aught  thou  hearest,  hear  thy  mother's  voice 
Bid  thee  to  slumber  !    Slumber,  ocean,  too  ! 
And  oh  !   unending  grief,  slumber  awhile  ! 
Put  from  thee  cruel  counsels.  Father  Zeus, 
And  if  too  bold  my  speech  strike  on  thy  ear. 
Forgive  it  to  the  mother  of  my  child  ! " 

In  the  epigram,  too,  the  simplicity  of  Simonides  found   full  expres- 
sion.    This  is  one : 


Gorgo,  thine  arm  about  thy  mother  lay  ; 

Our  tender  speech,  it  was  the  last,  was  thine  ; 
Weeping  thou  spak'st,  "  Stay  with  my  father,  stay 

And  bear  him  other  children,  mother  mine  ! 
Happier  in  this  than  she  who  dies  to-day, 
That  they  may  live  to  soothe  thy  life's  decay." 


SIMONIDES— LITERATURE  AFFECTED  BY  ENVIRONMENT.       191 
Here  is  another: 

Pythonax  and  his  sister,  side  by  side, 

Here  lie  at  rest  within  the  grave's  embrace. 
While  yet  their  lovely  youth  is  unfulfilled  ; 
Wherefore  their  father,  Megaritos,  willed 

A  consecrated  stone  should  in  this  place 
Mark  his  undying  thanks  for  those  who  died. 

An  epigram,  it  must  be  understood,  did  not  have  the  same  meaning 
to  the  Greeks  that  it  has  in  modern  times.  We  understand  by  the 
word  scarcely  mqre  than  a  rhymed  joke,  marked  by  causticity,  or  at 
least  pertness.  But  the  Greeks  regarded  it  as  above  all  things  an 
occasional  poem,  and  it  was  Simonides  who  first  gave  them  real  im- 
portance. His  predecessors  wrote  very  few  epigrams,  all  reports  of 
what  they  did  resting  on  meagre  foundations,  and  none  of  his  contem- 
poraries were  at  all  equal  to  him.  The  circumstances  in  which  he 
lived  inspired  him,  as  they  did  the  whole  Greek  nation;  and  his  marked 
literary  skill,  the  product  of  many  years  of  practice  on  the  part  of  the 
Greeks,  gave  expression  to  the  spirit  that  was  animating  his  fellow- 
countrymen  in  their  struggle  for  freedom.  His  commemoration  of  the 
many  deeds  of  heroism  was  especially  welcome  to  the  Athenians 
among  whom  he  was  living,  and  wherever  a  monument  was  built  to 
the  slain  heroes,  Simonides,  as  the  first  of  living  poets,  was  called  on 
for  an  inscription.  The  two  extracts  just  given  show  the  reasonable- 
ness of  their  request.  Simonides  was  the  master  of  what  art  last  at- 
tains, simplicity;  and  the  novel  employment  of  his  genius  on  vivid 
subjects  of  general  interest  indicated  the  awakening  of  the  Greek 
mind  to  the  contemplation  of  more  momentous  things  than  the  muta- 
bility of  life,  the  brief  duration  of  youth  and  beauty,  all,  to  be  sure, 
undeniable  truths,  but  truths  that  are  of  the  nature  of  luxuries  for 
idle  people.  It  is  only  in  periods  of  inaction  that  these  half  mournful 
melodies  find  utterance.  It  is  generally  the  useless  man  who  is  most 
afraid  of  death,  and  it  is  when  life  is  empty  that  poets  are  busiest  in 
pointing  out  its  sadness.  All  literary  history  teaches  us  that  in  differ- 
ent countries  similar  conditions  produce  similar  work:  in  Persia  a 
condition  of  apathy  and  ease  was  the  accompaniment  of  abundant 
pathetic  lyric  song,  in  which  the  picturesque  sadness  of  human  life 
was  abundantly  treated  ;  in  Japan  a  period  of  courtly  luxury  heard 
the  same  note  sounded ;  in  Italy,  Spain  and  England,  the  detachment 
of  national  interest  from  the  national  life,  the  seclusion  of  literature 
behind  luxury,  saw  men  occupied  with  the  production  of  literary 
gems.  It  was  to  work  of  this  kind  that  Simonides  gave  new  vigor, 
and  the  subsequent  predominance  of  the  epigram  attests  its  novelty. 
The  other  forms  that  he  employed  bore  the  perfection  of  completed 


192  THE   LYRIC  POETS. 

work ;  their  task  was  done,  the  dithyrambic  measures,  as  we  shall 
see,  even  transformed  into  the  drama.  The  others  were  sterile.  Yet 
of  Simonides  we  must  judge  mainly  by  report,  and  this  places  him 
high  among  the  world's  poets.  We  see,  too,  by  the  number  of  his 
victories,  both  the  general  poetic  interest  and  his  preeminence.  The 
winning  of  a  prize,  as  he  did,  over  .^schylus,  is  a  proof  of  this. 

Among  the  imitators  of  Simonides  was  his  nephew,  Bacchylides, 
who  possessed  much  literary  skill,  which  was  devoted,  however,  mainly 
to  singing  the  joys  of  life  and  the  pleasures  of  society.  Simonides 
was  a  national  poet,  and  so  one  of  those  who  address  the  whole  civi- 
lized world;  Bacchylides  was  in  comparison  a  local  poet  of  temporary 
significance.  His  work  only  confirms  the  opinion  that  we  should 
naturally  form  of  the  ripeness  and  complexity  of  the  Greek  civiliza- 
tion at  this  time;  alongside  of  the  patriotism  was  abundant  luxury, 
and  this  Bacchylides  fully  expressed.  Certainly  all  of  this  sentiment 
may  be  found  in  Simonides,  but  the  older  poet  combined  with  it  a 
loftiness  which  the  circumstances  of  his  career  demanded.  An  excel- 
lent example  of  the  manner  of  the  nephew  is  thus  translated  by  Mr. 
J.  A.  Symonds: 

To  mortal  men  peace  giveth  these  good  things  : 

Wealth,  and  the  flowers  of  honey-throated  song  ; 
The  flame  that  springs 
On  carven  altars  from  fat  sheep  and  kine, 

Slain  to  the  gods  in  heaven  ;  and  all  day  long 
Games  for  glad  youths,  and  flutes  and  wreaths  and  circling  wine. 

Then  in  the  steely  shield  swart  spiders  weave 
Their  web  and  dusky  woof  ; 

Rust  to  the  pointed  spear  and  sword  doth  cleave  ; 

The  brazen  trump  sounds  no  alarms  ; 
Nor  is  sleep  harried  from  our  eyes  aloof. 

But  with  sweet  rest  my  bosom  warms  ; 
The  streets  are  thronged  with  lovely  men  and  young, 
And  hymns  in  praise  of  boys  like  flames  to  heaven  are  flung. 

A  little  earlier  than  Simonides  was  Lasus  of  Hermione.  He  lived 
in  Athens  at  the  court  of  Hipparchus  ;  there  he  introduced  modifica- 
tions— just  what  they  were,  is  not  clear — in  thecompositions  of  dithy- 
rambs, and  contested,  sometimes  successfully,  with  Simonides.  We 
have  but  the  merest  bit  of  his  work,  which  probably  disappeared  before 
the  greater  merit  of  Simonides  and  Pindar.  Melanippides  the  elder  has 
likewise  fallen  into  some  obscurity.  Apollodorus  of  Athens  is  known 
only  as  a  teacher  of  Pindar.  Tynnichus  of  Chalcis,  Lamprokles,  and 
Kydias  are  but  names  to  us. 

Meanwhile  we  find  a  number  of  women  composing  lyric  verse,  and 
often  with  marked  success.  Among  them  was  Myrtis,  who  is  also  said 
to  have  been  a  teacher  of  Pindar,  although  this  statement   has  been 


SAPPHO'S    CONTEMPORARIES.  193 

doubted.  Another  was  Corinna,  who  for  her  part,  and  probably  with 
more  accuracy,  has  been  styled  a  pupil  of  Myrtis.  Remains  of  her 
verses,  of  which  only  very  few  have  reached  us,  are  a  mere  dying  echo 
of  the  original.  It  is  known,  however,  that  she  was  frequently  suc- 
cessful in  poetical  contests,  once  indeed  winning  the  prize  over  Pindar. 
What  is  interesting  to  us  is  the  proof  that  women  still  devoted  them- 
selves to  verse.  Generally,  however,  they  appear  in  outlying  regions. 
Corinna  won  her  fame  in  Boeotia.  Telesilla  of  Argos,  if  tradition 
is  to  be  believed,  handled  a  sword  as  well  as  a  pen,  for  when  the 
Spartan  Cleomenes  had  beaten  the  Argives,  she  placed  herself  at  the 
head  of  a  band  of  women  and  drove  back  the  enemy.  More  fortunate 
than  Myrtis,  two  lines  of  her  work  remain.  Praxilla,  a  possible  contem- 
porary, and  a  native  of  Sicyon,  showed  another  side  of  a  manly  spirit 
in  composing  songs  for  feasts,  generally  of  an  instructive  kind.  Thus : 

"  Under  every  stone,  my  friend,  hides  a  scorpion  ;  take  care  lest  he  sting 
you  !     There  is  danger  in  everything  that  is  hidden." 

Another  curious  fragment,  apparently  from  a  sort  of  narrative  poem, 
is  the  answer  of  Adonis  to  one  who  asked  him  in  the  shades  what  it 
was  that  he  most  missed.  He  said:  "The  most  beautiful  thing  I 
have  left  is  the  sunlight,  next  the  bright  stars  and  the  face  of  the 
moon,  ripe  melons,  apples,  and  pears."  The  remark  is  certainly  in 
character. 

The  following  are  taken  from  Bland's  "  Collections  from  the  Greek 
Anthology,"  edited  by  Merivale : 

FROM    AN   ELEGY   ON   A   SHIPWRECK,   BY   ARCHILOCHUS. 

Loud  are  our  griefs,  my  friend  ;  and  vain  is  he 
Would  steep  the  sense  in  mirth  and  revelry. 
O'er  those  we  mourn  the  hoarse-resounding  wave 
Hath  clos'd,  and  whelm'd  them  in  their  ocean  grave. 
Deep  sorrow  swells  each  breast.     But  heaven  bestows 
One  healing  med'cine  for  severest  woes, 
— Resolv'd  endurance— for  affliction  pours 
To  all  by  turns, — to-day  the  cup  is  ours. 
Bear  bravely,  then,  the  common  trial  sent, 
And  cast  away  your  womanish  lament ! 
***** 

Ah  !  had  it  been  the  will  of  Heav'n  to  save 
His  honor'd  reliques  from  a  nameless  grave  \ 
Had  we  but  seen  th'  accustom'd  flames  aspire, 
And  wrap  his  corse  in  purifying  fire ! 
***** 

Yet  what  avails  it  to  lament  the  dead  ? 
Say,  will  it  profit  aught  to  shroud  our  head. 
And  wear  away  in  grief  the  fleeting  hours. 
Rather  than  'mid  bright  nymphs  in  rosy  bowers  } 


194  THE  LYRIC  POETS. 


ON   A   PORTRAIT. — ERINNA. 

I  am  the  tomb  of  Ida,  hapless  bride  ! 
Unto  this  pillar,  traveler,  turn  aside ; 
Turn  to  this  tear-worn  monument,  and  say, 
'  O  envious  Death,  to  charm  this  life  away  !  " 
These  mystic  emblems  all  too  plainly  show 
The  bitter  fate  of  her  who  sleeps  below. 
The  very  torch  that  laughing  Hymen  bore 
To  light  the  virgin  to  the  bridegroom's  door, 
With  that  same  torch  the  bridegroom  lights  the  fire 
That  dimly  glimmers  on  her  funeral  pyre. 
Thou,  too,  O  Hymen !  bidst  the  nuptial  lay 
In  elegiac  meanings  die  away. 

ALC^US. 

Jove  descends  in  sleet  and  snow, 

Howls  the  vex'd  and  angry  deep  ; 
Every  stream  forgets  to  flow, 

Bound  in  winter's  icy  sleep. 
Ocean  wave  and  forest  hoar 
To  the  blast  responsive  roar. 

Drive  the  tempest  from  your  door. 

Blaze  on  blaze  your  hearthstone  piling. 

And  unmeasur'd  goblets  pour 
Brimful  high  with  nectar  smiling. 

Then  beneath  your  Poet's  head 

Be  a  downy  pillow  spread. 

THE   SPOILS   OF  WAR. — ALCiEUS. 

Glitters  with  brass  my  mansion  wide  ; 
The  roof  is  decked  on  every  side 

In  martial  pride, 
With  helmets  rang'd  in  order  bright 
And  plumes  of  horse  hair  nodding  white, 

A  gallant  sight  — 

Fit  ornament  for  warrior's  brow — 
And  round  the  walls,  in  goodly  row. 

Refulgent  glow 
Stout  greaves  of  brass  like  burnished  gold, 
And  corselets  there,  in  many  a  fold 

Of  linen  roll'd  ; 

And  shields  that  in  the  battle  fray 
The  routed  losers  of  the  day 

Have  cast  away  ; 
Euboean  faulchions  too  are  seen, 
Wiih  rich  embroider'd  belts  between 

Of  dazzling  sheen  : 

And  gaudy  surcoats  pil'd  around, 
The  spoils  of  chiefs  in  war  renown 'd, 

May  there  be  found. 
These,  and  all  else  that  here  you  see. 
Are  fruits  of  glorious  victory 

Achieved  by  me. 


SAPPHO'S  CONTEMPORARIES.  195 

THE   RETURN  OF   SPRING. — IBYCUS. 

What  time  soft  zephyrs  fan  the  trees 

In  the  blest  gardens  of  th'  Hesperides, 

Where  those  bright  golden  apples  glow, 

Fed  by  the  fruitful  streams  that  round  them  flow, 

And  new-born  clusters  teem  with  wine 

Beneath  the  shadowy  foliage  of  the  vine  ; 

To  me  the  joyous  season  brings 

But  added  torture  on  his  sunny  wings. 

Then  Love,  the  tyrant  of  my  breast. 

Impetuous  ravisher  of  joy  and  rest. 

Bursts,  furious,  from  his  mother's  arms, 

And  fills  my  trembling  soul  with  new  alarms ; 

Like  Boreas  from  his  Thracian  plains, 

Cloth'd  in  fierce  lightnings,  in  my  bosom  reigns. 

And  rages  still,  the  madd'ning  power — 

His  parching  flames  my  wither'd  heart  devour  : 

Wild  Phrensy  comes  my  senses  o'er. 

Sweet  Peace  is  fled,  and  Reason  rules  no  more, 

SIMONIDES. 

Long,  long  and  dreary  is  the  night 

That  waits  us  in  the  silent  grave  : 
Few,  and  of  rapid  flight. 

The  years  from  Death  we  save. 
Short — ah,  how  short — that  fleeting  space ; 
And  when  man's  little  race 
Is  run,  and  Death's  grim  portals  o'er  him  close. 
How  lasting  his  repose  ! 

SIMONIDES. 

Who  would  add  an  hour 

To  the  narrow  span 

That  concludes  the  life  of  man  } 
Who  would  envy  kings  their  power. 

Or  gods  their  endless  day. 

If  pleasure  were  away  ? 

BACCHYLIDES. 

Happy,  to  whom  the  gods  have  given  a  share 
Of  what  is  good  and  fair  ; 

A  life  that's  free 

From  dire  mischance  and  ruthless  poverty. 
To  live  exempt  from  care. 

Is  not  for  mortal  man,  how  blest  soe'er  he  be. 


CHAPTER  III.— PINDAR. 

The  General  Condition  of  the  Lyric  Poetry.  I. — Its  Flowering  in  Pindar. — His  Life 
— His  Relations  with  the  Sicilian  Tyrants. — A  Comparison  between  Him  and  Mil- 
ton.— The  Abundance  of  his  Work,  and  its  Various  Divisions.  II. — The 
Epinicion,  or  Song  in  Praise  of  a  Victor  at  the  Public  Games. — The  Games,  and 
their  Significance  to  the  Greeks. — The  Adulation  which  Pindar  Gave  to  the  Vic- 
tors ;  the  Serious  Nature  of  his  Work  ;  Its  Relation  to  Religious  Thought ;  Its 
Ethical  Importance,  All  being  Qualities  that  were  Outgrowing  the  Bonds  of 
Mere  Lyric  Verse.     III. — Illustrative  Extracts. 

THIS  brief  sketch  of  the  Greek  lyric  poetry  brings  us  at  last  to  its 
best  known  representative,  Pindar.  He  is  the  crown  of  the  whole 
movement,  and  it  may  be  well  to  observe  the  course  already  taken  by 
this  form  of  verse.  In  the  one  hundred  and  eighty  years  between 
580  and  400  B.C.,  the  most  characteristic  features  were  the  simple 
.^olic  lyric  and  the  Dorian  choral  lyric.  Both  of  these  spread  over 
the  whole  of  Greece,  the  latter  advancing  through  Argos  to  the  Ionic 
islands,  and  from  them  back  to  the  mainland,  while  the  ^olic  lyric 
forms  first  prevailed  among  the  islands,  and  thence  moved  westward. 
They  reached  Athens  at  about  the  same  time,  at  the  end  of  the  period 
of  the  Pisistratidae,  but  the  more  complicated  and  magnificent  choral 
lyric  found  a  welcome  which  was  denied  its  humble  rival.  With  the 
crystallization  of  Greek  power  into  a  single  mass  under  the  Persian 
attack,  the  political  relations  of  the  different  nations  acquired  im- 
portance, and  in  the  development  of  national  interests  the  expression 
of  individual  feelings  sank  out  of  sight.  The  elegy  decayed  under 
the  rivalry  of  prose,  and  the  choral  lyric  exactly  suited  the  pompous 
ceremonies  and  the  new  luxury  of  Athens.  Yet  some  of  its  forms 
languished  at  an  early  date.  The  seclusion  in  which  the  women  of 
that  city  were  accustomed  to  live  forbade  the  employment  of  choruses 
of  maidens,  and  the  encomion,  which  was  introduced  by  Lasos  of 
Hermione  and  by  Simonides  of  Ceos,  found  no  following.  The  dithy- 
ramb faded  away  before  the  development  of  the  worship  of  Dionysus 
that  accompanied  the  rise  of  the  drama. 

I. 

Yet  before  the  decay  of  lyrical  poetry  came  its  full  flowering  time 
in  the  hands  of  Pindar.  This  writer  was  regarded  by  the  Greeks  as 
the  greatest   of  the   lyric  poets,  and   fortunately  a  good  part  of  his 


FLOWERING   OF  LYRIC  POETRY.  197 

work  has  come  down  to  us,  enough  to  enable  us  to  see  what  it  was 
that  the  Greeks  admired.  We  shall  notice,  too,  that  he  was  the  last 
product  of  a  long  period.  It  is  only  then  that  perfection  is  reached 
when  continued  practice  has  decided  on  the  most  desirable  form,  after 


rejecting  what  is  unsatisfactory,  and  after  a  vocabulary  and  habit  of 
thought  have  grown  up  that  aid  both  the  poets  and  their  audience. 
The  whole  historical  civilization  of  Greece  was  reflected  in  its  brilliant 
lyric  poetry,  with  its  abundant  divisions  that  had  commemorated  all 


I9«  PINDAR. 

subjects  from  a  lover's  languishing  despair  to  the  sumptuous  ceremonial 
of  great  religious  festivals.  That  its  growth  had  been  towards  com- 
plexity was  only  natural,  in  view  of  its  close  relation  with  the  swiftly 
ripening  civilization,  and  of  the  inevitable  tendency  of  even  sim- 
plicity, which  is  itself  attained  only  by  effort,  to  become  artificial. 

Pindar  was  a  Boeotian,  and  was  born  at  Cynoscephalae,  near  Thebes, 
522  B.C.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  Dorian  style  had  already 
made  its  way  throughout  Greece,  and  that  from  its  original  use  for 
religious  meetings  and  festal  choruses  it  had  grown  to  fill  the  place 
formerly  held  by  the  great  epics.  The  accession  of  wealth  that  fol- 
lowed the  defeat  of  the  Persians  enabled  rulers  and  citizens  to  pay 
generously  for  the  panegyrics  of  the  poets.  Simonides  had  been  de- 
nounced for  writing  for  hire,  a  charge  which  was  very  obnoxious  to 
the  Greeks,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  Pindar  lent  his  services  to  the 
highest  bidder.  The  new  national  feeling  that  began  to  appear  in 
Greece  gave  additional  importance  to  the  athletic  contests,  which  were 
the  meeting-place  for  men  from  every  region,  and  the  victors  were 
willing  to  pay  large  sums  to  win  the  immortality  that  song  could  give 
them.  Pindar  was  born  at  the  very  time  that  the  Pythian  sports  were 
held.  Of  his  infancy  we  have  the  tradition  that  the  future  sweetness 
of  his  song  was  prophesied  by  a  swarm  of  bees  that  settled  on  his  lips 
while  he  was  sleeping.  The  same  thing  was  told,  towards  the  end  of 
their  life,  of  several  other  Grecian  poets,  and  with  the  advance  of 
Hellenic  culture  in  Italy  the  same  phenomenon  began  to  make  its  ap- 
pearance there,  as  notably  in  the  case  of  Virgil,  while  the  doves  cov- 
ered the  infant  Horace  with  leaves  when  he  was  sleeping  in  the  woods. 
These  incidents  seem  to  show  how  carefully  either  \.\\.q.  fauna  of  Italy 
or  its  poets  had  read  Greek. 

His  early  education  was  carefully  provided  for  ;  mention  has  already 
been  made  of  some  of  his  teachers,  Lasos  of  Hermione,  Myrtis  and 
Corinna.  Besides  these,  an  early  visit  to  Athens  brought  him  under 
the  charge  of  Agathocles  and  Apollodorus ;  possibly  it  was  then  that 
he  was  taught  by  Lasos.  At  any  rate,  although  ill-feeling  grew  up 
between  Athens  and  Thebes,  Pindar  long  preserved  a  warm  affection 
for  the  city  that  was  in  fact  his  intellectual  home.  When  but  twenty 
years  of  age  he  composed  an  ode,  the  loth  Pythian,  for  the  victory  of 
a  Thessalian  youth,  and  very  soon  he  was  employed  by  Kings  Arcesi- 
laus  of  Cyrene  and  Amyntas  of  Macedonia,  as  well  as  by  the  free 
Grecian  cities.  Yet  it  is  not  to  be  imagined  that  he  held  a  dishonor- 
able position  before  these  rulers  ;  to  be  sure  he  accepted  rewards  from 
them  for  his  poems,  as  writers  in  the  last  century  accepted  gifts  from 
their  patrons,  but  without  a  sense  of  degradation.  Undoubtedly  the 
influence  of  patrons  was  at  times  evil ;  writers  did  their  best  to  make 


PINDAR  AND  MILTON.  I99 

themselves  acceptable,  just  as  now  there  are  men  who  humor  the  pub- 
lic against  their  own  better  judgment,  but  it  was  the  only  means  by 
which  literature  could  be  supported.  In  Pindar's  case  we  find  that  he 
expressed  his  own  convictions.  Hiero  of  Syracuse  heard  many  words 
of  good  advice,  as  did  the  Cyrenean  ruler  Arcesilaus  IV.  Evidently 
Pindar  was  not  a  needy  parasite  who  sought  to  conciliate  the  great  by 
flattery,  but  rather  a  serious  defender  of  existing  institutions,  who  yet 
saw  and  tried  to  provide  against  the  dangers  that  threatened  them. 
He  was  by  birth  and  education  an  aristocrat,  and  he  maintained  an 
admiration  for  Doric  principles ;  yet  his  vision  was  wide,  and  after 
overcoming  his  temporary  prejudice  against  Athens  he  was  able  to 
praise  what  that  city  had  done  in  behalf  of  national  freedom  as  well 
as  the  energy  of  the  Spartans  against  the  Persians,  and  of  the  Syracus- 
ans  against  the  Carthaginians.  This  breadth  is  the  more  remarkable, 
because  at  the  beginning  Thebes,  misled  by  jealousy  of  Athens,  allied 
itself  with  the  invader.  Above  all  things,  Pindar  was  honest,  and 
honesty  he  regarded  as  the  foundation  of  virtue.  In  this  respect  he 
stands  with  his  friend  .^schylus,  the  great  tragedian.  In  his  rigid  ad- 
herence to  a  lofty  moral  code  and  his  adoption  of  the  older  form  of 
lyric  rather  than  the  new  dramatic  poetry — a  choice  which  was  doubt- 
less in  great  measure  determined  by  the  remoteness  of  conservative 
Boeotia  from  the  most  modern  developments  of  literature — he  bears  a 
strong  likeness  to  Milton.  For  as  Pindar  was  the  complete  master  of 
a  long-lived  method  that,  after  the  perfection  which  he  gave  to  it,  was 
about  to  disappear,  so  Milton  was  the  last  representative  in  England 
of  the  learned  culture  of  the  Renaissance,  of  the  ripest  literary  devel- 
opment of  awakening  Europe.  Then,  too,  in  both  we  see  the  choice 
of  complicated  models,  and  a  masterly  use  of  difficult,  recondite 
language  and  allusion  which  require  for  their  full  comprehension  care- 
ful study.  Both  too  have  won  admiration,  but  often  an  admiration 
not  unmingled  with  awe,  that  has  secured  for  both  respect  rather  than 
popularity.  Pindar  is  certainly  hard  reading.  He  kept  himself  of  set 
purpose  in  the  clouds,  and  his  exalted  flight  presented  obstacles  even 
to  the  ancients — how  much  more  to  us  who  must  painfully  decipher 
his  difficult  language  and  grope  our  way  confusedly  through  his  vast 
accumulations  of  mythical  lore  ! 

Pindar  was  a  fertile  writer.  For  more  than  forty  years  he  was  busily 
producing  poems  of  various  kinds  ;  hymns,  paeans,  dithyrambs,  prosodia, 
parthenia,  hyperchemes,  encomia,  scolia,  threni,  and  epinicia,  or 
hymns  of  victory,  which  form  the  bulk  of  what  is  left  to  us  of  his 
work,.  While  these  various  forms  were  all  admired,  we  are  told  that 
the  epinicia  were  the  most  popular — perhaps  the  most  nearly  popu- 
lar would  be  the  more  exact  expression,  although  Pindar  was  honored 


200  PINDAR. 

throughout  Greece.  The  Athenians  put  up  a  statue  in  his  memory ; 
one  of  his  hymns  was  inscribed  on  a  slab  in  the  temple  of  Jupiter 
Ammon  in  Thebes.  The  fact  that  we  have  only  fragments  of  other 
poems  than  the  epinicia  compels  us  to  take  on  trust  much  of  the 
praise  that  was  given  to  him,  but  we  have  enough  of  these  to  see 
what  it  was  that  antiquity  admired. 


II. 

The  epinicion  was  a  song  in  praise  of  a  victor  at  the  public  games. 
These  games,  known  as  the  Olympian,  Pythian,  Nemean,  and  Isthmian, 
were  the  most  important  festivals  of  the  Greeks.  The  Olympian 
games  were  held  at  Elis  once  in  four  years,  in  summer,  and  their 
importance  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  They  were  held  in  honor 
of  Zeus,  whose  golden  and  ivory  statue,  the  work  of  Phidias,  was 
the   masterpiece  of  Greek   art.     It  was  placed    in  the  temple,  and 


REWARD  OF  VICTORY. 
{From  a  vase  painting.) 


represented  the  god,  seated,  as  he  is  described  by  Homer,  shaking  his 
locks,  whereat  Olympus  shakes.  We  have  the  unqualified  testimony 
of  Greeks  and  Romans  to  the  magnificence  of  this  colossal  statue — it 
was  forty  feet  high — which  consecrated  the  place  where  the  games 
were  held.  Contestants  came  from  all  parts  of  Greece,  and  there  were 
numberless  spectators  assembled,  for  the  occasion  was  like  a  great 
national  fair  at  which  there  met,  not  traders,  but  men  who  exchanged 
intellectual  novelties.  There  philosophers  debated,  poems  were  read, 
painters  showed  their  work  ;  it  was  at  this  great  festival  that  Herod- 
otus read  his  history  to  the  assembled  multitudes,  and  it  was-  before 
this  brilliant  collection  of  spectators  that  races  were  run,  and  the  vie- 


THE   GREEK  GAMES. 


20I 


tors  attained  widespread  fame  The  apparent  prize 
was  a  wreath  of  wild  olive.  The  Pythian  games 
took  place  in  the  spring,  once  in  four  years ;  the 
prizes  were  a  wreath  of  laurel  and  a  palm.  The 
Nemean  games  were  held  in  the  Nemean  groves, 
near  Cleonae,  in  Argolis,  every  three  years,  and  the 
successful  contestant  received  a  wreath  of  parsley. 
The  Isthmian  games  were  held  at  Corinth,  at  the 
same  intervals ;  the  prize  was  a  wreath  of  pine. 
These  modest  rewards  were,  however,  but  certificates 
of  brilliant    success    over    many    and  sturdy  rivals. 


CROWNING  A  VICTOR. 
(Front  a  bo-ivl  in  the  Luy ties  collection^ 

Contestants  appeared,  not  only  from  all  Greece, 
but  from  remote  regions  where  Hellenic  colonies 
had  been  founded,  from  Sicily  and  even  from  Africa, 
These  distant  tyrants  and  the  free  cities  and  noble 
families  vied  with  one  another  in  magnificence  and 
liberality,  the  chariot  races  especially  inspiring  osten- 
tatious emulation.  In  one  race,  Pindar  tells  us, 
forty  chariots  were  upset;  one  may  judge  from  that 
incident  of  the  abundance  of  competitors.  The 
winners  were  little  short  of  heroes.  Plutarch  tells 
us  that  one  town  removed  a  part  of  its  walls  to 
admit  a  victor  as  if  he  were  a  conquering  general. 
Cicero  scarcely  exaggerated  when  he  said  that  to  a 
Greek  an  Olympic  victory  was  dearer  than  a 
triumph  to  a  Roman.  Consequently  the  odes  of 
the  greatest  poets  were  properly  employed  in  help- 


202  PINDAR. 

ing  the  fortunate  winners  to  secure  immortality.  There  was  no 
festival,  one  might  almost  say  no  incident  of  public  life  that  lacked 
its  lyrical  praise  ;  naturally  enough  Simonides  or  Pindar  was  solicited 
to  lend  additional  luster  to  these  great  solemnities,  and  to  celebrate 
with  song  such  important  victories.  We  see  from  what  we  have  of 
Pindar's  work  that  he  brought  to  the  accomplishment  of  this  task  all 
the  complicated  machinery  of  the  lyric  verse.  This  form  had  already 
abandoned  the  personal  note  of  the  ^olic  writers,  and  with  the 
aid  of  music  and  dance  had  become  an  artificial  method  of  expression. 
Its  main  inspiration  was  the  religious  sense,  for  to  the  Greek  mind 
religion  was  everywhere.  The  remote  feeling  of  an  uncivilized 
race  that  the  hand  of  a  god  was  directly  present  in  every  circum- 
stance of  life  survived  among  the  people  of  this  race,  together  with 
the  numerous  gods  who  shared  the  duties  of  supervision  over  all 
phenomena.  It  was  in  their  praise  that  the  lyric  poetry  found  its 
busiest  employment.  This  was  extended  to  the  celebration  of  the 
various  victories.  Pindar  praised  not  so  much  the  individual  contes- 
tant as  the  deity  who  had  aided  him  to  secure  the  victory,  or  in  whose 
honor  the  sports  were  held.  Then,  too,  the  deities  of  the  city  and  of 
the  family  had  to  receive  their  due  praise.  The  success  of  the  winner 
was  far  from  being  the  sole  possession  of  one  man  ;  it  was  a  glory 
shared  by  all  his  kin,  by  the  men  of  his  city  and  race,  by  his  ancestors, 
by  all  who  were  in  any  way  connected  with  him.  Hence  the  odes  ad- 
dressed a  larger  audience  than  they  would  have  done  if  they  had 
simply  celebrated  one  man's  prowess  ;  they  sang  the  great  event  rather 
than  an  individual.  It  is  this  religious  bearing  that  makes  the  poems 
hard  for  us  to  read.  They  are  the  full  product  of  a  long-growing  sys- 
tem whereof  our  knowledge  is  most  scanty,  and  they  are  rich  with 
references  to  a  mass  of  mythological  lore  that  bound  the  living  Greeks 
to  a  fabulous  past,  and  made  their  religion  a  very  part  of  their  being. 
The  myths  underlay  history,  politics,  morals,  everywhere  presenting  an 
ideal  image  of  human  life  to  the  poet  and  the  artist.  It  was  as  if  the 
gods  had  stepped  down  from  Olympus  to  share  the  work  of  men  and 
to  aid  them  with  brilliant  and  inspiring  example.  Consequently  the 
lyric  poet  was  never  tired  of  celebrating  the  myths  that  were  connected 
with  the  subjects  of  his  song.  He  was  free  to  employ  mere  local 
legends ;  he  could  even  invent  myths  in  honor  of  victors,  as  in 
modern  times  fictitious  genealogies  have  lent  additional  luster  to 
famous  heroes. 

The  long  life  of  the  lyric  poetry  had  formed  certain  rigid  rules  that 
no  one  was  at  liberty  to  break.  Thus  the  poet  was  expected  not 
to  utter  his  own  personal  sentiments,  but  to  observe  the  laws  govern- 
ing  the  various  forms  of  composition.     He  was  to  praise  noble  actions. 


PINDAR'S   CONCEPTION  OF  HEAVEN.  203 

not  to  blame.  The  license  that  Archilochus,  for  instance,  had  enjoyed 
was  wholly  denied  him.  His  hands  were  bound,  as  much  as  are  now 
the  hands  of  a  man  who  composes  religious  music,  and  he  was  com- 
pelled to  magnify  the  glory  of  the  gods.  The  way  in  which  Pindar 
did  this  shows  the  extent  of  the  changes  in  Greek  thought.  In  Hesiod 
the  gods  are  crude  beings  ;  in  Pindar's  time  the  swiftly  growing  civiliz- 
ation has  made  over  man's  whole  relation  to  the  universe  ;  the  intellect- 
ual travail  of  centuries  has  refined  the  morality  and  found  a  new  mean- 
ing in  the  old  stories.  These  are  not  denied  or  derided  ;  they  are  held 
to  contain  a  deeper  meaning  than  was  once  apparent. 

All  these  things  become  clear  in  what  Pindar  has  to  say  concerning 
human  destiny,  for  it  is  about  this  subject  that  all  serious  thought  re- 
volves. Ancestor  worship  had  been  handed  down  in  a  weakened  form 
from  remote  times,  and  Pindar  asserts  the  interest  that  the  dead  take 
in  the  glorious  deeds  of  their  descendants.  Thus  in  the  fifth  Pythian  he 
says  that  all  the  sacred  kings  beneath  their  monuments,  from  the 
bosom  of  the  earth  that  now  encloses  them,  hear  the  great  virtue  of 
their  descendant  refreshed  by  soft  dew  of  flattering  hymns ;  and  else- 
where he  afifirms  that  the  dead  take  part  in  the  noble  actions  of  their 
descendants  ;  the  dust  of  the  tomb  does  not  rob  them  of  the  brilliant 
honor  of  their  race.  More  important  are  his  expressions  of  the  future 
world.  In  this  region  the  righteous  are  separated  from  the  wicked, 
and  their  abode  is  a  charming  region  where  the  sun  forever  shines, 
fresh  breezes  blow,  and  lovely  trees,  fruits,  and  flowers  abound, — a 
scene,  it  will  be  noticed,  not  unlike  that  depicted  by  the  early  painters 
of  the  New  Jerusalem.  The  after-world  of  which  we  are  told  in  the 
Odyssey  is  a  pallid  shadow -of  this  world,  filled  with  an  awful  gloom, 
worse,  to  be  sure,  for  sinners,  but  kindly  to  none.  In  Pindar,  however, 
we   find  the  righteous  enjoying  pleasures,  for 

"  There  some  please 
Themselves  with  feats  of  horseback  exercise, 
And  some  with  draughts  and  others  with  the  lute, 
And  every  sort  of  happiness 

Blooms  in  luxuriance  there  : 
Whilst  a  sweet  odor  lies 

For  aye  above  that  land  so  fair, 
From  them  that  mingle  victims  numberless 
With  fire,  whose  radiance  shines 
Afar  upon  the  gods'  well-tended  shrines." 

The  wicked,  on  the  other  hand,  undergo  cruel  torments ;  their  souls 
hasten  down  a  steep  path  to  the  gulf  of  Erebus,  where  the  slowly 
crawling  streams  of  black  night  exhale  noxious  miasms.  The  souls  of 
the  accursed,  he  also  says,  forever  wander  about  the  earth  in  dreadful 
torment,  in  eternal  bonds  of  agony,  while  the  blessed  dwell  in  heaven. 


204  PINDAR. 

singing  hymns  of  praise  to  the  great  God.  To  be  sure,  Pindar  puts 
the  abode  of  the  blessed  at  one  time  in  the  regions  under  the  earth  and 
at  another  on  Olympus,  but  one  will  not  have  to  seek  long  for  similar 
trifling  inconsistencies.  What  is  better  worth  studying  is  Pindar's 
mention  of  metempsychosis,  with  yet  another  indication  of  the  future 
abode  of  the  sinless.  On  them,  he  says,  the  sunlight  falls  by  night 
and  day,  and  theirs  is  a  life  void  of  toil  ;  they  do  not  need  to  till  the 
earth  or  to  sail  the  sea,  but  these  favorites  of  the  gods,  who  have  fol- 
lowed virtue,  pass  tearless  days.  Whoever  has  been  able,  here  and  in 
that  abode,  thrice  to  keep  his  soul  from  stain  of  sin,  passes  to  the 
happy  isles,  where  the  breezes  from  the  sea  whisper  about  them,  and 
where  on  land  and  water  grow  odorous  golden  flowers  of  which  the 
blessed  make  wreaths  to  bind  their  heads  and  arms.  Again,  he  says 
the  souls  of  those  from  whom  Persephone  has  received  expiation  for 
their  sins  she  lets  return  again  in  the  ninth  year  to  the  sunlight ;  from 
these  spring  illustrious  kings,  men  invincible  in  their  strength  and  ad- 
mirable in  their  wisdom  ;  after  their  death  posterity  honors  them  as 
heroes. 

All  of  these  statements  show  the  greater  complications  of  religious 
thought  in  later  days,  and  naturally  the  view  of  life  on  this  side  of  the 
Styx  had  become  more  intricate.  To  be  sure,  we  find  even  among 
the  least  civilized  races  frequent  expression  of  the  uncertainty  and 
mutability  of  human  existence.  They  are  bewailed  by  savages  as  well 
as  by  riper  peoples  ;  this  part  of  the  lesson  of  life  is  soon  learned,  or, 
at  least,  soon  stated.  Pindar  is  never  tired  of  repeating  it.  "  Ephem- 
eral creatures,  what  are  we  ?  what  are  we  not  ?  Man  is  but  the  dream 
of  a  shadow  ;  when  the  gods  turn  upon  him  a  ray  from  heaven,  a  bright 
light  surrounds  him  and  his  life  is  sweet."  This  is  his  continual  re- 
frain ;  even  in  the  triumphal  odes,  in  his  songs  of  victory,  he  sounds 
his  lament  for  the  inevitable  tragedy  of  life.  All  good  lies  in  the 
hands  of  the  gods,  or  of  the  fate  above  the  gods,  who  may  dispense 
or  withhold  it,  as  to  them  seems  good.  "  In  a  moment  the  inconstant 
breath  of  fortune  turns  from  pole  to  pole."  "When  a  man,  without 
too  much  pains,  has  obtained  some  advantage,  he  seems  skillful,  and 
we  call  others  foolish  by  his  side ;  he  appears  to  have  secured  his  life 
by  the  wisdom  of  his  plans.  But  this  is  not  in  man's  power,  God  alone 
can  grant  it,  who  raises  to-day  one  man  and  holds  another  beneath  his 
mighty  hand."  But  there  would  be  no  limit  to  the  extracts  from  Pin- 
dar that  might  establish  the  proof  of  his  lofty  melancholy.  Yet,  with 
this,  he  knows  how  to  celebrate  the  glowing  joy  of  life  in  these 
young  conquerors;  he  sings  youth,  beauty,  strength,  and  love,  and  all 
with  a  firm  vigor  far  removed  from  effeminacy.  His  note  is  that  of 
a  trumpet;    he  is    Miltonic   in  the  lofty  air  with  which  he  treats    his 


COMPARATIVE    QUALITIES  OF   THE  LYRIC  POETS.  205 

subjects  as  in  his  vivid  language.  He  chants  the  praises  of  glory 
with  wonderful  fervor,  as  if  the  winning  of  the  prizes  at  these  games 
atoned  for  the  greater  part  of  human  ill.  Success  in  these  and  in 
war  formed  the  highest  gratification  for  men. 

With  regard  to  man's  duties  he  sounds  as  lofty  a  note  as  in  his 
praise  of  the  gods.  In  his  religious  utterance  he  at  times  rivalled 
even  the  Hebrew  prophets,  as  when  in  the  ninth  Pythian  ode  he 
said:  "Thou  knowest  the  fixed  end  of  all  things  and  all  their 
ways  ;  thou  knowest  the  number  of  the  leaves  the  earth  puts  forth 
in  spring,  and  hast  counted  the  sands  in  the  sea  and  in  the  rivers, 
as  they  are  moved  by  the  waves  and  by  the  sweep  of  the  winds ; 
thou  knowest  what  will  come  and  whence  it  will  rise."  In  morals 
his  constant  lesson  was  the  one  already  familiar  to  the  Greeks, 
according  to  which  moderation  was  strongly  counselled.  While  he 
saw  the  sadness  of  life  he  escaped  depressing  melancholy,  for  every 
thing  lay  in  the  hands  of  the  gods,  and  this  faith  made  duty  simple, 
even  if  austere,  and  at  times  puzzling.  We  have  seen  that  many  of 
the  Greeks  lamented  a  long  life ;  it  was  their  constant  wail  that  those 
whom  the  gods  loved  died  young.  But  Pindar's  faith  preserved  him 
from  this  sadness ;  he  is  always  serene  in  his  lofty  majesty.  If  we 
compare  him  with  what  we  know  of  the  other  lyric  poets  of  Greece, 
we  shall  find  that  they  all  possessed  in  common  a  certain  tone,  although 
they  are  to  be  distinguished  by  separate  qualities.  The  three  leading 
names  are  those  of  Alcman,  Stesichorus,  and  Simonides.  Alcman 
lived  in  the  seventh  century  ;  Stesichorus  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  ; 
Simonides  at  the  end  of  the  sixth  and  the  beginning  of  the  fifth,  B.C. 
Of  the  first-named  we  have  but  very  little  left,  and  this  is  marked  by 
an  air  of  simplicity  that  is  very  unlike  what  is  to  be  found  in  Pindar. 
Stesichorus  kept  closer  to  the  epic  style,  borrowing  from  those  long 
poems  the  subjects  of  his  songs.  His  style  too  appears  to  have 
possessed  an  abundance  and  facile  eloquence  very  unlike  the  qualities 
of  Pindar.  In  Simonides  again  we  find  grace  and  soft  emotions  very 
different  from  Pindar's  remote  majesty.  Pindar  is  not  pathetic  ;  we 
notice  in  him  rather  an  intellectual  massiveness  than  an  attractive  and 
sympathetic  treatment  of  the  feelings.  He  is  remote  from  general 
interest,  and  his  loneliness  is  only  intensified  by  his  liberal  use  of  myths 
that  are  as  strange  to  us  as  the  continual  references  to  Latin  civiliz- 
ation would  be  to  one  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  classics.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  a  great  deal  of  Pindar's  work  cannot  be  understood 
by  us  as  it  was  by  the  Greeks  ;  it  is  a  sealed  book  to  the  moderns.  For 
one  thing,  their  relation  to  Greek  music  is  something  that  we  cannot 
understand.  That  this  was  intimate  and  important  is  well  known,  yet 
this  is  lost  to  us.     Even  Cicero  said  that  when   Pindar's  lines  were 


2o6  PINDAR. 

separated  from  the  music  for  which  they  were  written  they  lacked  al- 
most every  appreciable  trace  of  rhythm  ;  how  then  can  we  detect  it  ?  Of 
the  merits  of  his  style,  too,  we  can  catch  only  a  small  part,  yet  enough 
is  left  to  give  us  a  deep  impression  of  a  great  man.  A  bold  imagina- 
ation  and  an  unfettered  vocabulary  always  present  problems  to  read- 
ers, and  these  odes  which  formed  the  principal  literary  expression  of  a 
comparatively  unknown  civilization  are  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Yet, 
remote  as  are  some  of  the  qualities  of  his  verse,  there  is  a  core  which 
cannot  fail  to  delight  readers,  a  lofty  tone  which  cannot  fail  to  impress 
itself  upon  every  one  who  will  read  him.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  how- 
ever, that  in  the  multitude  and  fulness  of  his  allusions  his  style  is  like 
modern  music,  which  abounds  in  melodies  and  suggestions  that  escape 
separate  analysis,  and  combine  together  to  leave  a  general  impression. 
The  fourteenth  Olympiad,  a  very  short  ode,  may  illustrate  this  side  of 
Pindar's  manner.     It  is  given  in  a  prose  translation : 

"  Ye  dwellers  in  a  settlement  that  enjoys  the  blessings  of  Cephisus'  waters, 
a  land  of  beautiful  steeds,  queens  of  fertile  Orchomenus  famed  in  song, 
ye  Graces,  guardians  of  the  ancient  race  of  the  Minyae,  hear  me,  for  to  you 
I  pray  ;  since  it  is  by  your  favor  that  all  which  is  pleasant  and  sweet  comes 
to  mortals,  if  any  man  is  a  poet,  or  handsome,  or  has  gained  glory  by  vic- 
tory. Nay,  the  gods  themselves  preside  not  at  the  dance  or  the  banquet 
without  the  revered  Graces  ;  but  they  are  the  directors  of  all  that  is  done  in 
heaven,  and  setting  their  seats  by  the  side  of  the  Pythian  Apollo  with  the 
golden  bow,  they  worship  the  eternal  majesty  of  the  Olympian  Father.  O 
venerable  Aglaia,  and  thou,  song-loving  Euphrosyne,  daughters  of  the  mighti- 
est of  the  gods,  lend  me  your  ears,  and  thou  also,  tuneful  Thalia,  and 
regard  this  Comus,  advancing  with  sprightly  foot  under  favoring  fortune. 
I  have  come  to  sing  of  Asopichus  in  the  Lydian  air,  and  with  the  strains  of 
the  lute,  because  the  land  of  the  Minyae  hath  won  at  Olympia  through  thee. 
Go  now.  Echo,  to  the  dark-walled  abode  of  Persephone,  and  convey  to  his 
father  the  glorious  news  that  when  you  see  Cleodamus  you  may  tell  him 
about  his  son,  that  she  hath  crowned  his  youthful  locks,  by  the  vales  of  the 
renowned  Pisa,  with  wreaths  from  the  chivalrous  contests." 

In  this  brief  poem  Pindar  has  made  mention  of  many  things :  he 
has  praised  the  victor,  a  boy  who  has  won  the  boys'  foot-race,  B.C. 
476;  he  has  referred  to  his  dead  father;  he  has  eulogized  his  country 
and  its  principal  deities,  all  the  essentials  of  the  ode,  and  with  the  glow 
of  adoration  and  praise  there  is  combined  a  pensive  melancholy  which 
raises  the  poem  above  a  mere  set  congratulation.  This  one  is  simple 
enough  ;  however,  many  of  the  others  are  more  complex.  Such,  for 
instance,  is  the  first  Pythian. 

The  absolute  ripeness  of  form  is  readily  perceptible,even  through 
the  translation,  in  these  extracts  from  Pindar,  and  the  mastery  of  music 
and  metres,  the  possession  of  abundant  material,  the  facility  with  which 
complexity  is  treated,  all  betoken  the  completed  method  of  utterance 


PREPARATORY   STAGE   OF  GREEK  LITERATURE. 


207 


that  awaits  a  fuller  development.  The  almost  cloying  perfection  of 
the  lyric  verse  was  beating  the  air  when  it  celebrated  subjects  of  such 
comparative  unimportance  as  these  athletic  victories ;  but  when  the 
time  came  that  Greece  awoke  from  its  internecine  wars  and  pleasant 
peace  to  find  its  existence  endangered,  and  was  victorious  over  a 
mighty  foe,  all  the  practice  that  had  been  acquired  in  these  remote 
centuries  had  prepared  a  new  form  of  expression,  which  in  its  dignity 


THE  GRACES. 


and  beauty  matched  the  amazing  political  and  military  enthusiasm 
that  must  have  astounded  the  Greeks  themselves  as  much  as  it  did  the 
Persians.  It  is  with  justice  that  some  writers  speak  of  the  period  in 
Greek  history  before  the  Persian  wars  as  the  middle  ages  ;  it  was  a  time 
when  the  whole  country  was  ripening  and  making  ready  for  its  full 
life,  for  its  brief  period  of  wonderful  achievement  ;  and  this  not  merely 
in  literature,  but  in  its  politics  as  well,  for  both  are  only  different  forms 


208 


PINDAR. 


of  expression  for  the  same  men.  And  it  is  well  to  observe  how  full  of 
seriousness  the  Greeks  had  packed  the  forms  which  still  survived  from 
a  time  of  savageness.  These  races,  for  instance,  and  all  the  games,  had 
such  an  origin,  but  that  was  forgotten  in  the  rich  and  sudden  develop- 
ment of  ethical  and  religious  treatment  of  important  questions. 

A  striking  characteristic  of  the  lyric  verse  had  been  brevity  and  com- 
pactness,— in  a  word,  extreme  grace  of  form, — a  quality  which  appealed 
especially  to  cultivated  readers  or  hearers.  It  was  distinctly  an  aristo- 
cratic luxury,  not  a  means  of  popular  expression.  This  remoteness 
from  the  current  of  life  secured  for  the  poetry  all  that  luxury  and  ease 
can  give,  and  when  it  was  the  Greeks  to  whom  they  were  given  the 
result  was  a  lyrical  literature  of  the  most  amazing  fulness  and  beauty. 
Its  limitations,  its  narrow  range  of  subjects,  and  what  with  all  its 
charm  remains  a  conventional  mode  of  expression,  marked  it  as  the 
possession  of  a  few  persons  of  refinement,  and  thus  ill  adapted  to  ex- 
press the  new  and  vastly  wider  emotions  of  the  greater  days.  Yet,  of 
course,  its  influence  remained  ;  the  new  literature  which  succeeded  it 
did  not  break  with  the  old  traditions,  but  grew  from  them  in  a  larger 
and  richer  field  ;  while  the  lyric  verse  flourished  without  a  rival,  it  was 
continually  helping  to  establish  the  authority  of  a  literary  form  in 
which  precision  as  well  as  grace  should  exercise  great  authority.  For 
centuries  these  formed  the  poetical  ideal,  and  they  affected  the  subse- 
quent development  of  great  poetry  which  never  lost  its  original  charm 
and  exactness  of  expression.  In  the  drama  this  acquired  a  special 
form  under  the  influence  of  the  intenser  and  broader  subjects  with 
which  it  dealt,  and  of  the  religious  solemnity  of  the  dramatic  festivals  ; 
but  these  qualities  still  remained. 


TO   MEGAKLES   OF  ATHENS. 


Imperial  Athens  !  with  thy  name  I  best  may  'gin 

To  build  the  basement  of  my  lofty  song, 

That  laud's  Alkmaion's  sturdy  kin 

For  horsemanship.     What  country  or  what  house 

More  glorious 

Could  poet  name  amid  this  earth's  unceasing  din 

To  thrill  Hellenic  tongue  } 


For  wheresoe'er  the  town  be,  'tis  a  household  word, 

The  honor  of  Erectheus'  populace. 

Who  have  thy  holy  shrine  restored 

In  sacred  Pytho  beautiful  to  see, 

Apollo.     Me 

Thy  conquests  and  thy  fathers'  —  five  on  Isthmus'  sward, 

One  in  Olympia's  race. 


ODES    TO  MELISSUS  AND  HIERO.  209 

Surpassing,  Zeus  conferred,  and  two 

At  Kirrha  —  lead  to  hymn  thee  —  Megakles, 

And  much  thy  new  success  doth  please 

Me  ;  still  I  rue 

That  envy  will  not  all  thy  merit  spare 

To  cross.     But,  so  they  say. 

Such  steadfast,  flourishing  success  alway 

Must  good  and  evil  bear. 


TO   MELISSUS   OF  THEBES. 

If  any  man,  by  glorious  feats  of  strength, 

Or  store  of  honest  gold,  have  got  him  fame, 

Yet  curbs  within  his  soul  besetting  insolence. 

He  well  deserves  that  on  his  name 

His  countrymen  should  heap  their  praises.     Excellence, 

O  Zeus,  to  mortals  comes  of  thee  ; 

And  reverential  folk  prosperity 

Have  more  enduring  than  their  neighborhood  ; 

While  crooked  hearts  their  seeming  good. 

Though  flourishing  awhile,  will  leave  alone  at  length. 

For  noble  deeds  beholders  it  behoves 

To  recompense  the  brave  with  noble  song. 

And  kindly  him  to  laud  who  leads  the  gay  parade. 

Now  to  Melissus  here  belong 

Twin  crown  for  conquests  twain  ;  the  one  in  Isthmus'  glade 

By  favorable  Fate  was  sent 

To  turn  his  heart  to  jocund  merriment ; 

The  other  gathered  in  the  hollow  glen 

Of  the  deep-chested  lion,  when 

He  bade  them  shout  the  name  of  Thebes,  the  Thebes  he  loves. 

Where  rival  chariots  ran,  victorious. 

Nor  does  he  put  to  shame 

Th'  hereditary  courage  of  his  kin. 

Ye  well  have  known  how  oft  Kleonymus 

The  honors  of  the  chariot  race  would  win  ; 

And  so  his  mother's  folk,  who  trace  to  Labdakus 

Their  pedigree, 
Gat  wealth  by  four-in-hands.     But  rollingly 
Time  plays  a  changing  game. 
The  sons  of  gods  from  hurt  are  free  alone. 


TO    HIERO   OF   SYRACUSE. 

My  golden  cittern,  whom 

Apollo  keeps 
In  common  with  the  raven-tressM  Muses,  thee, 

Beginner  of  the  revelry. 
The  dancers'  step  awaits  ;  the  minstrel  choir, 
When  thy  sweet  strings'  melodious  quivering 
The  prelude  wake,  thy  signs  inspire 
The  hymn  that  ushers  in  the  festival  to  sing. 
Zeus'  pointed  bolt  of  fire  eternal  thou  in  gloom 
Canst  shroud  ;  the  eagle  on  his  sceptre  sleeps. 

And  lets  his  wide 
Pinions  so  swift  of  flight  droop  down  on  either  side ; 


PINDAR. 

Of  all  the  feathered  kind 

Though  he  be  lord. 

About  his  beaked  head  a  cloud  of  sable  night 

Thou  sheddest ;  o'er  his  orbs  of  sight, 

Spelled  by  thy  sweep  of  song,  his  eyelids  close 

In  pleasant  slumber ;  softly  to  and  fro 

He  sways  his  back  in  deep  repose  ; 

Nay,  headstrong  Ares'  self  has  oftentimes  let  go 

His  lance's  cruel  point  with  sleep  to  glad  his  mind. 

To  souls  of  gods  thy  missiles  calm  afford, 

With  skill  endued 
By  Phoibos  and  the  Muses'  full-clad  sisterhood, 

But  whosoe'er 
Of  Zeus'  love  have  never  had  a  share 

Are  sore  distressed 
To  hear  the  cry  of  the  Pierides 
On  land  or  midst  the  dark  resistless  seas. 
Like  him  who  lies  in  baleful  Tartarus, 
Typhoeus  of  the  hundred  heads,  the  deadly  foe 
Of  all  the  gods,  whom  erst 
Kilikia's  famous  cavern  nursed  ; 
But  now  the  sea-beat  cliffs  precipitous 
That  frown  o'er  Cumag  hold  him  down. 
And  all  Sikelia  weighs  upon  his  shaggy  chest ; 
And  Etna's  pillar-peak  that  pierces  air, 

With  ice  bestrown. 
The  yearlong  nurse  of  nipping  snow  ; 
From  whose  recesses  jets 
The  awesome  flood 

Of  fire  that  none  may  near  ;  and  while  the  daylight  beams 
A  cataract  of  smoke  that  gleams 
With  lurid  lights  her  torrents  pour,  but  when 
The  dusk  of  even  falls,  her  blaze  blood-red 
Rolls  boulders  huge  each  ragged  glen 
Adown,  to  splash  and  sink  in  ocean's  level  bed. 
'Tis  yonder  reptile  born  to  lame  Hephaistus  lets 
These  fountains  forth.     To  all  the  neighborhood 

A  prodigy 
Of  fear  and  wonder  full  he  is  to  hear  and  see  ; 
And  how  the  plain  between 
And  Etna's  crest 

Of  dark-leaved  forest  he  is  chained,  and  all  his  back 
The  torments  of  his  bedding  rack 
Laid  out  at  length.     O  Zeus,  I  pray  thee  grant 
That  I  may  find  acceptance  in  thine  eye, 
Who  lov'st  this  mountain-top  to  haunt, 
A  fruitful  country's  front,  whose  namesake  city  nigh 
Her  famous  founder  has  bedecked  with  glory's  sheen  ; 
Since  Pytho's  herald  on  the  course  confessed 

Her  honors  thro' 
The  chariot-race's  crown  adjudged  to  Hiero. 


By  those  who  sail 
Across  the  seas  'tis  deemed  of  prime  avail, 
When  they  begin 

A  trip,  to  quit  the  port  with  breezes  fair  ; 
For  thus  'tis  like  that  they  will  home  repair 
With  better  luck  ;  so  in  my  song  of  praise 
For  this  success  I  fain  would  find  an  augury 


ODE    TO  HIERO. 

That  many  a  future  year, 

For  steeds'  victorious  career, 

And  crowns  and  feasts  and  hymns  that  minstrels  raise, 

Renown  on  Etna  may  attend. 

Oh  !  Lykian  Phoibos,  Delos'  king,  delighting  in 

Kastalia's  fount  in  steep  Parnassus'  vale, 

Do  thou  befriend 
This  noble  land,  and  hear  my  plea. 

For  human  excellence 

From  heaven  derives 

All  means  of  growth,  and  none,  unless  the  gods  assent, 

Is  wise  or  strong  or  eloquent. 

And  Hiero  to  laud  is  my  intent ; 

So  hope  I  that  my  missile  may  not  fall 

Without  the  lists,  as  javelin  sent 

From  whirling  hand  with  cheek  of  brass,  but  distance  all 

Opponents  by  its  cast.     Would  heaven  the  afifluence 

And  gifts  of  wealth's  increase  wherein  he  lives 

May  ne'er  be  less  ; 

While  time  of  anguish  past  affords  forgetfulness  ; 

Or  brings  to  mind  instead 

The  memory 

How  boldly  in  the  stress  of  fight  he  held  his  own  ; 

When  at  the  hands  of  gods  a  throne 

They  got,  an  honor  such  as  Hellene  ne'er 

May  reap,  the  diadem  of  majesty 

And  unexampled  wealth  to  wear. 

And  now  forsooth  in  Philokteta's  fashion  he 

Has  gone  to  war,  and  one  that  held  a  haughty  head 

Has  found  it  need  his  flatterer  to  be. 

They  say  of  yore 

The  godlike  heroes  came  from  Lemnos'  lonely  shore. 

The  archer-son 

Of  Poias,  by  his  ulcer  nigh  undone, 

To  fetch  away ; 

Who  wasted  Priam's  city,  and  at  length 

The  Danaeans'  labors  ended,  poor  of  strength 

Although  he  went,  for  thus  it  was  decreed. 

So  may  the  healing  god  vouchsafe  to  Hiero 

In  coming  time  to  be, 

Granting  him  opportunity 

To  gain  whate'er  his  heart  of  hearts  may  need. 

Before  Deinomones  upraise, 

Sweet  Muse,  the  pasan  of  the  four-in-hands,  I  pray ; 

For  children  share  the  joy  by  fathers  won  ; 

Then  bid  our  lays 

For  Etna's  sovereign  friendly  flow ; 

Since  Hiero  for  him 

Resolved  to  rear 

That  town  in  freedom  'neath  the  laws  of  Hyllus'  rule. 

For  in  Aigimius'  Doric  school 

The  sons  of  Pamphilus  and  Herakles  — 

Who  'neath  the  slopes  of  wild  Taygetus 

Are  settled,  dweUing  at  their  ease  — 


PINDAR. 

Have  ever  wished  to  bide.     With  fortune  prosperous 

They  quitted  Pindus'  clefts  in  ages  distance-dim, 

Amyklce  gained,  and  dwelt  in  glory  near 

The  snowy  steeds 

Of  Leda's  twins,  abloom  with  fame  of  warlike  deeds. 

Grant,  Zeus  who  hearest  prayer, 

In  years  to  come 

That  kings  and  citizens  by  Amenanus'  burn 

May  truth  from  falsehood  aye  discern. 

Let  Hiero  a  guiding-star  arise 

His  son  to  lead,  his  folk  in  honor  hold. 

And  both  in  quiet  harmonize. 

I  pray  thee,  Kronos'  son,  their  war-cry  overbold 

Let  not  Phoinikian  nor  Tyrrhenian  foemen  dare 

To  shout  again,  but  keep  them  still  at  home. 

And  ponder  well 

The  lamentable  loss  that  all  their  fleet  befell 

At  Cumas  when, 

By  Syracuse's  lord  subdued,  their  men 

He  bade  to  throw 

Forth  from  their  speedy  ships  into  the  sea ; 

And  from  their  heavy  bonds  of  slavery 

All  Hellas  freed.     From  Salamis  the  fame 

Of  Athens  I  will  chant  for  meed  ;  the  deadly  fight 

At  Sparta  sing,  that  nigh 

Kithairon's  heights  was  fought,  whereby 

The  Persian  host  of  bent-bowed  archers  came 

To  ruin  ;  while  to  laud  the  kin 

Of  great  Deinomenes  my  hymn  of  praise  shall  flow 

Of  deeds  in  Himera's  well-watered  glen 

Achieved,  wherein 

Their  enemies  were  put  to  flight. 

If  at  the  season  meet 

One  lift  his  voice, 

Twisting  his  many  threads  to  one  diminished  strand, 

Less  hard  will  be  man's  critic-brand 

Of  blame  ;  for  evermore  satiety 

Tarnishes  eager  hopes  :  a  townsman's  ears 

Do  ne'er  so  much  in  secrecy 

Weigh  down  his  soui,  as  when  a  friend's  success  he  hears. 

Yet  pass  not  honors  by,  for  envy  is  more  sweet 

Than  pity.     Guide  with  honest  helm  the  choice 

Of  yonder  throng  : 

On  Truth's  good  anvil  forge  the  arrows  of  thy  tongue. 

For  if  a  syllable 

Of  folly  fall 

Out  of  thy  mouth,  'tis  deemed  of  moment,  being  thine  : 

Thy  every  good  or  evil  sign 

A  host  of  trusty  witnesses  observe  : 

Of  many  people  thou  hast  stewardship. 

Thy  native  bloom  of  heart  preserve  ; 

And  if  thou  lovest  to  have  thy  praise  on  every  lip 

Shrink  not  from  spending :  loose  the  sail  that  breezes  swell. 

Like  wary  skipper.     Be  not  snared  withal 

By  cozening  cheats. 

'Tis  posthumous  renown  that  tongue  to  tongue  repeats. 


ODE    TO    WINNERS  IN  ATHLETIC  GAMES.  213 

Alone  may  show, 

Dear  friend,  the  life  of  mortals  hence  who  go, 

By  minstrelsy 

And  story-tellers'  faithful  histories. 

The  kindly  worth  of  Kroisus  never  dies  ; 

And  Phalaris,  of  the  burning  brazen  bull 

And  cruel  mind,  has  earned  an  infamous  renown 

Wide  as  the  world,  and  ne'er 

Do  tuneful  citterns  let  him  share 

Their  joyance  when  the  banquet  hall  is  full 

Of  carols  of  the  gentle  train 

Of  boys.     The  first  of  prizes  is  prosperity, 

The  second  good  repute  ;  but  he,  below 

Who  both  may  gain 

And  keep,  has  won  the  highest  crown. 

FOR  ARISTOMENES   OF    AIGINA. 
WINNER  OF   THE  WRESTLING-MATCH.      PYTH.  VIII. 


WRESTLING-MATCH. 
(Florentine  Group.') 

O  kindly  Peace,  daughter  of  Righteousness,  thou  that  makest  cities  great, 
and  boldest  the  supreme  keys  of  counsels  and  of  wars,  welcome  thou  this 
honour  to  Aristomenes,  won  in  the  Pythian  games. 

Thou  knowest  how  alike  to  give  and  take  gentleness  in  due  season  ;  thou 
also,  if  any  have  moved  thy  heart  unto  relentless  wrath,  dost  terribly  con- 
front the  enemy's  might,  and  sinkest  insolence  in  the  sea. 

Thus  did  Porphyrion  provoke  thee  unaware.  Now  precious  is  the  gain 
that  one  beareth  away  from  the  house  of  a  willing  giver.  But  violence  shall 
ruin  a  man  at  the  last,  boast  he  never  so  loudly.  He  of  Kilikia,  Typhon  of 
the  hundred  heads,  escaped  not  this,  neither  yet  the  king  of  giants  ;  but  by 
the  thunderbolt  they  fell  and  by  the  bow  of  Apollo,  who  with  kind  intent 
hath  welcomed  Xenarches  home  from  Kirrha,  crowned  with  Parnassian 
wreaths  and  Dorian  song. 

Not  far  from  the  Graces'  ken   falleth  the  lot  of  this  righteous  island-corn- 


2  14  PINDAR. 

monwealth,  that  hath  attained  unto  the  glorious  deeds  of  the  sons  of  Aiakos  ; 
from  the  beginning  is  her  fame  perfect,  for  she  is  sung  of  as  the  muse  of 
heroes,  foremost  in  many  games  and  in  violent  fights  ;  and  in  her  mortal 
men  also  is  she  pre-eminent. 

But  my  time  faileth  me  to  offer  her  all  I  might  tell  at  length,  by  lute  and 
softer  voice  of  man,  so  that  satiety  vex  not. 

So  let  that  which  lieth  in  my  path,  my  debt  to  thee,  O  boy,  the  youngest 
of  thy  country's  glories,  run  on  apace,  winged  by  my  art. 

For  in  wrestlings  thou  art  following  the  footsteps  of  thy  uncles,  and 
shamest  neither  Theognetos  at  Olympia,  nor  the  victory  that  at  Isthmus  was 
won  by  Kleitomachos'  stalwart  limbs. 

And  in  that  thou  makest  great  the  clan  of  the  Midylidai  thou  attainest 
unto  the  very  praise  which  on  a  time  the  son  of  Oikleus  spake  in  a  riddle, 
when  he  saw  at  seven-gated  Thebes  the  sons  of  the  seven  standing  to  their 
spears,  what  time  from  Argos  came  the  second  race  on  their  new  enterprise. 
Thus  spake  he  while  they  fought :  "  By  nature,  son,  the  noble  temper  of  thy 
sires  shineth  forth  in  thee.  I  see  clearly  the  speckled  dragon  that  Alkmaion 
weareth  on  his  bright  shield,  foremost  at  the  Kadmean  gates. 

"  And  he  who  in  the  former  fight  fared  ill,  hero  Adrastos,  is  now  endowed 
with  tidings  of  a  better  omen.  Yet  in  his  own  house  his  fortune  shall  be 
contrariwise  ;  for  he  alone  of  all  the  Danaan  host,  after  that  he  shall  have 
gathered  up  the  bones  of  his  dead  son,  shall  by  favor  of  the  gods  come 
back  with  unharmed  folk  to  the  wide  streets  of  Abas." 

On  this  wise  spake  Amphiaraos.  Yea,  and  with  joy  I  too  myself  throw 
garlands  on  Alkmaion's  grave,  and  shower  it  withal  with  songs,  for  that 
being  my  neighbor  and  guardian  of  my  possessions  he  met  me  as  I  went 
up  to  the  earth's  centre-stone,  renowned  in  song,  and  showed  forth  the  gift 
of  prophecy  which  belongeth  unto  his  house. 

But  thou,  far-darter,  ruler  of  the  glorious  temple  whereto  all  men  go  up, 
amid  the  glens  of  Pytho  didst  there  grant  this  the  greatest  of  joys  ;  and  at 
home  before  didst  thou  bring  to  him  at  the  season  of  thy  feast  the  keen- 
sought  prize  of  the  pentathlon.  My  king,  with  willing  heart  I  make  avowal 
that  through  thee  is  harmony  before  mine  eyes  in  all  that  I  sing  of  every 
conqueror. 

By  the  side  of  our  sweet-voiced  song  of  triumph  hath  Righteousness 
taken  her  stand,  and  I  pray,  O  Xenarches,  that  the  favor  of  God  be  unfail- 
ing toward  the  fortune  of  thee  and  thine.  For  if  one  hath  good  things  to 
his  lot  without  long  toil,  to  many  he  seemeth  therefore  to  be  wise  among 
fools  and  to  be  crowning  his  life  by  right  desiring  of  the  means.  But  these 
things  lie  not  with  men  :  it  is  God  that  ordereth  them,  who  setteth  up  one 
and  putteth  down  another,  so  that  he  is  bound  beneath  the  hands  of  the 
adversary. 

Now  at  Megara  also  hast  thou  won  a  prize,  and  in  secluded  Marathon,  and 
in  the  games  of  Hera  in  thine  own  land,  three  times,  Aristomenes,  hast  thou 
overcome.  And  now  on  the  bodies  of  four  others  hast  thou  hurled  thyself 
with  fierce  intent,  to  whom  the  Pythian  feast  might  not  award,  as  unto  thee, 
the  glad  return,  nor  the  sweet  smile  that  welcometh  thee  to  thy  mother's 
side  ;  nay,  but  by  secret  ways  they  shrink  from  meeting  their  enemies, 
stricken  down  by  their  evil  hap. 

Now  he  that  hath  lately  won  glory  in  the  time  of  his  sweet  youth  is  lifted 
on  the  wings  of  his  strong  hope  and  soaring  valor,  for  his  thoughts  are 
above  riches.  In  a  little  moment  groweth  up  the  delight  of  men  ;  yea,  and 
in  like  sort  faileth  it  to  the  ground,  when  a  doom  adverse  hath  shaken  it. 


THE  NEMEAN  GAMES.  215 

Things  of  a  day — what  are  we,  and  what  not  ?  Man  is  a  dream  of 
shadows. 

Nevertheless,  when  a  glory  from  God  hath  shined  on  them,  a  clear  light 
abideth  upon  men,  and  serene  life. 

Aigina,  mother  dear,  this  city  in  her  march  among  the  free,  with  Zeus  and 
lordly  Aiakos,  with  Peleus  and  valiant  Telamon,  and  with  Achilles,  guard 
thou  well. 

FOR  ARISTOKLEIDES   OF  AIGINA, 
WINNER  IN  THE   PANKRATION. 

O  divine  Muse,  our  mother,  I  pray  thee  come  unto  this  Dorian  isle  Aigina 
stranger-thronged,  for  the  sacred  festival  of  the  Nemean  Games  :  for  by  the 
waters  of  Asopos  young  men  await  thee,  skilled  to  sing  sweet  songs  of  tri- 
umph, and  desiring  to  hear  thy  call. 

For  various  recompense  are  various  acts  athirst ;  but  victory  in  the  games 
above  all  loveth  song,  of  crowns  and  valiant  deeds  the  fittest  follower. 
Thereof  grant  us  large  store  for  our  skill,  and  to  the  king  of  heaven  with  its 
thronging  clouds  do  thou  who  art  his  daughter  begin  a  noble  lay  ;  and  I  will 
marry  the  same  to  the  voices  of  singers  and  to  the  lyre. 

A  pleasant  labor  shall  be  mine  in  glorifying  this  land  where  of  old  the 
Myrmidons  dwelt,  whose  ancient  meeting-place  Aristokleides  through  thy 
favour  hath  not  sullied  with  reproach  by  any  softness  in  the  forceful  strife 
of  the  pankration  ;  but  a  healing  remedy  of  wearying  blows  he  hath  won  at 
least  in  this  fair  victory  in  the  deep-lying  plain  of  Nemea. 

Now  if  this  son  of  Aristophanes,  being  fair  of  form  and  achieving  deeds 
as  fair,  hath  thus  attained  unto  the  height  of  manly  excellence,  no  further  is 
it  possible  for  him  to  sail  untraversed  sea  beyond  the  pillars  of  Herakles, 
which  the  hero-god  set  to  be  wide-famed  witnesses  of  the  end  of  voyaging  : 
for  he  had  overcome  enormous  wild  beasts  on  the  seas,  and  tracked  the 
streams  through  marshes  to  where  he  came  to  the  goal  that  turned  him  to 
go  back  homeward,  and  there  did  he  mark  out  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

But  to  what  headland  of  a  strange  shore,  O  my  soul,  art  thou  carrying  aside 
the  course  of  my  ship  ?  To  Aiakos  and  to  his  race  I  charge  thee  bring  the 
Muse.  Herein  is  perfect  justice,  to  speak  the  praise  of  good  men  :  neither 
are  desires  for  things  alien  the  best  for  men  to  cherish  :  search  first  at  home  : 
a  fitting  glory  for  thy  sweet  song  hast  thou  gotten  there  in  deeds  of  ancient 
valour. 

Glad  was  King  Peleus  when  he  cut  him  his  gigantic  spear,  he  who  took 
lolkos  by  his  single  arm  without  help  of  any  host,  he  who  held  firm  in  the 
struggle  Thetis  the  daughter  of  the  sea. 

Also  the  city  of  Laomedon  did  mighty  Telamon  sack,  when  he  fought 
with  lolaos  by  his  side,  and  again  to  the  war  of  the  Amazons  with  brazen 
bows  he  followed  him  ;  neither  at  any  time  did  man-subduing  terror  abate 
the  vigour  of  his  soul. 

By  inborn  worth  doth  one  prevail  mightily ;  but  whoso  hath  but  precepts 
is  a  vain  man  and  is  fain  now  for  this  thing  and  now  again  for  that,  but  a 
sure  step  planteth  he  not  at  any  time,  but  handleth  countless  enterprises 
with  a  purpose  that  achieveth  naught. 

Now  Achilles  of  the  yellow  hair,  while  he  dwelt  in  the  house  of  Philyra, 
being  yet  a  child  made  mighty  deeds  his  play  ;  and  brandishing  many  a  time 
his  little  javelin  in  his  hands,  swift  as  the  wind  he  dealt  death  to  wild  lions 


2l6  PINDAR. 

in  the  fight,  and  boars  he  slew  also  and  dragged  their  heaving  bodies  to  the 
Kentaur,  son  of  Kronos,  a  six  years'  child  when  he  began,  and  thenceforward 
continually.  And  Artemis  marvelled  at  him,  and  brave  Athene,  when  he 
slew  deer  without  dogs  or  device  of  nets  ;  for  by  fleetness  of  foot  he  over- 
came them. 

This  story  also  of  the  men  of  old  have  I  heard  :  how  within  his  cavern  of 
stone  did  deep-counselled  Cheiron  rear  Jason,  and  next  Asklepios,  whom  he 
taught  to  apportion  healing  drugs  with  gentle  hand  :  after  this  it  was  that 
he  saw  the  espousals  of  Nereus'  daughter  of  the  shining  wrists,  and  fondling 
nursed  her  son,  strongest  of  men,  rearing  his  soul  in  a  life  of  harmony  ; 
until  by  blowing  of  sea  winds  wafted  to  Troy  he  should  await  the  war-cry  of 
the  Lykians  and  of  the  Phrygians  and  of  the  Dardanians,  cried  to  the  clash- 
ing of  spears  ;  and  joining  in  battle  with  the  lancer  Ethiops  hand  to  hand 
should  fix  this  purpose  in  his  .soul,  that  their  chieftain  Memnon,  Helenos' 
fiery  cousin,  should  go  back  again  to  his  home  no  more. 

Thenceforward  burneth  ever  a  far-shining  light  for  the  house  of  Aiakos  ; 
for  thine,0  Zeus,  is  their  blood,  even  as  thine  also  are  the  games  whereat  my 
song  is  aimed,  by  the  voice  of  the  young  men  of  the  land  proclaiming  aloud 
her  joy.  For  victorious  Aristokleides  hath  well  earned  a  cheer,  in  that  he 
hath  brought  new  renown  to  this  island,  and  to  the  Theoroi  of  the  Pythian 
god,  by  striving  for  glory  in  the  games. 

By  trial  is  the  issue  manifest,  wherein  may  one  be  more  excellent  than  his 
fellows,  whether  among  boys  a  boy,  as  among  men  a  man,  or  in  the  third 
age  among  elders,  according  to  the  nature  of  our  mortal  race.  Four  virtues 
doth  a  long  life  bring,  and  biddeth  one  fit  his  thought  to  the  things  about 
him.*     From  such  virtues  this  man  is  not  far. 

Friend,  fare  thee  well  :  I  send  to  thee  this  honey  mingled  with  white  milk, 
and  the  dew  of  the  mixing  hangeth  round  about  it,  to  be  a  drink  of  min- 
strelsy distilled  in  breathings  of  Aiolian  flutes  ;  albeit  it  come  full  late. 

Swift  is  the  eagle  among  the  birds  of  the  air,  who  seizeth  presently  with 
his  feet  his  speckled  prey,  seeking  it  from  afar  off ;  but  in  low  places  dwell 
the  chattering  daws.  To  thee  at  least,  by  the  will  of  throned  Kleio,  for 
sake  of  thy  zeal  in  the  games,  from  Nemea  and  from  Epidauros  and  from 
Megara  hath  a  great  light  shined. 

*  This  is  very  obscure  :  Bockh  said  that  the  longer  he  considered  it  the  more  obscure  it 
became  to  him.  Donaldson  is  inclined  to  think  that  Pindar  is  speaking  with  reference  to  the 
Pythagorean  division  of  virtue  into  four  species,  and  that  he  assigns  one  virtue  to  each  of  the 
four  ages  of  human  life  (on  the  same  principle  as  that  which  Shakspere  has  followed  in  his 
description  of  the  seven  ages)  namely  temperance  as  the  virtue  of  youth,  courage  of  early 
manhood,  justice  of  mature  age,  and  prudence  of  old  age. — E.  Myers'  Transl.  of  Pindar. 


BOOK  III.— THE  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 


CHAPTER  I.— ITS  GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 

I. — The  Prominence  of  Athens  after  the  Wars  with  Persia — The  Qualities  of  the 
Athenians ;  Their  Intellectual  Vivacity ;  the  Aristocratic  Conditions  of  Their 
Society — The  Little  Influence  of  Women  and  Books — Their  Political  Training — 
Their  Literary  Enthusiasm.  II. — The  Drama  a  Growth,  not  a  Special  Crea- 
tion —  The  Early  Condition  of  Dramatic  Performances  —  The  Celebration  of 
Festivals;  the  Dithyramb;  the  Rudimentary  Dialogues;  the  Worship  of 
Dionysus — The  Drama  Before  ^schylus,  and  the  Resemblance  between  its 
Growth  and  that  of  Modern  Times.  III. — The  Mechanical  Conditions — The 
Theatres;  the  Actors  and  their  Equipment  —  The  Stage — The  Masks  — The 
Absence  of  Minute  Detail,  and  Unlikeness  to  Modern  Drama — The  Chorus  ; 
its  Composition  and  its  Share  in  the  Performance  at  Different  Times.  IV. — 
The  Author's  Relation  to  his  Play — The  Tetralogy  and  its  Obscurities — Fur- 
ther Obscurities  Besetting  the  Subject,  such  as  the  Symmetry  of  the  Plays — 
The  Plays  that  Survive — The  General  Development  of  the  Drama  and  its  De- 
pendence on  the  Life  of  the  Time. 

I. 

THE  lyric  poetry  then  flourished  in  different  parts  of  Greece,  passing 
through  various  stages  of  development  from  the  expression  of 
personal  feeling  to  its  appearance  as  a  magnificent  formal  mode  of  utter- 
ance, reaching  at  last  a  completeness,  in  the  hands  of  Simonides  and 
Pindar,  that  foreboded  a  change  ;  for  the  perfection  of  any  literary 
method,  once  attained,  marks  its  swift  decay.  The  change  that  was 
about  to  appear  had  other  causes.  Greece,  by  its  victory  over  the  Per- 
sians, had  acquired  a  comparative  unity  and  an  absolute  consciousness  of 
strength  that  altered  the  whole  condition  of  the  country.  One  result 
of  the  victories  was  the  prominence  that  was  given  to  Athens,  a  promi- 
nence that,  however,  inspired  the  enmity  of  Sparta.  The  glory  that 
Athens  had  acquired  by  its  part  in  the  war  was  undeniable.  The  power 
of  Persia  had  twice  shattered  itself  against  its  stubborn  defence,  and 
thus  not  only  were  its  citizens  filled  with  pride,  but  even  its  neighbors 
had  to  confess  the  proved  military  prowess  of  the  defender  of  Greece. 
In  Attica,  too,  the  best  qualities  of  the  Greeks  found  their  fullest  devel- 
opment.    In  no  other  country  did  the  ideals  of  this  race  come  near 


2l8 


GREEK    TRAGEDY— GROWTH  AND   HISTORY. 


the  height  that  was  here  almost  attained.  The  Athenians  possessed 
in  full  measure  the  Ionic  vivacity  and  flexibility,  standing  in  this  re- 
spect in  marked  contrast  to  the  crude  and  rigid  conservatism  of  the 
Spartans;  their  literature  and  art  survive  to  show  what  the  human 
intelligence  has  been  able  to  accomplish  under  favorable  conditions. 


MELPOMENE. 
( The  Muse  of  Tragedy.) 


Yet  it  would  be  unfair  to  ascribe  all  the  merit  of  Greek  work  to  their 
circumstances;  their  intellectual  activity  lay  behind  this,  the  same 
quality  that  underlay  and  inspired  all  their  work.  The  Athenians  al- 
ready possessed  certain  elements  of  civilization  to  a  greater  extent 
than  any  of  their  neighbors  ;  they  were  humaner  and  they  weie  better 
educated  than  the  other  Greeks,  and  were  thus  freed  from  some  of  the 


INTELLECTUAL   SOCIABILITY  OF    THE    GREEKS.  219 

provincialisms   that    clogged    the   growth    of  the    more    conservative 
peoples. 

What  especially  distinguished  the  lonians  and  the  Athenians  notice- 
ably even  among  them,  was  what  may  be  called  their  intellectual 
sociability.  This  was  furthered  by  many  circumstances.  The  city  was 
of  moderate  size ;  its  population  may  have  been  a  little  more  than 
half  a  million,  but  the  number  of  adult  freemen  bearing  arms  was  only 
about  twenty-five  thousand.  For  every  freeman  we  must  count  four 
or  five  slaves,  slavery  having  existed  among  the  Greeks  from  time  im- 
memorial; and  these  were  often,  though  not  always,  not  to  be  distin'- 
guished  from  their  masters  by  difference  of  race  or  color  ;  they  were,  if 


FAMILY   SCENE. 
(From  a  Relief.) 


not  Greeks,  generally  at  least  Aryans,  although  some,  to  be  sure,  were 
Arabians,  Egyptians,  and  Negroes,  and  were  far  from  forming  a  sepa- 
rate and  hostile  caste.  There  were  in  Attica  about  four  hundred  thou- 
sand of  these,  on  whom  there  fell  the  duty  of  performing  all  the  work, 
while  their  masters  enjoyed  leisure.  This  aristocratic  class,  it  must  be 
remembered,  did  not  live  in  a  period  when  money-making  was  the 
chief  end  of  man  ;  they  were  free  to  live,  not  compelled  to  devote 
themselves  to  securing  the  means  of  living.  Mere  subsistence  was 
simple  in  a  mild  climate,  and  in  a  society  devoid  of  extravagant  tastes. 
Their  houses  were  mere  sleeping-places  where  the  wife  stayed  and 
supervised  the  children  and  domestic  occupations.  The  considerable 
commerce  in  which  Athens  was  engaged  was  far  less  complex  than 


220  GREEK    TRAGEDY— GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 

modern  business,  and  the  freemen  were  thus  possessed  of  leisure  to 
devote  themselves  to  intellectual  interests. 

The  Athenian  society,  to  be  sure,  missed  the  influence  of  women. 
The  wife  was  distinctly  scarcely  more  than  a  household  drudge, 
the  mother  of  children.  The  importance  of  women  in  the  old  times 
as  we  see  it  reflected  in  the  Homeric  poems  had  disappeared,  and 
society  suffered,  as  was  inevitable,  from  the  decay  of  family  life.  The 
association  with  hetairai  brought  degradation,  and  even  apart  from 
this  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  insignificance  of  women  left  its  mark  in 
literature ;  for  in  ^schylus  the  women  hold  an  inferior  position,  and 
in  Sophocles  the  women  have  distinctly  masculine  qualities.  In  Euri- 
pides to  be  sure,  they  become  more  important,  but  on  the  whole  a 


WOMEN  AT  TOILET, 
{From  a  vase  painting.) 

great  difference  between  the  Greek  and  modern  literature  is  in  the 
position  that  women  occupy.  The  heroines  of  the  Greek  plays  all  be- 
long to  heroic  times. 

Another  difference  is  the  way  in  which  modern  men  derive  their 
opinions  from  books.  When  in  Athens  men  were  near  life ;  the  stu- 
dent with  us  is  remote  from  life,  buried  in  volumes  of  greater  or  less 
value.  Their  knowledge  was  more  strictly  immediate  ;  ours  is  neces- 
sarily in  great  measure  attained  at  second-hand.  The  Athenians  too 
had  direct  control  of  political  matters ;  all  were  directly  concerned 
in  the  making  and  administration  of  laws  ;  they  governed  without 
the  intervention  of  deputies.  It  lay  with  them  to  declare  and  wage 
wars.  In  consequence  they  received  continuous  political  training,  of 
a  sort,  too,  that  encouraged  their  natural  disposition  to  eloquence  and 


ATHENS— THE  LITERARY   CAPITAL— THE   DRAMA.  221 

their  amenability  to  reason.  It  was  in  conditions  like  these  that 
Athens  became  the  intellectual  leader  of  Greece.  Earlier  it  had  known 
rivals;  Syracuse,  for  instance,  in  Sicily,  was  for  a  time  a  main  centre  of 
intellectual  inspiration.  Philosophy  found  encouragement  there,  and 
men  of  letters  were  summoned  from  every  quarter.  In  the  colonies  on 
the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  literature  received  a  start  on  the  termination  of 
the  Persian  wars,  but  the  most  distinguished  men  of  that  region  became 
well  known  in  foreign  parts.  In  Greece  itself  we  have  seen  Sparta 
offering  hospitality  to  poets ;  but  from  this  moment  it  retired  within 
itself  and  had  no  part  in  the  intellectual  advance,  which  it  had  only 
encouraged  by  patronage,  not  by  production.  In  Thebes  there  was 
Pindar,  but  his  main  encouragement  came  from  Athens  ;  but  beyond 
this  there  was  no  movement  to  be  at  all  compared  with  this  which  has 
made  that  city  immortal. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  Simonides  was  a  favorite  at 
Athens,  and  that  Pindar  studied  there  and  preserved  for  that  city  a 
peculiar  affection  which  was  warmly  returned  ;  and  from  these  facts  we 
perceive  the  growing  importance  in  literature  of  the  Attic  capital.  It 
was  now  about  to  begin  its  own  work  in  literature,  which  was  of  a 
kind  that  Greece  had  never  before  seen. 

II. 

Like  everything  else  in  literature,  the  Greek  drama  was  not  a  special 
creation,  but  a  gradual  development  out  of  older  conditions.  We  find 
a  dramatic  element  prominent  in  the  Greek,  as  for  that  matter  in  all 
religious  rites.  Imitative  dances,  like  the  Pyrrhic,  had  existed  since 
a  remote  antiquity,  and  in  the  various  festivals  we  find  men  personat- 
ing a  god,  who  were  clad  was  dramatically  repre- 
in  some  conventional  at-  /^^I^IiiSrv  sented,  and  similar  crude 
tire  that  at  once  made  A^IaI  t  ^^  performances  were  found 
them  known.  Scenes  from  /  h^u^  '  !©^  '  everywhere  in  Greece.  It 
some  religious  story  were  I  wJlai^y  ^^^'  however,  in  the  fes- 
represented  with  appro-  \^«f"»«.^^  tivals  attendant  on  the 
priate  action.  In  Delphi,  ^^*— — ^  harvest  that  the  religious 
for  example,  the  incident       apollo  slaying       rites    had     their     fullest 

^       '  THE  DRAGON. 

of  the  conflict  between  (FromaCotn.)  expression;  for  besides 
Apollo    and    the    dragon  the      formal     celebration 

with  song  and  dance,  these  occasions  were  famous  for  the  privileges 
the  populace  enjoyed  of  almost  absolute  freedom  of  speech.  For  a 
moment  license  was  the  rule;  every  one  enjoyed  the  fullest  liberty  of 
jesting,  as  now  in  certain  countries  in  the  carnival,  itself  a  survival  of 
remote  nature-worship.     Besides  this  hold  upon  the  populace,  the  bar- 


222  GREEK  DRAMA— GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 

vest  was  closely  connected  with  the  worship  of  Dionysus,  the  god  of 
the  vine,  and  so  one  of  the  most  prominent  of  the  deities  who  every 
year  won  a  victory  over  the  antagonistic  forces  of  nature.  The  vine 
was  this  god's  gift  to  mankind,  and  it  was  from  the  rural  festivals  in 
his  honor  that  the  Greek  drama  took  its  rise.  The  merry-making  on 
these  occasions  was  unbridled,  and  the  complicated  myths  that  had 
grown  up  about  Dionysus,  the  miracles  that  he  had  performed,  presented 
abundant  material  for  dramatic  imitation.  Both  tragedy  and  comedy 
arose  from  the  twofold  worship  of  this  god. 

It  was  in  both  autumn  and  in  spring  that  he  was  honored  by  public 
feasts.  In  the  autumn  there  reigned  complete  joviality;  in  the  spring, 
when  the  birth  of  the  god  was  celebrated,  and  the  new  wine  was  first 
tasted,  more  reserve  prevailed.  On  both  occasions  a  song  of  praise  to 
the  god  was  sung,  and  from  this  grew  both  divisions  of  the  drama.  At 


DIONYSUS  AND   THE   SEASONS. 


the  harvest  time, when  fertility  and  increase  were  acknowledged  with 
gratitude,  and  the  symbols  of  reproduction  were  carried  in  a  proces- 
sion with  solemn  song,  ribald  jest  and  ridicule  accompanied  these  rites; 
this  was  the  origin  of  the  comedy.  Tragedy  sprung  from  the  dithy- 
ramb that  was  sung  in  the  less  jocund  celebration  of  the  rites  in  the 
spring  time.  On  this  occasion  the  various  adventures  of  the  god  lent 
themselves  to  imitation  and  gradually  to  the  fuller  exercise  of  the 
dramatic  art. 

The  dithyramb  had  for  some  time  been  the  favorite  form  of  lyric 
poetry  among  the  Athenians,  and  it  was  the  one  best  adapted  for  the 
growth  which  time  made  necessary  in  this  form  of  literary  expression. 
It  was  a  complicated  form,  and  it  gradually  acquired  many  modifica- 
tions, both  in  regard  to  its  rhythmical  and  its  musical  components. 
Lasos  of  Hermione,  Pindar's  teacher,  had  especially  developed  it,  and 
with  such  success  that  his  fame  quite  overshadowed  that  of  Arion,  its 


THE  BIRTH-PLACE   OF   THE  DRAMA.  223 

inventor.  In  its  improved  and  richer  state  it  attracted  the  attention 
of  wealthy  citizens,  and  its  performance  was  encouraged  with  lavish 
generosity.  In  fact  it  embodied  all  the  qualities  of  the  various  lyrical 
forms  and  acquired  new  ones  under  the  skilful  hands  of  Pindar  and 
Simonides.  The  new  complexity  of  Greek  life  overflowed  the  old  ves- 
sels, just  as  the  Renaissance  compelled  the  introduction  of  newer  and 
larger  forms  while  yet  making  use  of  the  literary  methods  of  medi- 
sevalism. 

The  evolution  of  the  drama  was  very  gradual ;  so  far  we  have  found 
scarcely  more  than  the  soil  from  which  the  drama  was  to  grow.  The 
first  step  towards  independent  existence  seems  to  have  been  this,  that 
the  leader  of  the  chorus  became,  as  it  were,  independent  of  his  fellows 
and  was  able  to  carry  on  a  dialogue  with  them.  It  was  among  the 
Dorians  that  imitative  representations  began,  and  that  tragic  and  comic 
choruses  first  appeared  ;  the  fuller  development  of  both,  however,  be- 
longed to  Attica,  and  the  little  village  of  Icaria  bears  the  reputation  of 
being  the  birthplace  of  both  tragedy  and  comedy.  Yet  this  statement, 
even  if  true,  helps  us  but  little.  Amid  all  this  uncertainty  we  only 
begin  to  touch  solid  ground  when  we  come  to  Thespis,  an  Icarian  who 
carried  the  tragic  chorus  from  his  home  to  Athens,  where  it  speedily 
took  root  and  flourished.  It  appears  that  he  gave  the  leader  of  the 
dithyrambic  dance  a  part  as  an  actor  who  should  recite  mythical 
stories  without  connection  with  the  song  in  praise  of  Dionysus.  These 
stories  were  recited  with  some  mimetic  action.  Narration  such  as  we 
find  in  the  epics  was  admitted,  the  lyric  choruses  continued,  and  thus 
in  Athens  the  tragedy  was  evolved  from  the  dithyrambs.  Of  none  of 
these,  unfortunately,  have  we  more  than  fragments,  and  in  some  of  the 
tragic  choruses  we  have  doubtless  the.  survival  of  its  older  form,  so 
given  that  we  may  best  judge  what  it  was  in  earlier  times.  This  re- 
cital of  old  myths  which  Thespis  introduced  we  may  conceive  to  have 
developed  into  the  play,  while  the  choruses  hand  down  the  religious 
song.  Yet  just  by  what  steps  the  drama  was  developed  is  only  to  be 
conjectured.  Phrynichus  (511-476  B.C.)  held  an  important  position  in 
the  change,  but  the  fact  that  we  know  but  little  more  than  the  titles 
of  his  plays  renders  his  services  obscure.  These  show  that  he  chose 
for  writing  very  diverse  legends ;  thus.  The  Phoenician  women.  The 
Persians,  The  capture  of  Miletus,  Actaeon,  Alcestis,  Andromeda,  Tan- 
talus, etc.,  indicate  a  wide  principle  of  selection.  We  are  told  that  he 
was  the  first  to  introduce  a  female  character,  an  innovation  of  con- 
siderable importance. 

Such  then  is  the  dim  picture  of  the  Athenian  stage  when  ^schylus 
appeared.  The  festival  in  honor  of  Dionysus  was  celebrated  in  the 
spring  time,  a  goat  being  sacrificed  to  the  god,  and  choruses  perform- 


224 


GREEK  DRAMA— GROWTH  AND   HISTORY. 


ing  their  dances  about  the  altar  and  the  victim.  Later,  the  goat  was 
awarded  as  a  prize  to  the  successful  leader  of  the  chorus.  The  name 
tragedy  (from  the  Gx&€k  rfjayoq,  a  goat)  came  from  the  fact  that  the 
singers  appeared  wearing  the  masks  of  satyrs  and  clad  in  goats'  skins. 
With  time  the  inappropriate  masks  ceased  to  be  used,  but  the  name 
remained. 

The  resemblance  between  the  evolution   of  the   Greek  drama  and 


PAN  MASKS. 


that  of  modern  times  is  very  distinct ;  both  owed  their  origin  to  reli- 
gious rites,  for  the  unfolding  of  mysteries  and  miracle  plays  from  eccle- 
siastical ceremonies  has  been  clearly  shown,  and  thus  both  the  ancient 
and  modern  stage  secured  an  important  element  of  popularity.  To  be 
sure  the  modern  drama  paid  dearly  for  belonging  to  posterity  by  being 
overborne  by  the  work  of  the  classic  stage,  while  that  of  Greece  en- 
joyed full  independence  of  literary  models;  but  where  this  shadow  was 
less  obscure,  as  in  England,  the  development  was  normal  and  fertile. 


Yet  there  are  reli- 
gions and  religions, 
and  the  marked  dif- 
ference between  me- 
diaeval Christianity 
and  the  early  wor- 
ship of  Dionysus  is 
so    great     that    the 


PANTOMIME    MASKS. 


acknowledged  simi- 
larity of  the  origins 
of  ancient  and  mod- 
ern drama  is  almost 
hidden  beneath  the 
mass  of  divergencies. 
Behind  '  one  was  a 
past    that    had     tri- 


umphed successfully  overthe  barbarism  which  left  its  rites,  so  to  speak, 
as  the  raw  material  to  be  worked  by  art  and  enthusiasm  into  a  thousand 
charming  forms.  The  savage  survivals  were  like  the  physical  geog- 
raphy of  the  land,  tamed,  smoothed,  cultivated,  made  inhabitable, 
modified, not  destroyed  ;  and  in  the  other  we  have  a  drama  growing  up 


MECHANICAL   CONSTRUCTION-  OF    THE    GREEK  THEATRE.       225 

out  of  the  ruins  of  past  civilizations,  obscured  by  contemporary 
barbarism,  if  the  term  is  not  too  severe.  And  two  things  more 
unlike  than  the  worship  of  Dionysus  and  the  Christianity  of  the 
middle  ages  it  would  not  be  easy  to  imagine,  one  rejoicing  in  life,  the 
other  animated  by  hatred  of  what  was  the  chief  inspiration  of  the 
early  Greek  stage.  Still  the  resemblance  shines  through  the  difference 
of  conditions,  and  is  no  less  apparent  in  the  ripening  than  in  the 
budding  of  the  two  dramas. 

III. 

Before  discussing  what  was  done  in  the  flowering  time  of  Greek 
tragedy,  it  will  be  well  to  consider  the  mechanical  conditions  that 
attended  the  productions  of  the  plays.  The  ancient  theatres  of  Greece 
were  large  stone  structures,  built  to  contain  the  whole  adult  free  popu- 
lation of  a  Greek  city.  They  were  generally  devoid  of  architectural 
beauty,  possibly  because  their  size  baffled  the  men  who  above  all 
things  loved  moderation  and  proportion.  They  perhaps  despaired  of 
treating  the  vast  bulk  of  the  theatres  with  success,  and,  abandoning  all 
architectural  effect,  contented  themselves  with  making  them  safe  and 
convenient.  It  was  only  in  later  years  and  in  remote  regions,  in  the 
Peloponnesus  and  the  colonies,  for  example  in  Syracuse,  that  they 
were  built  with  an  eye  to  architectural  beauty.  The  Athenians  began 
to  build  their  stone  theatre  about  500  B.C.,  after  the  press  of  people 
had  broken  down  the  old  wooden  seats,  and  it  was  hurriedly  completed  ; 
it  was  without  a  roof,  open  to  the  sky,  and  the  plays  were  always  given 
in  the  daytime.  If  a  shower  fell  the  spectators  would  seek  shelter  in 
the  passage-ways  that  ran  behind  the  seats,  or  they  could  endure  it 
without  interrupting  what  was  really  a  solemn  religious  rite.  To  have 
shut  in  the  theatre  with  a  roof  would  have  seemed  to  the  Greeks 
an  objectionable  thing ;  the  tragedies  had  a  ceremonial  significance 
that  demanded  this  performance  in  the  open  air  under  the  very  eyes 
of  the  gods,  and  the  climate  made  such  protection  unnecessary.  The 
spectators'  seats  were  arranged  in  a  semicircle  about  what  in  a  modern 
theatre  we  call  the  parterre,  or,  like  the  Greeks,  the  orchestra,  rising 
gradually  towards  the  back.  The  actors  wore  masks  with  contrivances 
for  carrying  the  voice,  and  with  larger  faces,  so  that  those  even  at  a 
great  distance  could  see  and  hear  ;  moreover,  the  cothurnus  augmented 
^he  height  of  the  performers.  The  use  of  masks,  moreover,  obviously 
prevented  what  would  have  seemed  to  the  Greeks  the  distraction  of 
seeing  the  varying  expressions  of  the  actors*  faces.  The  development 
of  the  actor's  personal  suitability  to  a  part  is  something  of  purely 
modern  growth,  and  far  removed  from   the  •  Greek  conception   of  the 


2  26  THE    GREEK  STAGE   APPOINTMENTS. 

drama  as  a  piece  of  ritual  in  which  the  various  performers  were  as 
unindividual  as  at  all  times  are  the  priests  who  conduct  any  purely 
religious  ceremony.  Besides,  there  is  always  something  statuesque 
about  every  form  of  Greek  art,  which  was  far  removed  from  modern 
feelings. 

The  stage  formed  the  diameter  of  the  orchestra,  and  was  a  long, 
comparatively  narrow  space,  in  the  centre  of  which  the  actors  stood. 
Just  back  of  this  centre  was  an  open  space,  called  the  proscenium. 
The  front  wall  towards  the  orchestra  was  adorned  with  small  columns 
or  similar  decorations,  the  whole  stage  resting  on  boards  supported  by 
a  stone  foundation.  The  scenery  was  cleverly  arranged  according  to  a 
conventional  model.  On  the  left  was  a  representation  of  a  city,  which 
included  a  palace,  temple,  or  whatever  the  play  might  demand  ;  on  the 
right  were  open  fields  or  mountains,  or  the  sea-shore,  and  the  side 
scenes  were  composed  of  upright  triangles,  movable  on  an  axis  so  that 
the  scene  could  be  changed  without  difficulty.  At  the  back  there  were 
probably  many  things  actually  in  position  that  are  only  painted  on 
modern  scenery.  If  a  temple  was  represented,  an  altar  stood  in  the 
proscenium  for  sacrifices,  etc.  In  the  back  wall  there  were  one  main 
entrance  in  the  centre  and  two  side  entrances  ;  the  first  for  the  use  of 
the  leading  characters,  the  others  for  the  inferior  ones.  Besides  these, 
which  faced  the  spectators,  and  appeared  as  doors  in  architectural 
scenery,  there  were  four  side  entrances,  two  on  the  stage  at  the  inner 
corners  of  the  proscenium,  and  two  more  at  the  opposite  ends  of  the 
orchestra.  These  last  were  intended  for  the  chorus,  but  were  occasion- 
ally used  by  the  actors,  who  then  ascended  the  steps  leading  from  the 
orchestra  to  the  middle  of  the  stage.  Beneath  the  seats  of  the  spec- 
tators ran  a  passage-way,  through  which  spirits  from  the  lower  regions 
advanced  to  the  staircase  that  carried  them  to  the  stage.  The  machinery 
to  support  the  gods  that  should  appear  in  the  air  or  to  carry  away  mor- 
tals was  kept  out  of  sight  of  the  spectators  behind  the  walls  on  both 
sides  of  the  stage.  Arrangements  also  existed  by  which  actors  could 
sink  into  the  earth,  or  houses  could  be  shattered  or  burned.  A  tower 
could  easily  be  set  in  the  back  of  the  stage  ;  in  short,  the  mechanical 
contrivances  were  most  convenient.  When,  for  example,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  reproduce  the  interior  of  a  house,  a  machine  behind  the  mid- 
dle entrance  projected  a  roof  over  the  centre  of  the  stage.  The  cur- 
tain rolled  down,  instead  of  up  as  with  us.  The  chorus  had  its 
entrances  below,  in  the  orchestra,  where  it  remained  for  the  greater 
part  of  the  time,  and  where  it  performed  the  customary  dances.  In 
the  orchestra,  opposite  the  middle  of  the  stage,  stood  an  altar-like 
elevation,  of  the  same  height  as  the  stage,  called  the  thymele,  the 
survival  of  the  ancient  stone  slab  on  which  a  victim  was  sacrificed  to 


s,^ 


3         .2 


SB  -1 


228 


GREEK  DRAMA— ITS  GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 


Dionysus.      It   was  around   this  that  the  chorus  gathered  when    not 
taking  part  in  the  action  of  the  play,  but  simply  observing  the  course 


of  events.  The 
leader  of  the  chorus 
stood  on  the  level 
surface  of  the  thy- 
mele,  where  the  first 
actor  of  tragedy  had 
stood,  to  have  a  clear 
view  of  what  was 
taking  place  on  the 
stage  and  to  converse, 
with  the  actors.  The 
thymele,  it  is  well  to 
remember,  was  in  the 
centre  of  the  whole 
building;  from  it  the 
semicircles  of  seats 
were  described  just 
as,  in  the  days  when 
the  drama  was  com- 
ing into  existence, 
the  space  where  the 
chorus  alternately 
stood  and  danced 
was  surrounded  by  a 
circle  of  spectators. 

The-*  only  connec- 
tion  between  the 
drama  and  the  wor- 
ship of  Dionysus  con- 
tinually appeared  in 
the  performances  as 
we  have  already  seen 


TRAGIC  ACTOR. 
{Front  an  ivory  figure  in  the  Fillon 
Collections^ 


of  the  theatre.  The 
dress  of  the  tragic 
actors,  for  instance, 
was  not  the  simple 
attire  which  we  find 
exhibited  in  most  of 
the  Greek  works  of 
art,  but  was  rather 
one  modelled  after 
the  requirements  of 
the  Dionysiac  festi- 
val. Almost  all  the 
actors  wore  long 
robes  reaching  nearly 
to  the  ground,  and 
over  these  were  flung 
vestments  of  crimson 
or  other  striking  col- 
ors, with  trimmings 
of  various  hues 
and  golden  jewels, 
such  as  were  usually 
worn  on  the  days  of 
the  Dionysiac  festi- 
val. While  the 
chorus,  who  always 
represented,  as  it 
were,  idealized  spec- 
tators, and  took  but 
a  subordinate  part  in 
the  play,  were  not 
distinguishable  by 
their  dress  from  the 
part    of    a   god   or   a 


it  in  the  construction 

ordinary    citizens,    the    actor    who    took    the 

hero  wore    this    conventional    and     solemn    attire.     Moreover,    the 

cothurnus,    of     which    mention    has     been    already    made,    rendered 

him     some     inches    taller    than     he   would     naturally    have    been. 

The  mask  that  he  wore  was  larger  than  life,  and  to  preserve  the  proper 

proportions  his  clothes  were  stuffed  out  to  heroic  size.     The  mobile 

Greeks  had  brought  to  perfection  the  art  of  gesture,  and  probably  the 

skill  of  the  actors  in  their  movements  modified  somewhat  their  artifi- 


THE    TRAGIC  MASKS— THEIR  REMOTE  ORIGIiV. 


229 


cial  appearance  in  padding  and  masks.  The  tragic  masks  were  not 
wholly  unattractive  ;  they  were  not  caricatures,  like  those  of  the  comic 
actors ;  the  mouth  was  open,  the  eye-holes  were  large  and  the  general 
impression  was  one  of  solemn  dignity.  Moreover,  it  is  easier  for  us  to 
reconcile  the  unchangeableness  of  expression  with  the  characters  of 
an  ancient  play  than  it  would  be  to  endure  it  in  a  modern  one,  and 
especially  in  one  of  Shakspere's.  In  the  Greek  plays  we  often  find  a 
character  expressing  but  one  emotion  from  the  beginning  to  the  end, 
as  the  Medea  of  Euripides  or  the  Ajax  of  Sophocles ;  in  the  King 
CEdipus  of  Sophocles,  the  altered  mood  might  perhaps  have  been  ex- 
pressed by  a  change  of  masks,  and  so  with  others. 

The  origin  of  this  use  of  masks  has  long  been  the  subject  of  discus- 
sion.      In   ancient   times   their   invention   was   ascribed    by   various 


TRAGIC   MASKS. 
(From  wall  paintings.') 


authorities  to  different  persons,  although  Aristotle  expressed  himself 
unable  to  form  any  definite  opinion  in  regard  to  the  matter.  A  good 
reason  for  his  hesitation  readily  suggests  itself,  namely,  that  no  one  of 
the  early  tragedians,  to  whom  the  merit  was  commonly  ascribed,  did 
in  fact  invent  the  masks,  but  that  these  existed  as  survivals  of  the 
paraphernalia  of  the  Greek  rites  from  remote  and  uncivilized  times, 
such  as  we  now  find  employed  by  other  savage  races,  as  the  American 
Indians  and  the  Esquimaux.  Indeed,  the  use  of  masks  is  widespread 
among  uncivilized  peoples  ;  it  begins  apparently  with  a  dim  notion  of 
terrifying  or  deceiving  demons,  and  soon  becomes  a  formula  of  wor- 
ship. It  was  from  this  state  that  the  custom  appears  to  have  entered 
the  Greek  drama.  In  the  ceremonies  of  the  Dionysiac  festivals  it  was 
usual  to  stain  and  disguise  the  face,  and  for  this  purpose  first  leaves 
and  later  linen  masks  were  employed  at  a  very  early  date.  Some  of 
the  masks  represented  animals,  as  afterwards  in  the  Birds  and  Frogs  of 
Aristophanes,  in  the  same  way  that  we  now  find  similar  disguises  ex- 
isting in  different  parts  of  the  world.  While  the  mask  is  common 
among  nearly  all  savage  races,  we  may  find  it  surviving  in  the  dramatic 


230 


n^S  GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 


performances  of  the  Chinese  and  Japanese,  and  doubtless  after  going 
through  a  very  similar  experience.  The  Roman  mask  appears  to  have 
had  the  same  origin,  and  to  have  maintained  itself  down  to  the  present 
day.  In  the  masques  of  the  Elizabethan  playwrights,  which  were 
composed  after  Italian  models,  we  have  an  undoubted  survival  of  the 
old  custom,  which  still  lingers  in  the  masked  ball. 

Whatever  their  origin,  the  use  of  masks  helped  to  secure  the  vivacity 
of  the  comedy  by  furnishing  a  conventional  disguise  for  its  satire,  and 
to  preserve  the  solemnity  of  the  tragedy  by  maintaining  the  traditions 
of  the  ancient  rites  ;  and  they  were  particularly  well  suited  to  make 
more  marked  the  uniformity  of  purpose  that  we  generally  find  ex- 
pressed in  a  Greek  play.  In  the  modern  drama  the  conditions  are 
very  different,  and  we  find  more  stress  laid  upon  individuality  and  a 

far  greater  variety  of  action.  Thus, 
in  the  tragedies  of  Shakspere  — 
where  met  the  very  different 
streams  of  mediaevalism  and  the 
Renaissance,  there  was  no  lack  of 
various  moods ;  the  conflict  was 
perpetual  between  gloom  and 
jollity,  despair  and  hope.  In  the 
French  classic  drama,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  prevailed  a  compara- 
tive uniformity,  and  the  majesty 
of  its  spirit  was  long  in  giving 
ground  before  modern  changes.  Its  superiority  to  external  details, 
to  the  minor  matters  which  are  of  the  greatest  importance  in  the 
realistic  drama,  only  concentrated  the  spectators'  attention  on  its  real 
merits,  on  the  intellectual  conflict,  so  to  speak,  which  the  dramatist 
proposed  to  set  forth.  Every  thing  else  was  of  as  little  importance 
as  is  local  color  in  an  oratorio  ;  there  was  an  almost  complete  disregard 
of  anachronisms;  Roman  heroes  wore  modern  wigs,  coats,  and  boots, 
and  these  apparent  inconsistencies  were  reckoned  as  but  part  of  the 
inevitable  inaccuracy  of  all  scenic  representations.  The  drama  always 
requires  some  conventions,  and  the  only  controlling  law  is  the  assent 
of  the  audience  ;  in  this  case  it  was  freely  given,  and  the  classic  French 
plays  moved  after  a  generally  recognized  and  tolerably  uniform  fashion 
that  well  represented  the  artificial  and  somewhat  complicated  social 
system  of  the  time,  just  as  modern  plays,  with  their  greater  attention 
to  minute  details  and  precise  verisimilitude,  express  our  interest  in 
facts  that  may  be  directly  observed. 

In  its  remoteness  from  minute  accuracy  the  French  tragedy  bore  a 
noteworthy  correspondence  to  the  impersonal  quality  that  the  masks 


MASKS. 
{From  a  relief  in  Naples.) 


JilSE   OF   THE    DRAMA   FROM  RELIGIOUS   CEREMONIES.  231 

and  customary  conventionality  gave  to  that  of  the  Greeks  ;  but  what 
in  France  was  an  indication  of  merely  the  enforcement  of  certain 
social  and  political  conditions,  was  in  Greece  primarily  an  expression 
of  religious  feeling,  which  naturally  concerned  itself  but  little  with 
what  would  have  seemed  the  trivial  minutiae  of  everyday  life.  Yet 
the  Greek  tragedy  continually  yielded  to  the  modern  spirit ;  and  while 
it  began  under  the  inspiration  of  awe  and  reverence,  and  throughout 
retained  its  original  form,  we  yet  see  the  influence  of  the  immediate 
business  of  life  making  itself  more  and  more  forcibly  felt.  In  ^schylus 
it  is  remote ;  in  Euripides  it  is  near,  and  in  Sophocles  we  may  see  the 
two  inspirations  almost  equally  balanced.  Themain  thing  to  be  noticed 
at  this  point,  however,  is  the  rise  of  the  drama  from  religious  cere- 
monial, and  the  survival  of  the  form  then  assumed,  not  merely  through- 
out the  Greek  tragedies,  but  even  in  those  of  modern  times.  The 
Greek  tragedy  was  primarily  a  magnificent  ritual,  which,  like  all  rituals, 
petrified  into  a  lasting  form  the  existing  customs  of  the  day  where  it 
first  took  shape  ;  and  since  these  consisted  of  invocation  and  lofty  lan- 
guage, the  dithyramb  became  the  fountain  from  which  the  most  im- 
portant currents  of  later  poetry  took  their  rise.  Later  we  shall  see  its 
equal  influence  on  the  almost  contemporary  formation  of  prose. 

From  the  first  the  actors  were  not  so  much  individuals  as  personifi- 
cations of  great  contesting  principles,  abstract  representations  of 
familiar  conditions  ;  and  the  absence  of  their  individuality  was  aug- 
mented and  preserved  from  what  would  have  seemed  a  concession  to 
pettiness  by  the  disguise  of  a  mask.  But  what  was  lost  in  the  direc- 
tion in  which  the  modern  mind  has  worked  was  gained  in  impressive 
dignity;  and  the  importance  of  the  tragedy  was  maintained  by  its 
alliance  with  the  most  solemn  and  baffling  questions  of  mythology. 

Besides  the  actors  there  was  the  chorus.  This  consisted  originally 
of  fifty,  later  of  twelve,  and  finally  of  fifteen  men,  who  were  under  the 
direction  of  a  leader.  This  leader  was  at  times  of  service  as  a  sort  of 
fourth  actor,  when  he  appeared  as  a  representative  of  the  whole  chorus, 
and  discussed  matters  with  one  or  more  of  the  actors.  The  whole 
band,  too,  lessened  the  barrenness  of  the  scene.  The  sense  of  national 
property  in  the  drama  was  encouraged  by  the  fact  that  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  chorus  were  private  citizens  who  volunteered  their  services, 
practised  the  songs  and  dances,  in  short  performed  their  part  in  the 
play  from  a  feeling  of  civic  duty.  The  position  of  leader  of  the 
chorus  fell  by  turns  to  different  prominent  citizens,  very  much  as,  at 
the  present  time,  the  calmer  duty  of  heading  a  subscription  list  falls 
on  a  comparatively  small  number  of  rich  men.  He  it  was  who  was 
deputed  to  instruct  and  maintain  the  chorus,  to  provide  meals  for  the 
different  members,  and  to  furnish  a  tripod  as  a  reward  for  the  success- 


232 


GREEK  DRAMA— ITS  GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 


ful  tragedian.  The  chorus  was  the  representative  of  the  body  of 
citizens;  its  members  took  no  direct  part  in  the  action  of  the  play, 
they  were  a  band  of  men  who  sympathized,  warned,  praised,  or  con- 
demned, as  seemed  most  fitting.  Their  songs  were  accompanied  by 
the  music  of  the  flute,  and  less  often  of  the  lyre,  and  they  uttered 
them  either  when  gathered  about  the  thymele,  or  when,  arranged  in 
two  semi-choruses  they  descended  into  the  orchestra,  and  advancing 
or  retreating,  or  forming  graceful  groups,  they  chanted  their  comments 
on  the  deeds  of  the  play.  These  lyric  outbursts,  with  their  formal 
dances,  were  something  like  the  interludes  between  the  acts  of  a  play. 
Then  the  actions  of  the  various  characters  were  judged,  and  the  tragic 
feeling,  intensified  by  these  solemn  interruptions,  was  supported  until 
the  thread  of  the  play  was  taken  up,  and  it  proceeded  to  its  end. 
Often,    too,     it  the  choral  song 

fell  to  the  chorus  -^^^^^  r^->3r^"-\  and  dance.  This 

to  take  part   in  y^     /tva (^^  CV  ^^^\  ^^^  their   most 

the  dialogue;  in  /  <^/^^^!^^^^\^r^''^^  r~~\  important  func- 
that    case    the      /     J^^/^m''^ /''^iXOM^  \       tion,  to  be  sure ; 

appointed   lead-  Jit^  LyQi^Mj' ^  ^^  v//  P?     1      ^"^  ^^  ^^  ^°    ^^ 

er    spoke    alone      \%%A-\/\\tL^  \     j      borne    in    mind 

in  the  name  of  \^^^  <ri)MlAr ^^^Imulm  I  /  ^^^^  ^^  early 
all  his  compan-  ^OMyW^^^h^^^'^lWWllJ^  times  from  the 
ions.       Their  ^^^gvj       \^_3'M^^^  beginning  to 

main  duty,  how-  —-^  the  end    of  the 

ever,    was     the  tragic  chorus  rehearsing.  pl^y  they  were 


performance   of  present    and    a 

part  of  the  spectacle ;  they  were  not  mere  performers  of  an  interlude, 
far  from  it — they  followed  every  thing  that  was  said  or  done  with 
curiosity  and  interest,  accompanying  the  dialogue  and  action  with 
movement  and  gesture  which  occasionally  turned  into  dance  ;  at  times, 
as  has  been  said,  they  took  part  in  the  dialogue,  and,  as  it  were, 
between  the  acts  they  gave  full  expression  to  their  feelings  with  lyric 
verse  and  complicated  dance.  One  of  the  later  changes  made  by 
Sophocles  was  the  natural  one  of  limiting  the  prominence  thus  given 
to  the  chorus,  and  diminishing  its  omnipresent  interest  in  the  play. 
The  dances,  too,  became  more  artificial.  The  various  songs  are 
carefully  distinguished.  The  parados  is  the  song  with  which  the 
chorus  made  its  first  appearance.  Naturally,  the  exact  form  varied 
in  the  different  plays ;  originally  the  chorus  sang  a  song  in  honor  of 
Dionysus,  but  this  custom  vanished,  leaving  behind  it,  however, 
the  measure  of  a  hymn  or  of  a  processional  song,  which  were 
employed  for  comment  on  the  play.  It  was  sung  as  the  chorus 
advanced,   wound   around   the   thymele,   and   took  its  position  in  the 


PREDOMINANT  ROLE    OF   THE    CHORUS. 


233 


orchestra.  Generally  the  opening  speech,  which  was  called  the  pro- 
logue, indicated  the  approach  of  the  chorus,  which  in  the  parodos,  as 
it  were,  struck  the  opening  note  of  the  play  and  announced  its  real 
ethical  significance.  The  stasimon  was  the  name  given  to  the  utter-^ 
ance  of  the  chorus  later  in  the  play  when  the  stage  was  empty.  These 
songs  served  to  maintain  what  we  may  call  the  universal  importance 
of  the  plays  by  their  continual  reference  to  the  great  controlling  prin- 
ciples of  life ;  they  were  not  unlike  accompaniments  of  majestic 
music.  They  were  of  practical  service,  too,  in  cutting  the  play  into 
various  sections :  thus,  as  has  been  said,  the  part  before  the  parodos 


SATYR     CHORUS   REHEARSING. 


was  called  the  prologue ;  that  between  the  parodos  and  the  stasima 
was  the  episodion,  and  that  after  the  last  stasimon,  the  epodos.  There 
was,  however,  no  inflexible  system  that  compelled  all  the  plays  to  pre- 
serve precisely  the  same  model. 

Besides  these  functions  of  the  chorus  there  were  in  the  tragedies 
many  songs  which  belonged  in  common  to  both  actors  and  chorus.  Of 
these  the  most  important  was  the  kommos,  a  mournful  dirge,  sung  al- 
ternately by  both.  This  was  generally  an  utterance  of  the  keen  sym- 
pathy of  the  chorus  with  the  sufferings  of  the  characters ;  it  was 
expressed  according  to  the  impressive  scheme  of  strophe  and  anti- 
strophe  and  with  accompanying  dance,  the  whole  producing  an  effect 
which  is  in  good  part  lost  upon  the  reader.     In  the  older  tragedies  the 


234  GREEK  DRAMA— GROWTH  AND   HISTORY. 

kommos  was  commonly  at  the  end  of  the  play;  afterwards,  in  a  some- 
what modified  form,  it  appeared  in  the  body  of  the  tragedy,  and  it  was 
free  to  assume  the  form  of  a  sort  of  lyrical  conversation  in  which  the 
intensity  of  the  feelings  inspired  the  chorus  with  varying  emotions  that 
were  expressed  by  small  sections  of  the  chorus  in  brief,  disjointed 
utterances.  In  general,  the  history  of  Greek  tragedy  shows  a  constant 
diminution  of  the  importance  of  the  chorus;  the  performance  was 
steadily  undergoing  a  change  from  an  almost  purely  lyrical  to  a 
dramatic  one. 

IV. 

The  author  of  a  tragedy  who  was  anxious  to  have  it  acted  had  first 
to  consult  the  leading  civic  official,  the  archon,  in  order  to  secure  the 
services  of  a  chorus.  This  having  been  accomplished,  the  poet  cast 
the  actors  in  the  various  parts  and  superintended  the  rehearsals  in  per- 
son, or  made  over  the  task  to  a  teacher  of  the  chorus,  a  man  with  the 
requisite  knowledge  and  experience.  Often,  too,  the  poet  acted  in  his 
own  play,  sometimes  taking  the  most  important  part  himself.  The 
time  for  bringing  out  the  plays  was  during  the  four  or  five  days  of  the 
great  Dionysiac  festivals,  and  judges  were  appointed  by  the  archon  to 
determine  the  relative  merit  of  the  competing  poets,  and  to  confer  the 
prizes.  The  custom  was  established  by  iEschylus  of  offering  in  com- 
petition not  single  plays,  but  a  tetralogy,  or  series  of  four,  three  of 
which  were  tragedies,  while  the  last  was  a  satyric  play  of  a  lighter 
sort,  that  served  the  purpose  of  the  modern  concluding  farce  that  re- 
deems the  seriousness  of  unrelieved  tragedy.  The  exact  composition 
of  the  tetralogy  is  not  clear  to  modern  scholars;  sometimes  the  three 
tragedies  were  closely  related  in  subject,  and  represented  successive 
divisions  of  one  myth ;  at  other  times  there  seems  to  have  been  no 
connection  between  the  different  members.  The  humorous  tone  of 
the  first  satyric  play  marked  the  frank  acceptance  among  the  Greeks 
of  jest  and  seriousness,  as  we  find  it  in  Shakspere  and  his  contempo- 
raries.    Their  union  produced  a  total  impression  of  harmony. 

The  fragmentary  state  in  which  very  much  of  Greek  literature  has 
come  down  to  us  leaves  very  many  questions  practically  insoluble,  in 
spite  of  the  constant  and  ingenious  examination  that  is  applied  to 
their  study.  The  growth  of  the  drama  is  obscure,  as  are  many  points 
in  its  most  flourishing  condition  ;  thus,  for  example,  among  the  per- 
plexing questions  that  await  settlement  is  that  of  the  constructive 
symmetry  in  the  separate  plays.  The  refined  and  well-concealed  art 
of  the  composition  of  the  choruses  is  gradually  unfolding  itself  to 
careful  observers,  but  the  particulars,  though  in  the  highest  degree  in- 


THE    CONSTRUCTION   OF    THE   GREEK  FLA  YS.  235 

teresting  to  students,  are  too  intricate  for  exposition  here ;  it  may  yet 
be  possible,  however,  to  point  out  similar  complexity  in  the  formation 
of  the  plays,  although  the  existence  of  such  elaboration — like  almost 
every  thing  else  about  the  Greek  classics,  is  a  subject  of  hot  contro- 
versy between  angry  scholars.  In  its  most  general  form  the  statement 
is  simple  enough  ;  it  is  merely  this,  that  one  important  law  of  the 
dramatic  construction  of  the  Greeks  is  symmetry.  We  observe  it  first 
in  the  dialogue,  in  which  question  and  answer  are  equally  balanced, 
and  opposing  arguments  are  held  in  impartial  scales;  and  it  is  strongly 
suspected  that  a  similar  equilibrium  is  maintained  in  the  longer 
speeches  and  scenes. 

The  derivation  of  the  drama  from  the  lyric  poetry  which  was  com- 
posed in  this  way,  with  strophe  balanced  by  antistrophe,  and  its  various 
formal  divisions,  gives  the  hypothesis  a  priori  probability,  and  the  dis- 
section of  various  passages  only  corroborates  it.  It  is  also  in  accord- 
ance with  every  thing  that  we  know  of  the  history  of  their  other  arts, 
in  which  the  notion  of  equipoise  is  very  evident,  as  in  the  symmetry 
of  groups  in  painting,  in  the  pediments  of  buildings,  and  later  in  the 
pictures  of  mediaeval  artists  where  the  composition  is  most  obvious. 
Thus,  to  explain  by  an  example,  the  monologue  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Agamemnon  of  ^schylus,  which  is  uttered  by  the  watchman  on 
the  roof,  is  divided  into  two  parts  by  the  flashing  of  the  flame  for 
which  he  was  waiting.  The  first  half,  of  fourteen  lines,  expressing  his 
longing  for  this  sign  of  the  fall  of  Troy,  is  subdivided  into  sections, 
thus  4,  4,  4,  2  ;  and  the  fourteen  lines  of  the  second  half  that  express 
the  joy  of  the  return  from  that  city  are  similarly  divided.  And  what 
is  here  to  be  plainly  seen  finds  itself  repeated  elsewhere,  in  other 
speeches  and  scenes,  not  in  ^schylus  alone,  but  also  in  Sophocles  and 
Euripides.  At  the  best  it  was  not  a  rigid  rule  that  can  be  verified  by 
a  pair  of  compasses,  but  one  that  suggests  rather  an  involuntary 
adoption  of  the  best  method  than  deliberate  measurement.  Such 
however,  is  the  secret  of  art  that  it  appears  like  accidental  simplicity ; 
whereas,  in  fact,  all  artistic  accuracy  is  the  result  of  enormous  practice 
and  effort,  as  any  one  who  has  seen  a  great  master's  preliminary  sketches 
will  readily  aflfirm.  In  the  same  way,  the  laws  of  musical  composition 
elude  the  observation  of  the  untrained  hearer,  who  perceives  only  the 
general  effect  without  recognizing  the  scientific  basis  of  this  compli- 
cated art,  and  in  literature  it  is  held  by  many  that  any  success  is  but 
the  result  of  happy  accident,  or  the  miraculous  product  of  genius, 
which  is  only  a  manifestation  of  the  inexplicable.  The  underlying 
foundation  of  law,  however,  may  be  proved  with  regard  to  the  other 
arts,  and  few  can  seriously  maintain  for  any  length  of  time  that  litera- 
ture alone  is  exempt  from  its  sway.    One  of  its  manifestations  may  be 


236  GREEK   DRAMA— GROWTH  AND   HISTORY. 

taken  to  be  this  of  symmetry,  and  its  long  concealment  may  be  taken 
as  proof  of  the  art  which  regulated  it. 

Whether  we  accept  or  deny  its  existence,  it  is  an  interesting  subject, 
and  only  shows  the  general  obscurity  that  hides  very  much  of  the  his- 
tory and  construction  of  the  Greek  drama.  If  the  supply  were  fuller, 
many  of  these  questions  would  doubtless  be  capable  of  readier  solu- 
tion ;  as  it  is,  we  must  here  as  elsewhere  mourn  the  meagerness  of  our 
equipment,  for  what  is  left  us  consists  of  but  thirty-three  complete 
plays,  seven  by  ^schylus,  the  same  number  by  Sophocles,  and 
nineteen,  including  one  satyrical  play,  by  Euripides.  Of  these  the 
earliest  is  ^schylus's  Persians,  brought  out  472  B.C.,  and  the  last  is 
Sophocles's  CEdipus  at  Colonos,  first  performed  401  B.C.,  a  few  years 
after  the  poet's  death.  Of  the  great  number  of  tragedians  (over  sixty) 
only  three,  the  two  just  named  and  Euripides,  have  come  down  to  us 
except  as  traditions.  Yet,  fortunately,  these  three  were  by  general  assent 
the  most  important.  To  be  sure,  they  at  times  were  overshadowed  by 
other  writers,  but  on  the  whole  their  leading  position  was  undeniable. 
Naturally  enough,  the  highest  honors  were  at  different  times  of  anti- 
quity variously  given,  as  they  have  been  transferred  from  one  to 
another  since  the  revival  of  learning.  Thus,  Sophocles  was  enormously 
admired  during  his  lifetime,  when  ^schylus  appeared  antiquated,  and 
opinion  was  divided  concerning  Euripides,  and  Aristophanes  warmly 
defended  yEschylus.  Later  it  was  Euripides  who  most  nearly  attained 
popularity  by  qualities  that  still  divide  his  readers.  In  the  last  century 
^schylus  was  regarded  as  all  that  is  barbarous  and  uncouth,  and  it 
was  Sophocles  with  his  technical  perfection  who  was  most  admired. 
Since  then  men  have  learned  to  appreciate  more  warmly  the  stern 
majesty  of  the  father  of  tragedy.  He  is  the  wisest  who  is  capable  of 
wide  and  generous  admiration  for  all,  and  escapes  the  partisanship,  so 
common  in  literary  judgments,  that  regards  it  necessary  to  praise  one 
sort  of  merit  by  decrying  another.  That  these  three  men  had  some- 
what different  qualities  will  be  very  evident,  and  is  suf^ciently  ex- 
plained by  their  sequence  in  time.  The  remoteness  and  almost  archaic 
dignity  of  ^schylus  was  inevitably  succeeded  by  the  artistic  perfec- 
tion of  Sophocles.  A  similar  difference  may  be  seen  by  comparing 
Racine  with  Corneille,  and  Sophocles  was  succeeded  by  Euripides  with 
his  accentuation  of  a  more  modern  pathos,  just  as  the  followers  of 
Shakspere,  such  as  Cyril  Tourneur  and  Ford,  gradually  intensified 
qualities  that  he  presented  with  greater  reserve. 

Indeed  we  may  say  that  the  most  striking  qualities  of  any  writer 
are  those  which  belong  to  him  as  the  product  of  the  period  in  which 
he  lived,  and  that  the  differences  between  any  two  men  living  at  dif- 
ferent dates  may  be  determined  with  more  precision  by  observing  the 


LITERATURE  SUBJECT    TO  LA  VV  —  EVOLUTION.  237 

general  condition  of  the  occupation  which  busies  them  both  than  by 
examining  their  personal  characteristics.  And  it  is  not  merely  the 
condition  to  which  they  brought,  let  us  say,  poetry,  that  is  to  be  con- 
sidered, but  rather  the  state  in  which  they  found  it ;  what  they  do 
with  it  then  depends  on  influences  outside  of  themselves,  not  on  their 
personal  choice.  If  we  regard  simply  the  words  that  they  use,  the 
statement  is  obvious  enough.  Every  man  employs  the  vocabulary 
that  he  finds  awaiting  him  as  he  breathes  the  air  of  the  room  in 
which  he  writes;  he  does  not,  if  an  American,  address  his  fellow- 
countrymen  in  Lithuanian,  but  in  the  language  of  his  neighbors.  He 
certainly  may  employ  archaic  constructions,  just  as  at  the  present 
time  writers  of  verse  are  fond  of  imitating  old-fashioned  French 
models  of  composition,  but  he  will  not  do  this  unless  it  is  necessary 
to  find  some  new  means  of  attracting  the  failing  attention  of  his 
readers,  and  then  the  form  which  he  chooses  will  be  found  to  be  one 
towards  which  general  attention  is  turned.  Thus,  the  widening  of 
interests  that  accompanied  the  Renaissance  required  an  enlargement 
of  the  vocabulary  to  find  means  of  expression  for  new  feelings,  and 
Latinisms  were  freely  added,  as  well  as  archaisms,  revived  by  Spenser 
for  example,  who  turned  his  attention  to  the  allegorical  romance  of  the 
middle  ages,  but  the  general  influences  of  the  whole  period  are  dis- 
tinctly marked  here,  as  they  are  in  the  contemporary  modifications  in 
dress,  in  architecture,  politics  and  the  fine  arts.  In  the  same  way,  the 
change  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  which  is  called  the  Romantic 
revival,  was  witness  of  a  similar  influx  of  long-forgotten  words  and 
phrases  that  also  bore  witness  to  the  general  revival  of  neglected 
sources  of  inspiration  in  the  once  despised  past. 

What  is  true  of  the  mere  matter  of  phraseology  is  true  of  the 
thoughts  and  sentiments.  Exactly  as  ^schylus  took  the  most  highly 
developed  literary  form,  the  dithyramb,  as  the  basis  of  his  tragedies, 
the  most  exalted  feelings  of  the  Athenian  mind  found  utterance  in 
those  immortal  masterpieces,  and  when  we  acknowledge  that  what 
/^schylus  uttered  with  fervor  and  comparative  simplicity  became  the 
subject  of  sophistical  treatment  at  the  hands  of  Euripides  we  shall 
be  far  astray  in  ascribing  the  change  to  the  quibbling  spirit  of  the  last 
tragedian,  and  in  neglecting  to  note  the  unfailing  tendency  of  great 
movements  to  lose  their  force  and  breadth,  and  to  disintegrate  into 
subjects  of  what  seems  less  inspired  discussion,  a  change  as  sure  in 
literature  as  any  fact  of  physics. 

An  apparent  objection  to  this  manner  of  regarding  literature  is  the 
hostility  that  so  often  shows  itself  against  inevitable  change.  If  the 
modification  is  part  of  a  widespread  feeling,  why  did  Aristophanes 
attack  Euripides  in  his  comedies,  just  as  critics  now  sneer  at  unroman- 


238  GREEK  DRAMA— GROWTH  AND  HISTORY. 

tic  novels  ?  It  may  be  answered,  however,  that  the  position  which  a 
man's  work  takes  may  be  likened  to  a  workman's  place  in  the  construc- 
tion of  a  pyramid.  When  we  examine  the  past  we  can  perceive  the 
solidarity  of  all  literature,  as  of  the  general  progress  of  mankind  ;  the 
vast  unity  that  is  obscure  when  we  are  watching  contemporary  work 
becomes  tolerably  clear.  We  then  see  that  there  is  nothing  wilful  in 
its  course,  however  misjudged  it  may  have  been  at  the  time.  Then 
Wordsworth's  return  to  nature  was  but  part  of  the  general  rupture  with 
decaying  artificiality,  which  is  as  apparent  in  the  French  Revolution  as 
in  the  changes  in  the  furniture  of  drawing-rooms,  or  in  the  laying-out 
of  gardens,  between  the  reign  of  Louis  XV.  and  the  beginning  of  this 
century ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  other  seeming  discordances  in  the 
history  of  literature,  which  as  little  needs  the  hypothesis  of  miracles 
as  does  geology.  When  men  are  watching  contemporary  work  that 
has  the  quality  of  novelty,  they  are  apt  to  be  puzzled  by  its  departure 
from  the  approved  models,  and  they  are  prone  to  urge  those  who  are 
in  advance,  who  are  working  on  the  upper  tiers  of  our  imaginary 
pyramid,  to  come  down  and  lay  their  brick  where  they  were  laid,  in  the 
face  of  similar  opposition,  by  those  who  belonged  to  a  past  generation. 
Yet  the  only  position  which  the  workers  can  take  is  that  which  rests 
on  what  is  already  accomplished.  The  principles  which  their  prede- 
cessors established  have  to  be  examined,  amended,  corroborated,  or 
refuted.  This  is  the  law  of  life,  and  of  literature  which  is  but  one  of 
the  many  sides  of  life,  not  a  thing  capable  of  becoming  fixed  at  any 
one  time  in  an  immutable  form.  Hence  in  investigating  the  evolution 
of  the  dramatic  work  of  Greece  we  are,  as  ever  in  studying  literature, 
tracing  but  one  of  the  manifold  paths  which  the  development  of  the 
mind  of  the  time  followed.  Not  only  do  the  works  of  Sophocles  and 
Euripides  thus  represent  the  thought  of  the  period  in  which  they  live ; 
they  also  form  another  instance,  as  we  shall  see  later,  of  the  tendency 
of  great  movements  to  subdivide  into  a  vast  number  of  minuter  ques- 
tions which  complicate  and  perplex  society,  just  as  a  great  wave  of 
patriotism,  when  it  animates  a  country,  brings  up  for  future  solution 
numberless  problems  of  legality,  wisdom,  and  prudence.  Our  own 
history  since  the  beginning  of  the  civil  war  is  a  sufficiently  clear  illus- 
tration of  this  statement. 

To  be  sure,  the  number  of  Greek  tragedies  that  we  possess  is  but 
small  in  comparison  with  the  vast  number  that  has  been  lost,  yet  they 
are  fairly  representative  of  the  magnificent  abundance  of  that  great 
period. 


CHAPTER  II.— ^SCHYLUS. 

I. — The  Life  of  ^schylus  ;  His  Part  in  the  Persian  Wars  ;  His  Career  as  an  Author; 
His  Death.  U. — The  Difficulties  in  the  Way  of  Our  Comprehending  the  Greek 
Drama — Its  Spectacular  Effect  with  the  Choral  Dances — The  Simplicity  of  the 
Plot  Compared  with  Shakspere's  Art — The  Unities  in  the  Greek  Plays — The 
Absence  of  Love  as  a  Dramatic  Inspiration — The  Flowering  of  the  Drama  in 
Athens,  Paris,  and  London  at  a  Moment  of  Victor)'.  III. — The  Earliest  Play, 
The  Persians — Its  Presentation  of  Historical  Events — An  Analysis  of  the  Play — 
The  First  Appearance  of  the  Drama  in  Western  Literature — The  Prominence  of 
the  Chorus,  and  Diminutive  Value  of  the  Actors,  and  the  Archaic  Quality  of  the 
Infant  Drama  :  Tableaux  rather  than  Actions — Solemnity  of  ^schylus.  IV. — 
The  Seven  Against  Thebes  Analyzed — The  Mythical  Plot — The  Slow  Growth  of 
Dramatic  Action.  V. — The  Suppliants — The  Predominance  of  the  Lyrical  Ele- 
ment, the  Crudity  of  the  Dialogue.  VI. — The  Prometheus  Bound — The  Possible 
Significance  of  the  Myth — The  Dramatic  Treatment — Its  Apparent  Irreverence — 
Our  Meagre  Comprehension  of  It.  VII. — The  Oresteian  Trilogy,  the  Agamem- 
non, the  Libation  Poems,  and  the  Furies,  Analyzed — The  Significance  of  the 
Dramatic  Treatment  of  Alleged  Legendary  History — The  Ethical  Principle — 
The  Simplicity  of  .(Eschylus — The  Changes  Wrought  by  Time  in  the  Drama, 


TCSCHYLUS  was  born  in  Eleusis,  a  town  in  Attica,  525  B.C.  His 
Jl^  father,  Euphorion  by  name,  belonged  to  a  family  that  had  long 
inhabited  this  town,  which  was  the  spot  where  were  held  the  Eleusin- 
ian  Mysteries,  obscure  rites  that  lent  a  solemn  significance  to  many 
of  the  myths  of  the  Greek  religion.  In  all  of  the  poetry  of  ^Eschylus 
there  is  prominent  a  lofty  religious  sense,  which  it  may  be  fair  to  sup- 
pose derived  some  of  its  strength  from  his  intimacy  with  the  myste- 
ries. vEschylus  took  part  in  all  the  principal  battles  of  the  Persian 
wars.  He  was  thirty-five  years  old  when  the  battle  of  Marathon  was 
fought,  on  which  occasion  he  was  severely  wounded,  and  in  the  second 
Persian  war  he  was  present  at  the  battles  of  Artemisium,  Salamis,  and 
Plataea.  His  brothers,  too,  fought  in  the  same  wars  with  noteworthy 
bravery.  The  epitaph  which  he  composed  for  himself  shows  the  im- 
portance that  he  placed  upon  his  military  prowess.  He  speaks  simply 
of  what  he  did  as  a  soldier,  without  a  word  about  his  plays : 

"  Athenian  ^schylus,  Euphorion's  son, 

In  his  last  rest  doth  'neath  this  stone  abide, 
'Mid  the  wheatfields  of  Gela  where  he  died. 
Be  witness  to  his  valor,  Marathon, 

And  also  may  the  long-haired  Persians  tell 
His  courage  which  they  knew,  and  overwell." 


240 


y^SCHYLUS. 


At  an  early  age  vEschylus  began  to  write  for  the  tragic  stage ;  the 
story  runs  that  he  was  called  to  the  occupation  by  a  dream  at  a  time 
when  he  was  guarding  grapes.  Dionysus  is  said  to  have  appeared  to 
him,  and  to  have  commanded  him  to  devote  himself  to  tragic  poetry, 
but  perhaps  the  many  similar  tales  that  are  told  of  famous  Greek 
poets  would  not  pass  careful  examination  by  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research;  this  number,  if  nothing  else,  argues  against  their  credibility. 
At  first  he  found  success  difficult.  He  wrote  in  rivalry  with  Simonides 
an  elegy  on  the  heroes  who  fell  at  Marathon,  and  was  defeated.  In 
time,  however,  he  secured  a  prize  for  his  tragedies.  The  Persians  is 
the  earliest  of  the  successful  ones  that  has  come  down  to  us.  In  468 
B.C.   he  failed  to  get  the  prize  in  competition  with  Sophocles,  but  ten 

years  later  he  was  more  fortunate  with 
the  plays  about  CEdipus.  The  rela- 
tions between  the  two  great  poets 
were  of  a  most  friendly  kind  ;  both 
men  were  unstained  by  jealousy  or 
envy,  and  the  influence  of  each  upon 
the  other  appears  to  have  been  most 
salutary  and  inspiring,  -^schylus's 
life  at  Athens  was  twice  interrupted 
by  visits  to  Sicily.  His  first  visit  was 
of  some  length,  and  was  probably  the 
result  of  an  invitation  from  Hiero, 
who  did  his  best  to  make  Syracuse  a 
place  of  literary  influence  by  summon- 
ing thither  men  of  renown  from 
various  parts  of  Greece.  We  have 
already  had  occasion  to  notice  his 
relations  with  Simonides  and  Pindar.  After  returning  to  Athens  and 
the  success  of  the  Orestes  tragedy,  .^schylus  went  back  to  Sicily, 
probably  indignant  at  being  charged  with  indecorous  allusions  in  his" 
plays  to  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries.  He  was  acquitted,  but  the  vexation 
could  not  be  removed.  Moreover,  the  new  political  conditions  doubt- 
less disturbed  so  zealous  a  lover  of  the  past  as  yEschylus,  and  drove 
him  to  what  was  almost  exile  in  a  remote  Sicilian  town.  The  manner 
of  his  death  is  again  the  subject  of  legend.  It  is  said  that  while  he 
was  seated,  pondering,  on  the  rocks,  an  eagle  carrying  a  tortoise  in  its 
claws  mistook  his  bald  head  for  a  stone  of  a  convenient  size,  and 
dropped  upon  him  the  tortoise,  in  order  to  shatter  its  shell.  This 
singular  fable  inspires  every  feeling  but  belief.  Perhaps  the  most  intelli- 
gent suggestion  concerning  it  is  that  it  arose  from  misinterpretation 
of  a  memorial  stone  representing  the  eagle  and  tortoise  as  a  symbol 


iESCHYLUS. 


THE  MOTIVE  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  241 

of  the  spirit  of  the  poet  freed  from  the  cramping  bonds  of  humanity, 
cleaving  the  air  like  an  eagle.  Yet  this  explanation  may  be  an  ill- 
advised  attempt  to  read  modern  imagery  into  ancient  art.  Whatever 
the  cause  of  his  death,  the  citizens  of  Gela  paid  him  many  honors, 
erecting  a  memorial  over  his  tomb,  which  was  long  visited  by  travelers. 
At  a  later  date  the  Athenians  put  up  a  statue  in  his  honor,  and 
encouraged  every  one  who  wished  to  bring  out  the  plays  of  ^schylus 
by  contributing  from  the  public  funds  the  expenses  of  the  chorus. 

For  forty  years  -^schylus  composed  plays  for  the  stage,  and  he  is 
said  to  have  written  ninety  dramas,  including  twenty  satyrical  pieces. 
Of  these,  as  has  been  said  above,  only  seven  have  reached  us. 


II. 

Before  taking  up  the  consideration  of  these  plays  it  is  well  to  remem- 
ber how  very  different  were  the  conditions  of  the  Greek  drama  from 
those  of  our  own.  Every  theatrical  performance  rests  on  a  number  of 
conventions.  In  spite  of  many  centuries  of  conscientious  effort  to  do 
for  modern  times  what  the  great  tragedians  had  done  for  Greece,  even 
the  most  faithful  work,  as  in  the  French  classical  tragedy,  leaves  the 
original  Greek  drama  incomprehensible,  and  can  not  itself  be  intelli- 
gently enjoyed  by  foreigners.  If  the  rest  of  the  world  find  even  Racine 
and  Corneille  remote  from  their  interest,  when  those  two  great  men 
drew  their  inspiration  from  a  study  of  the  classics,  and  especially  of 
the  Latin  classics,  which  have  formed  the  groundwork  of  all  literary 
cultivation  for  many  hundreds  of  years,  and  from  their  own  civilization, 
which  may  certainly  be  readily  understood,  how  readily  we  may  ex- 
plain the  difficulties  which  stand  in  the  way  of  sympathetic  compre- 
hension of  the  Greek  drama  !  This  bore  close  relations  with  a  religion 
that  is  far  removed  from  our  own  experience  or  intelligent  conception, 
and,  moreover,  it  rested  on  certain  fundamental  notions  which  not  only 
do  not  exist  for  us,  but  also  elude  our  study.  These  differences  em- 
barrass us  at  every  step ;  we  use  the  same  words  with  other  meanings 
when  we  undertake  to  describe  the  Greek  stage, and,  for  example,  make 
mention  of  the  musical  accompaniment  of  the  choruses.  We  do  not 
understand  clearly  what  the  Greek  music  was  and  what  it  meant  for 
the  Greeks,  yet  it  was  this  combination  of  words,  music,  and  dance  that 
formed  the  Hellenic  drama.  With  us,  a  play  is  something  so  unlike 
the  architectural  composition  of  that  race  that  we  are  continually  baf- 
fled. When  we  read  a  Greek  tragedy  we  get  but  a  small  part  of  the 
total  impression.  Those  who  have  seen  one  of  those  masterpieces 
acted,  even  under  the  modern  conditions  of  preserving  the  actors'  faces 


242  yESCHYLUS. 

unhidden  by  masks  and  without  the  choral  dances,  have  had  an  oppor- 
tunity to  get  a  much  fuller  insight  into  the  general  method  of  the 
tragedians  than  any  poring  over  the  text  could  give.  Yet  even  they 
have  but  an  incomplete  perception  of  the  whole,  which  was  an  effort 
to  represent  human  life  by  a  combination  of  all  the  existing  arts.  The 
exclusion  of  the  actor's  personality,  the  majestic  poses  of  the  elevated 
and  enlarged  figures,  formed  a  sort  of  mobile  sculpture  ;  the  lyric  part 
formed  the  chorus,  and  in  the  predominance  given  to  narration  we  may 
perhaps  see  the  influence  of  the  epic  poetry  brought  into  union  with 
the  other  brilliant  product  of  the  Greek  mind.  The  whole  was  made 
up  of  a  spectacular  effect,  which  is  lost  to  us,  in  combination  with 
what  we  understand  by  a  dramatic  effect.  This  last,  bearing  a  burden 
shared  by  allied  arts,  often  lacked  some  of  the  movement  that  is  re- 
quired of  the  drama  in  modern  times.  Often  we  notice  its  slow,  majes- 
tic march,  its  lack  of  action,  which  for  the  Greeks  was  atoned  for  by 
the  music  and  dance.  We  can  understand  their  method  by  recalling 
our  tolerance  of  undramatic  slowness  in  an  opera  or  an  oratorio.  In 
the  opera  what  has  faded  into  the  twinkling  beauty  of  a  ballet  was 
rendered  by  movements  of  dignity  and  grace  that  recalled  to  the  spec- 
tators a  host  of  feelings  connected  with  their  most  solemn  recollec- 
tions. The  music  was  subordinate  to  the  words,  but  it  was  an  impor- 
tant part  of  an  impressive  whole.  Obviously,  the  ancient  tragedy  could 
rest  on  a  very  simple  foundation  ;  the  complexity  of  its  means  of  ex- 
pression permitted  a  certain  meagreness  of  plot ;  it  was,  one  might 
almost  say,  an  excuse  for  long  epic  and  lyrical  treatment,  and  did  not, 
like  the  modern  drama,  depend  on  a  complicated  action  to  arouse  the 
spectators'  attention.  Instead  of  an  intrigue  it  chose  a  single  fact  or  a 
short  sequence  of  facts,  and  simplified  the  action  where  the  modern 
drama  would  expand  and  complicate  it. 

If  we  compare  the  Greek  tragedians  with  Shakspere  the  difference 
is  at  once  clear  ;  the  ancient  poet,  taking  a  plot  already  perfectly 
familiar,  or  even  trite,  selected  but  an  episode  and  of  that  episode 
merely  the  crisis,  the  most  vivid  moment  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  Shakspere  what  would  form  the  whole  subject  of  the  Greek  play 
becomes  merely  the  denouement,  and  all  the  earlier  part  of  the  tragedy 
is  devoted  to  expounding  and  preparing  the  final  consummation.  This 
difference,  it  will  be  noted,  is  a  very  great  one,  and  it  demands  very 
different  treatment  by  the  poet,  besides  inspiring  very  different  feel- 
ings in  the  spectator  or  reader.  We  see  at  once  what  novel  importance 
is  given  in  the  modern  play  to  complexity  of  plot  and  the  study  of 
character,  how  priests  and  kings  are  elbowed  by  clowns  and  boors,  how 
incident  and  passion  are  crowded  together,  all  being  traits  that  would 
have  distracted  the  Greek,  for  whom  a  tragedy  was  a  rounded,  harmo- 


CONTRASTING  QUALITIES  OF  GREEK  AND  MODERN  DRAMA.      243 

nious  work  of  art,  that  moved   in   an   ideal  region  into  which  nothing 
ignoble  could  intrude. 

This  is,  after  all,  the  main  difference  between  the  Greek  tragedy  and 
what  we  call  our  own,  although  the  Shaksperian  tragedy  is  quite  as 
obsolete  as  that  of  ^schylus,  and  it  is  a  difference  that  the  incompe- 
tence of  the  human  mind  to  see  more  than  a  single  face  of  the  truth 
makes  almost  world-wide.  It  is  certainly  only  labelled,  not  defined  or 
explained,  when  we  say  that  the  art  of  iEschylus  is  idealism  and  that  of 
Shakspere  realism.  Indeed,  even  if  we  accept  these  words  provision- 
ally, we  must  acknowledge  that  there  is  much  in  the  work  of  the  En- 
glish tragedy  that  is  not  aptly  described  by  any  such  term.  In  the 
Greek  tragedies,  the  dignity  of  the  language,  its  remoteness  from  that 
of  common  life,  and  the  general  nature  of  the  plan  of  the  plays,  wath 
the  prominence  given  to  the  chorus,  form  something  which  is  far  re- 
moved from  a  picture  of  human  life.  The  origin  of  the  drama  in  the 
early  ritual  helps  to  account  for  this  fact,  and  it  long  preserved  the 
tragedies  from  what' would  have  seemed  an  indecorous  perversion  of  a 
great  religious  function.  Then,  too,  the  indifference  which  the  Greeks 
felt  for  any  undue  prominence  of  individuality  undoubtedly  made  im- 
possible any  exaggeration  of  mere  personal  characteristics.  In 
Shakspere  we  may  observe  the  combination  of  two  distinct  currents, 
that  of  the  Renaissance,  and  that  of  mediaevalism.  The  first,  certainly, 
was  not  affected  by  realism  ;  it  was  essentially  an  aristocratic  move- 
ment, while  the  quality  of  mediaevalism,  which  is  represented  in  the 
Elizabethan  plays  by  clowns,  buffoons,  grave-diggers,  or  the  populace, 
is  distinctly  democratic.  What  was  inspired  by  the  Renaissance  is  as 
conventional  as  any  one  could  desire ;  the  influence  of  the  artificial 
romances  is  continually  apparent,  not  merely  in  the  exaggerations  and 
extravagant  language,  but  in  the  very  vigor  of  phrase  which  burns  in 
our  memory.  Hence  to  speak  of  Shakspere  as  a  realist  requires  that 
the  statement  be  corrected,  for  it  contains  only  a  fragment  of  the 
truth.  All  the  later  literature  of  the  Renaissance  is  increasingly  void 
of  realism  ;  it  has  been  left  for  modern  times  to  witness  its  growth. 
Let  us  remember,  however,  that  the  two  qualities,  idealism  and 
realism,  do  not  demand  that  they  be  drawn  up  in  battle-array  against 
each  other ;  both  require  to  be  acknowledged  and  to  be  understood. 
It  is  a  meager  philosophy  that  finds  in  even  marked  difference  nothing 
but  hostility. 

Yet  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  just  as  the  early  modern  writers  about 
dramatic  literature,  as  well  as  the  contemporary  tragedians,  gave  by 
precept  and  example  a  great  rigidity  to  the  rules  of  the  three  unities 
of  tirrie,  place,  and  action,  that  was  unknown  to  the  Greeks  themselves, 
so  we  are  accustomed  to  read  into  the  construction  of  their  plays  an 


244  ^SCHYLUS. 

excessive  rigidity  of  conventions  that  exists  only  in  our  imaginations, 
that  is  an  academic  verdict  handed  down  from  one  generation  to 
another.  Undeniably  a  great  part  of  our  conception  of  the  ancients 
is  a  one-sided  opinion,  in  which  the  authority  of  their  statues  in  ex- 
pressing repose  has  had  a  very  far-reaching  influence.  In  their  plays 
there  are  moments  of  superb  dramatic  outburst  that  effectually  destroy 
the  mistaken  notion  that  their  dramatic  works  are  pallid  monuments 
of  alternate  recitation  ;  flashes  of  life  as  intense  as  any  thing  in  litera- 
ture stand  out  in  bold  relief  against  the  much  argumentation  that  is 
remote  from  our  interests.  Yet  it  was  the  coldness  of  the  ancient 
plays,  their  use  of  narration  to  describe  tragic  incidents,  the  abuse  of 
the  device  of  having  emotions  expressed  to  a  confidant,  that  found  the 
most  persistent  imitation  in  the  pseudo-classic  drama  of  the  Renais- 
sance, for  after  all  it  is  easier  to  copy  another's  faults  than  his  merits. 
Another  point  of  contrast  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern 
dramatic  literature  remains  to  be  pointed  out,  and  this  is  the  position 
of  women.  The  Greeks  knew  nothing  of  the  modern  conception  of 
love,  with  its  enthusiasm,  and  one  may  almost  say  idolatry,  dating 
from  the  middle  ages,  and  gallantry  is  the  last  thing  to  be  found  in  their 
plays.  Indeed,  they  excluded  every  form  of  personal  relationship, 
which  forms  the  very  core  of  the  modern  drama  ;  their  subjects  drew 
them  away  from  individuals,  and  from  even  such  social  life  as  existed 
in  a  community  wherein  women  held  a  wholly  subordinate  position. 
The  origin  of  the  tragedy  in  religious  ceremonial  wholly  debarred 
such  sacrilege,  as  it  would  have  seemed  to  them,  and  turned  their 
attention  to  old  myths  that  knew  nothing  of  such  minutiae  and  would 
have  been  degraded  by  them.  Yet,  of  course,  even  conventionality 
feels  the  influence  of  the  time  in  which  it  exists,  and  in  the  plays  of 
yEschylus  we  may  see  reflected  the  glory  of  a  period  in  Greek  history 
which  was  never  repeated.  The  consciousness  of  the  newly  formed 
Hellenic  nationality,  and  accompanying  serious  moral  awakening  which 
attended  the  momentous  successes  of  the  Greeks  in  the  wars  with 
Persia,  are  the  animating  principles  of  the  tragic  art  of  ^schylus,  in 
the  same  way — the  comparison  is  trite — that  the  new  military  and 
naval  success  of  the  English  under  Elizabeth,  and  the  awakening  of 
men's  interests  in  the  Renaissance,  made  its  appearance  in  the  flowering 
time  of  English  dramatic  literature,  and  that  the  consolidation  of 
French  power  under  Louis  XIV.  inspired  the  plays  of  Corneille  and 
Racine.  Remembering  that  literature  is  but  one  expression  of  the 
thought  of  a  time,  we  see  that  it  is  simply  the  resultant  of  the  various 
forces,  past  and  present,  whereof  the  spirit  of  that  time  is  formed. 
No  genius,  however  brilliant,  can  do  more  than  arrange  the  material 
that  this  shall  offer,  in  a  manner  that  is  not  created  by  him,  but  is  itself 


THE  PERSIANS— INCIDENTS  OF   THE  PLAY. 


245 


derived  from  attendant  influences.  Still  it  must  be  remembered  that 
these  views  in  no  way  diminish  the  value  of  the  man  who  gives  utter- 
ance to  the  sentiments  that  affect  the  generation  to  which  he  belongs; 
he  must  obviously  possess  the  quality  that  is  not  defined  when  it  is 
called  genius,  but  the  way  in  which  this  shall  find  expression  depends 
on  the  accompanying  circumstances,  just  as  the  language  in  which  an 
orator  shall  speak  depends  on  many  things  over  which  he  has  no 
control. 

III. 

Obviously  the  Persians,  which  is  the  only  historical  play  that  we 
possess,  is  distinguished  by  some  qualities  that  are  not  to  be  found  in 
the  other  mythical  plays  that  have  reached  us.  The  poet  described 
contemporary  events  in  which  he  had  himself  taken  part,  but  with  an 


PERSIAN   SATRAP. 


absence  of  hostility  and  partiality  that  is  most  admirable.  Possibly  he 
was  induced  to  undertake  the  task  by  the  success  of  Phrynichus  with 
his  play,  the  Phoenicians,  which  treated  of  the  defeat  of  Xerxes,  and 
was  brought  out  two  years  after  the  battle  of  Salamis.  Six  years  later 
the    Persians  was  brought  out,  in  472  B.  C. 

The  scene  of  the  play  is  laid  in  the  home  of  the  Persian  kings,  near 
the  royal  tombs.  The  chorus  opens  the  tragedy  with  a  song  in  which 
it  enumerates  the  enormous  hordes  that  had  marched  forth  to  conquer 
Greece,  and  expresses  its  fears  lest  they  should  all  be  doomed  to  de- 
struction. The  chorus  consists  of  old  men,  the  dignitaries  of  the 
country,  who  are  full  of  anxiety  lest  some  all-deceiving  god  should 
have  tempted  them  forth  to  their  ruin, 

"  For  Ate.  fawning  and  kind,  at  first  a  mortal  betraying, 
Then  in  snares  and  meshes  decoys  him. 
Whence  one  who  is  but  man  in  vain  doth  struggle  to  'scape  from." 

When   the  chorus  are  about   to  take  counsel  together,  Atossa,  the 


246  MSCHYLUS. 

mother  of  Xerxes,  appears  and  recounts  a  dream  which  had  terrified 
her  in  the  previous  night.  Two  noble  women,  richly  clad,  one  in  Per- 
sian, the  other  in  Dorian  garments,  "  both  of  faultless  beauty,  sisters 
twain  of  the  same  stock,"  had  stood  before  her  full  of  anger  and  about 
to  quarrel.  Her  son  had  stopped  their  contest,  and  harnessed  them 
both  into  his  chariot.  One  proved  docile  ;  the  other,  however,  becom- 
ing violent,  shatters  the  chariot  and  throws  out  the  driver.  Then  came 
forth  Darius,  and  Xerxes,  when  he  saw  his  father,  wailed  and  rent  his 
garments. 

In  this  incident  we  have  the  first  appearance  of  the  dream,  which 
was  destined  to  become  the  perpetual  nightmare  of  later  tragedy,  yet 
here  it  admirably  serves  its  purpose  of  preparing  the  spectators  for  the 
future  horrors  of  the  play.  Doubtless  the  awful  significance  of  dreams 
was  something  that  the  audience  felt  more  or  less  clearly,  and  as 
heaven-sent  messengers  of  impending  evil  they  held  a  position  of 
solemn  importance  among  dramatic  devices.  The  chorus  evidently 
thinks  so,  for  it  at  once  bids  the  queen  to  endeavor  to  pacify  the  gods 
with  prayers  and  sacrifice.  The  queen,  in  the  ensuing  conversation, 
puts  some  questions  to  the  old  men  about  this  Greece  which  her  son 
has  gone  forth  to  conquer,  and  the  poet  takes  advantage  of  the  oppor- 
tunity to  draw  a  picture  of  the  freedom  of  Greece  in  contrast  with  the 
familiar  despotism  of  the  Asiatic  monarchy.  She  begins  with  a  ques- 
tion that  Herodotus  tell  us  was  actually  asked  by  Darius,  and  that  not 
unnaturally  galled  the  Athenians,  namely, 

"  But  first,  my  friends,  I  wish  to  hear  of  Athens, 
Where  in  the  world  do  men  report  it  standeth  ?  " 

In  the  play,  however,  it  must  have  called  forth  a  grim  smile  of  satis- 
faction  on  the  faces  of  the  spectators.     There  are,  too,  other  little 
touches  that  must  have  delighted  the  audience.     Atossa  asks  : 
"  What  shepherd  rules  and  lords  it  o'er  their  people  ?  " 

To  which  question  the  answer  is  made : 

"  They  are  not  slaves  of  any  man,  or  subjects," 
a  remark  which  makes  it  clear  that  the  Greeks  perceived  the  essential 
point  at  stake  in  their  contest  with  the    Persians.       This   brief  conver- 
sation is  interrupted  by  the  entrance  of  a  messenger  who  brings  tidings 
of  the  defeat  of  Xerxes  : 

"  O  cities  of  the  whole  wide  land  of  Asia  ! 
O  soil  of  Persia,  haven  of  great  wealth  ! 
How  at  one  stroke  is  brought  to  nothingness 
Our  great  prosperity,  and  all  the  flower 
Of  Persia's  strength  is  fallen  !     Woe  is  me ! 
'Tis  ill  to  be  the  first  to  bring  ill  news  ; 
Yet  needs  must  I  the  whole  woe  tell,  ye  Persians ; 
All  our  barbaric  mighty  host  is  lost." 


LYRICAL  FOETRY  AND    THE  DRAMA. 


247 


The  defeat  is  then  recounted  in  a  lyric  passage  divided  between  the 
chorus  and  the  messenger,  as  may  be  seen  in  this  extract: 

Cho.  "  Alas,  alas  !     Sea-tossed 

The  bodies  of  our  friends,  and  much  disstained: 

Thou  say'st  that  they  are  drifting  to  and  fro 
In  far  out-floating  robes. 
Mess.    E'en  so  ;  our  bows  availed  not,  but  the  host 

Has  perished,  conquered  by  assault  at  sea." 

In  the  use  of  this  form  of  communicating  the  news  we  may  see  the 

enormous  influence  of  the  meHc  poetry 
upon  the  early  development  of  the 
Greek  drama,  and  we  shall  find  other 
examples  in  abundance.  The  drama 
found  ready  at  hand  a  language  that 
had  been  brought  to  great  perfection 
by  the  countless  lyric  poets,  who 
had  for  centuries  been  busy  in  giv- 
ing ripe  expression  to  complicated 
thoughts  on  a  great  variety  of  sub- 
moments.     It    was 


^^ 

Hffii^ 

K 

^^ 

ylir^W  /j\ 

\\7^^^^  mm^^  ^M 

%'mim 

K^JmMi. 

^^98 

^^HP 

only  gradually  that 
the  dramatic  dia- 
1  o  gu  e  grew  up. 
The  plays  of  Phry- 
nichus  had  been 
composed  almost 
entirely  of  lyrics  ; 
^schylus  intro- 
duced   the    second 


jects,      and      their 
literary    perfection 
almost  overawed 
the  dramatists  who, 
at    the    beginning, 
were  apt  to  choose 
the  lyrical  form   as 
the  most  complete 
and  hence  the  best 
suited    for    solemn 
actor,  who   should   enliven  the  pre- 
vious  dialogue    between    the    single 
actor  and   the   chorus,  but,  naturally 
enough,  it  was  long  before  the  inno- 
vation was  perfected.     The  blending 
of  the  old  and  new  methods  may  be 
seen  in  this  play,  for  the  lyrical  intro- 
duction is   followed  by  the  messen- 
ger's   narration    to    Atossa    of    the 
circumstances  of  the  Greek  victory. 
Yet  such  is  the  vigor  of  his  recital 
that  we  scarcely  notice  that  what  we 
have   before    us   is   not   dramatic  action,  but  rather   description  ;  we 
are    told  that    such    and    such    things    happened,    we   see    nothing 


FIGHT   BETWEEN  GREEKS   AND    PERSIANS. 
(From  the  frieze  of  the  Nereid  Monument.) 


248 


^SCH  YLUS. 


happening  ;  and  here  again  we  have  another  instance  of  the  crudity 
of  the  beginning  drama,  and  of  its  further  dependence  on  the  epic 
poetry  with  its  full  use  of  description.  The  last  thing  to  be  acquired 
was  dramatic  action,  as  it  was  the  most  difficult.  In  observing 
the  growth   of  Greek  sculpture    we    see    the  same   slow  attainment 


of  the  quality  of  action. 
The  early  statues  of 
human  figures  represent 
a  man  standing  solidly^ 
on  both  legs,  the  face 
wears  a  simpering  ex- 
pression, and  there  is 
no  faint  indication  of 
movement ;  the  figures 
are  as  firm  as  columns. 
Thus,  in  the  statue  of 
one  of  the  soldiers  of 
Marathon,  we  are  evi- 
dently far  from  the  full 
development  of  Grecian 
sculpture,  and  we  notice 
the  same  unpliant  bulk 
that  characterizes  to  a 
less  extent  the  contem- 
porary tragedy  ;  in  both 
arts  the  movement  was 
toward  the  capacity  to 
express  ease  and  fluid- 
ity in  the  place  of  rigid 
formality.  This  tragedy 
has  an  archaic  stiffness 
when  we  compare  it 
with  later  work  of  the 
same  sort,  but  even  this 
is  impressive,  and  these 
are  not  criticisms  that 
one  makes  on  reading 
the   play ;  the   account 


SOLDIER   OF    MARATHON. 

{From    the    I^Ionutnent    of 

A  ristion.) 


of  the  battle  of  Salamis 
is  full  of  dramatic  in- 
stinct, and  in  the  next 
song  of  the  chorus, 
when  the  just-preced- 
ing anticipations  of  evil 
are  verified,  there  is 
most  impressive  utter- 
ance given  to  the  deep- 
est woe.  When  to  us, 
remote  in  time  and 
taste  from  the  old 
Greeks,  these  songs, 
written  in  a  foreign  and 
difficult  language,  are 
yet  burthened  with  a 
solemn  majesty,  we  may 
in  part  judge  of  their 
impressiveness  as  they 
were  sung  with  accom- 
paniments of  music  and 
dance  before  the  men 
who  had  themselves 
taken  part  in  the  battle 
and  had  known  the 
power  of  "this  proud, 
usurping  king  of  Per- 
sia." The  conventional 
rhythmic  movement  of 
the  choric  dances  must 
have  supplied  an  ele- 
ment of  majesty  and 
dignity  that  music  lends 


to  the  modern  drama  ;  certainly,  a  dramatic  performance  in  which  all 
the  conventions  were  of  a  solemn  kind  was  only  made  more  impressive 
by  them. 

When  the  chorus  following  the  messenger's  narration   has  come  to 
an   end,   Atossa  brings   an    offering  to  her    husband's  grave,  and  the 


THE  PERSIANS— XERXES'   LAMENT.  249 

chorus  entreats  his  shadow  to  appear.  He  at  once  complies  with  their 
request,  and  explains  that  the  Persian  defeat  is  due  to  his  disregard  of 
his  father's  warnings,  and  to  his  presumption  in  endeavoring  to  over- 
rule the  sea  by  bridging  the  Hellespont — even  now,in  spite  of  civiliza- 
tion,similar  instinctive  dread  of  modifying  the  face  of  nature  is  not 
unknown — and  he  foretells  the  complete  destruction  of  the  Persian 
army.  With  warnings  against  wanton  overconfidence  he  sinks  down 
into  the  earth.  The  chorus  then  proceeds  to  utter  a  lament  over 
their  former  power  and  glory  under  Darius,  and  bemoaning  their  pres- 
ent condition  under  Xerxes,  when  that  king  enters,  a  fugitive,  in 
tattered  garments,  tortured  by  repentance  and  despair,  and  the  tragedy 
ends  with  a  wailing  song,  divided  between  the  heart-broken  king  and 
his  faithful  counsellors.  The  long  chronicle  of  the  early  possessions 
of  Persia,  when  Darius 

"  Ruled  the  isles 
That  lie  midway  between  the  continents, 

Lemnos,  Icaria's  land ; 
Rhodes  and  Cnidos  and  the  Kyprian  towns, 

Paphos  and  Salamis, 

And  with  them  Soli  famed, 
Whose  parent  city  now  our  groans  doth  cause," 

and  many  other  places — the  list  is  a  long  one,  and  full  of  names  that 
only  intensify  the  completeness  of  the  Persian  defeat — is  broken  by 
the  sudden  entrance  of  the  desperate  Xerxes  in  a  manner  that  brings 
out  most  vividly  the  contrast  between  the  past  and  present,  between 
the  former  glory  and  the  terrible  defeat  of  the  tyrant,  who  bursts  in 
upon  them  thus: 

"  Oh,  miserable  me  ! 
Who  this  dark  hateful  doom 
That  I  expected  least 
Have  met  with  as  my  lot. 
How  stern  and  fierce  of  mood 
Towards  the  Persian  race 
God  has  displayed  himself ! 
What  woe  will  come  on  me  ? 
Gone  is  my  strength  of  limb. 
These  aged  men  beholding. 
Ah,  would  to  Heaven,  O  Zeus, 
That  with  the  men  who  fell 
Death's  doom  had  covered  me  !  " 

The  chorus  take  up  the  same  wail  of  shattered  hope : 

"  Ah  woe,  O  king,  woe  !  woe  ! 
For  the  army  brave  in  fight. 
And  our  goodly  Persian  name. 
And  the  fair  array  of  men. 
Whom  God  hath  now  cut  off ! 
And  the  land  bewails  its  youth 


25°  yESCHYLUS. 

Who  for  our  Xerxes  fell, 

For  him,  whose  deeds  have  filled 

Hades  with  Persian  souls  ; 

For  many  heroes  now 

Are  Hades-travellers, 

Our  country's  chosen  flower. 

Mighty  with  darts  and  bow  ; 

For  lo  !  the  myriad  mass 

Of  men  has  perished  quite. 

Woe,  woe  for  our  fair  fame  ! 

And  Asia's  land,  O  king, 

Is  terribly,  most  terribly,  overthrown." 

And  the  lamentation  proceeds,  growing  steadily  more  piteous  and 
uncontrolled: 

Xer.  "  Yea,  beat  thy  breast  and  cry 

After  the  Mysian  type. 
Chor.    Oh,  misery  !  Oh,  misery  ! 

Xer.      Yea,  tear  the  white  hair  off  thy  flowing  beard. 
Chor.    Yea ;  with  clenched  hands,  with  clenched  hands,  I  say, 

In  very  piteous  guise. 
Xer.      Cry  out,  cry  out  aloud. 
Chor.    That  also  will  I  do." 

And  so  it  goes  on  in  a  crescendo  of  grief  until  they  finally  move  off 
together,  wailing  and  rending  their  garments. 

It  is  evident  that  the  play  does  not  contain  what  we  understand  by 
dramatic  action  ;  we  find  rather,  besides  narration  and  the  direct  emo- 
tional appeal  of  the  choruses,  a  series  of  what  we  may  call  tableaux, 
which  make  up  in  solemn  impressiveness  what  they  lack  in  movement. 
There  is  a  grandeur  in  the  vagueness  of  this  and  other  plays  of  the 
same  poet  that  verifies  the  comparison  that  is  often  made  between 
^schylus  and  Beethoven.  As  in  the  great  master  of  modern  music,we 
find  in  the  tragedian  the  reflection  of  an  important  period  manifesting 
itself  by  a  direct  appeal  to  the  emotions  through  a  sort  of  awful  dig- 
nity, which  is  made  only  more  impressive  in  both  by  the  traces  of 
early  conventionality  from  which  they  both  made  themselves  free. 
yEschylus  has  more  frequently  than  any  poet  the  note  of  sublimity, 
and  in  this  play  it  makes  itself  felt,  as  we  see  in  some  of  the  extracts 
just  given  from  the  lamentations  of  the  chorus,  in  the  complete  pros- 
tration of  the  Persian  power  as  a  direct  punishment  from  the  hands  of 
the  gods.  Their  complete  defeat  is  exalted  into  a  manifestation  of 
divine  Avrath,  and  the  Greeks  are  elevated  to  chosen  instruments  of  the 
anger  of  the  gods.  Certainly,  this  view  of  contemporary  history,  as 
an  unfolding  of  the  plans  of  the  immortals,  bears  witness  to  an  exalted 
nature  in  the  poet,  and  to  a  lofty  enthusiasm  among  his  audience,  and 
every  thing  in  the  play  strengthens  the  impression,  from  the  ominous 
misgivings  of  the  elders  to  their  final  despair.  Let  us  once  more 
remember  how  much  the  play  loses  in  reading,  grand  as  it  is,  from   its 


DRAMATIC  REPRESENTATION— GREEK  PRINCIPLES.  251 

value  as  a  spectacle  in  which  the  rhythmic  movements  of  the  trained 
chorus,  with  their  careful  gestures,  served  for  a  sort  of  dumb  music  to 
accompany  the  whole  tragedy,  as  they  were  swayed  by  every  emotion, 
and  deepened  the  gloom  by  their  continual  sympathy.  Their  value 
as  representatives  of  the  nation  is  distinctly  prominent,  and  they 
were  treated,  as  the  chorus  at  this  time  always  was  treated,  as  an  im- 
portant adjunct  to  the  mere  mechanical  setting  of  the  play.  A  multi- 
tude on  a  stage  is  always  an  invaluable  ally  to  the  dramatist,  and  these 
being  trained  to  reflect  the  deeper  significance  of  the  play  by  move- 
ment and  gesture,  they  combined  to  form  an  accumulation  of  dramatic 


THE  LANDING  ARGONAUTS. 
{From  the  Ficosonian  Cist,  Museo  Kircheriano^  Rome.) 

effect  that  must  have  been  most  inspiring.  This  distribution  of  the 
dramatic  effect  enables  us  to  understand  better  the  toleration  of  the 
masks  on  the  faces  of  the  actors  ;  we  concentrate  the  attention  on  one 
or  two  figures.  With  the  Greeks,  every  thing  was  subordinate  to  a  grand 
general  effect. 

The  Persians  was  the  second  piece  of  a  trilogy,  of  which  the  others 
are  lost.  It  was  in  trilogies  that  the  tragedies  of  yEschylus  were  al- 
ways presented,  and  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  there  was  some  thread 
of  ificident  or  likeness  on  which  the  separate  members  were  hung. 
Just  what  it  was  in  this  case  escapes  definite  knowledge,  but   possibly 


252  ^SCHYLUS. 

those  are  right  who  boldly  conjecture  that  in  the  Phineus,  which  was 
the  name  of  the  first  piece  of  the  trilogy,  there  may  have  been  some 
indication  of  the  early  conflict  between  Europe  and  Asia.  Phineus, 
according  to  the  old  mythology,  entertained  the  Argonauts  on  their 
way  to  Colchis,  and  foretold  to  them  their  future  adventures,  and  in 
his  prophecies,  it  is  thought  by  some,  he  may  have  mentioned  the 
future  wars.  In  the  supposed  third  piece  of  the  trilogy,  Glaucus,  of 
which  a  few  fragments  survive,  the  same  bold  constructors  of  an  ab- 
sent literature  imagine  that  in  speaking  of  Himera  ^schylus  may 
have  mentioned  the  defeat  of  the  Carthaginians  at  the  hands  of  the 
Sicilian  Greeks,  as  another  repulse  of  the  barbarians.  It  is  unneces- 
sary to  point  out  that,  if  evidence  out  of  the  pure  ether  is  wanted,  it 
may  be  constructed  without  difficulty  by  the  ingenious.  The  final 
satyrical  play  of  the  tetralogy  was  a  Prometheus. 

While  the  Persians  was  thus  a  play  that  concerned  itself  with  con- 
temporary history,  it  is  yet  to  be  noticed  that  in  it  the  local  color  is 
not  made  over-prominent ;  the  Persian  names  that  abound  brought 
possibly  no  vivid  sense  of  reality  to  the  Greeks,  and  the  general  eleva- 
tion of  the  subject  by  the  enforcement  of  its  ethical  significance,  as  an 
illustration  of  the  divine  power  over  the  greatest  human  efforts,  gave 
the  play  a  universal  importance.  The  absence  of  all  exultation  over 
the  victory  but  added  to  the  impressiveness  of  the  lesson,  and, in  spite 
of  the  immediateness  of  the  event,  gave  the  tragedy  a  place  alongside 
of  those  that  dealt  with  the  traditions  of  the  dateless  past,  which  was 
the  more  frequent  inspiration  of  the  Greek  poets. 

IV. 

The  Seven  against  Thebes,  which  was  brought  out  in  476  B.C.,  car- 
ries us  back  to  the  remote  regions  of  legend,  but  to  a  legend  that  was 
as  familiar  to  the  Greeks  as  is  any  story  of  the  Old  Testament  to  us  ; 
indeed,  part  of  our  own  intellectual  inheritance  from  the  Greeks  is  the 
knowledge  of  these  very  myths,  which  to  them  were  packed  with  deep 
ethical  instruction.  It  was  part  of  the  story  of  CEdipus  that  this  play 
narrates,  and  the  whole  legend  was  one  which  the  Greek  dramatists 
were  continually  representing.  This  fragment  of  it  is  somewhat  late 
in  the  course  of  the  story ;  in  discussing  Sophocles  we  shall  come  to 
some  of  the  earlier  incidents.  After  CEdipus  had  discovered  that  he 
had  murdered  his  own  father  and  married  his  mother,  he  blinded  him- 
self ;  his  two  sons,  Eteocles  and  Polyneices,  at  first  kept  him  in  con- 
finement, but  this  imprisonment  made  him  angry,  so  that  he  prayed 
that  they  might  divide  with  their  swords  the  kingdom  they  inherited. 
To  prevent  the  fulfillment  of  this  wish  they  agreed  to  rule  in  alternate 


SUBJECT  OF  ''THE   SEVEN  AGAINST   THEBES."  253 

years,  and  the  elder,  Eteocles,  was  the  first  to  rule.  At  the  end  of  the 
year  Polyneices  came  to  take  his  turn,  but  Eteocles  refused  to  listen 
to  him  and  retained  the  government.  Polyneices  departed  to  Argos, 
where  he  married  the  daughter  of  Adrastos,  the  king  of  that  country, 
and  collected  a  large  army  under  six  great  chieftains  and  led  it  against 
Thebes,  where  the  seven  generals  posted  themselves  before  the  seven 
gates  of  the  city.  It  was  at  this  point  that  the  play  opens.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  notice,  by  the  way,  that  it  secured  the  prize  for  ^schylus 
over  Aristias  and  Polyphradmon,  sons  of  the  early  tragedians  Pratinas 
and  Phrynichus  respectively. 

The  play  opens  with  a  long  address  made  by  Eteocles  to  the  citizens 
of  Thebes,  in  which  he  encourages  them  to  repel  the  threatened 
assault  upon  their  city.  A  messenger  then  comes  in  to  report  that  the 
enemy  are  making  great  preparations  for  the  assault,  and  that  the  gen- 
erals are  about  to  draw  lots  to  determine  at  which  gate  each  shall  make 
the  attack.  Eteocles  prays  to  the  gods  for  their  aid  in  defending  the 
city,  and  then  goes  forth.  Thereupon  a  chorus  of  Theban  maidens 
enters,  who  are  filled  with  terror  at  the  perils  surrounding  them,  and 
pray  to  the  gods  and  goddesses  for  aid  : 

"  For  now  around  the  town 
The  wave  of  warriors  bearing  sloped  crests. 
With  blasts  of  Ares  rushing,  hoarsely  sounds  : 
But  thou,  O  Zeus  !  true  father  of  us  all, 
Ward  off,  ward  off  our  capture  by  the  foe." 

Later  they  describe  the  din  of  the  assault : 

"  Ah  !  Ah  !  I  hear  a  din  of  chariot  wheels 

Around  the  city  walls  ; 

O  Hera  great  and  dread  ! 
The  heavy  axles  of  the  chariots  groan, 

O  Artemis  beloved  ! 
And  the  air  maddens  with  the  clash  of  spears ; 

What  must  our  city  bear  ? 

What  now  shall  come  on  us  ? 

What  end  brings  God  to  pass  ? 
Ah  !  Ah  !  A  storm  of  stones  is  falling  fast 

On  battlements  attacked ; 

O  Lord,  Apollo  loved, 
A  din  of  bronze-bound  shields  is  in  the  gates  : 

And  oh  !  that  Zeus  may  give 
A  pure,  decisive  issue  of  the  strife  !  " 

Their  wailings  are  interrupted,  however,  by  the  return   of   Eteocles, 
who  with  considerable  asperity  remonstrates  with  them  for  encourag- 
^  ing  panic  terrors  : 

"  I  ask  you,  O  ye  brood  intolerable. 
Is  this  course  best  and  safest  for  our  city  ? 
Will  it  give  heart  to  our  beleaguered  host, 
That  you  before  the  forms  of  guardian  gods 
Should  wail  and  howl,  ye  loathed  of  the  wise  }  " 


254  yESCHYLUS. 

The  chorus  seek  to  defend  themselves,  but  Eteocles  persists  in  his 
overbearing  denunciations  until  he  departs  to  station  his  men  at  the 
gateways  against  the  impending  onslaught.  His  whole  tone  is  signifi- 
cant of  the  contempt  of  the  Greeks  for  their  womankind.  Yet  his 
words  had  the  effect  of  calming  those  to  whom  they  were  addressed, 
for  after  his  departure  the  chorus  describe  with  much  more  self-control 
the  horrors  attendant  on  the  sacking  of  a  city,  more  as  if  resigned 
to  a  cruel  fate  than  as  if  hoping  divine  aid.  Indirectly  the  chorus 
serves  the  purpose  of  pointing  out  the  wickedness  of  Polyneices  in 
thus  bringing  an  army  against  Thebes,  and  the  sympathies  of  the  audi- 
ence are  aroused  in  favor  of  Eteocles,  who  soon  returns,  accompanied 
by  the  messenger.  The  messenger  informs  him  that  the  seven  leaders 
have  drawn  their  lots,  and  describes  the  aspect  as  well  as  the  shield  of 
each  one.  Eteocles  in  turn  says  which  one  of  his  own  captains  he  has 
appointed  to  face  the  attacking  leader.  Three  hundred  and  fifty  lines 
are  devoted  to  these  alternate  descriptions  of  the  contending  heroes, 
with  brief  songs  from  the  chorus  at  the  end  of  each  one.  The  last 
mentioned  is  Polyneices,  with  whom  Eteocles  declares  that  he  shall  him- 
self contend,  in  spite  of  the  entreaties  of  the  chorus,  who  fear  the  worst. 

Here  again  it  is  obvious  that  it  is  not  action  which  fills  this  play, 
but  this  statement,  so  far  as  it  may  be  meant  for  an  objection,  falls  to 
the  ground  before  the  fact  that  -^schylus  hides  the  lack  of  movement 
beneath  what  is  really  the  tragic  core  of  the  play,  the  feelings,  namely, 
that  animate  the  city :  terror  in  the  chorus  and  lofty  bravery  in  Eteo- 
cles, which' are  subjects  far  better  fitted  for  the  elevating  grandeur  of 
^schylus  than  would  be  any  description  of  a  bloody  fight.  The  Greek 
tragedies  abound  with  instances  of  the  marked  effect  of  the  lyric  verse 
upon  the  later  development  of  poetry,  and  in  nothing  is  it  more  marked 
than  in  the  tendency  to  portray  the  effect  of  the  incidents  rather  than 
the  incidents  themselves.  Nothing  is  more  true  than  that  in  literature, 
as  throughout  nature,  changes  are  but  gradual,  that  even  those  that 
seem  most  sudden  are  prepared  by  causes  that  were  only  hidden,  and 
that  growth  and  decay  are  the  inevitable  rule.  No  man,  however 
great,  stands  elsewhere  than  on  the  works  of  his  predecessors,  and  he 
is  limited  to  a  greater  or  less  range  beyond  what  they  have  done.  In 
the  descriptions  of  the  various  warriors  we  see  traces  of  the  Homeric 
influence,  but  this  is  given  a  later  turn  by  the  dialogue  and  the  inter- 
vention of  the  chorus. 

After  Eteocles  goes  forth  to  face  the  fate  which  his  father's  curse 
has  evoked,  the  chorus  expresses  its  fears,  and  soon  the  messenger  re- 
turns to  tell  them  that  it  has  been  fulfilled  ;  the  attack  has  been  re- 
pelled, but  the  brothers  have  fallen  by  each  other's  hand.  Their  bodies 
are  brought  in,  and  the  play  ends  with  a  brief  lament. 


CONDITIONS  AFFECTING    THE  DRAMA. 


255 


Yet  a  tragedy  depends  on  the  present  as  well  as  on  the  past ;  the 
ground  must  be  receptive,  and  the  air  propitious,  or  the  seed  withers 
without  growth;  and  in  this  play  we  find  the  poet  reflecting  the 
patriotism  of  Athens,  and  the  emotions  called  forth  by  the  perils  it 
had  escaped  from  the  Persians.  Besides  these  general  points  of  re- 
semblance, there  were  certain  minor  details  which  were  not  lost  upon 
the  audience.  Thus,  at  the  passage  in  which  the  messenger  says, 
"  He  wishes  to  be  just  and  not  to  seem,"  the  tradition  runs  that  the 
whole  audience  turned  to  look  at  Aristides  the  Just,  in  recognition 
of  its  applicability  to  him.     Then,  too,  the  fraternal  contest  portrayed 


DEATH    OF    ETEOCLES   AND    POLVNEICES. 
(Front  an  Etruscan  Urn  in  Florence  Museum.') 

in  the  play  could  not  fail  to  serve  as  a  reminder  of  the  treacherous 
conduct  of  Pausanias  and  Themistocles  in  the  Persian  wars. 

The  Seven  against  Thebes  was  the  third  play  of  a  trilogy  which  re- 
counted the  mythical  story  of  the  Theban  king,  but  we  find  in  it  no 
summing  up  of  the  whole  significance  of  the  legend,  but,  in  its  place, 
a  melancholy  wail  over  the  dreary  end,  and  we  receive  a  definite  im- 
pression that  the  drama  was  yet  in  a  comparatively  inchoate  state,  and 
was  not  yet  ripe  for  the  full  development  of  all  its  capabilities ;  we  see 
this  exemplified  in  the  plays  themselves,  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  what  was  true  of  the  separate  pieces  was  not  true  of  their 
combination  in  a  trilogy.  All  literature  teaches  us  how  slow  of  attain- 
ment is  the  fullest  artistic  treatment  of  any  subject.  What  seems 
archaic    in    the   construction  and  termination    of  the  Seven  against 


256  MSCHYLUS. 

Thebes  may  be  explained  by  reference  to  the  newness  of  the  drama, 
and  to  the  extent  in  which  the  lyrical  presentation  overweighed  the 
capacity  for  action.  All  the  qualities  are  to  be  found  in  what  ^schy- 
lus  wrote,  but  a  riper  art  was  required  to  set  them  forth  in  their  high- 
est value.  The  great  prominence  given  to  the  chorus,  to  the  description 
placed  in  the  mouth  of  the  messenger,  indicate  that  we  are  back  in 
the  beginning  of  dramatic  history.  Obviously  the  drama  did  not 
appear  at  once  full  grown,  but  advanced  step  by  step  to  perfection, 
and  in  .^schylus  we  see  the  ripeness  of  the  language,  and  of  the  ex- 
pression of  the  emotions  combined  with  simplicity  of  action. 

His  most  vigorous  utterances  lose  much  by  translation,  just  as  every 
fine  phrase  is  weakened  by  misquotation.  Every  generation  attaches 
to  certain  words  a  quality  that  is  often  lost  with  time.  In  Keats's 
"  Ode  to  a  Nightingale  "  the  word  forlorn  had  at  the  time  the  poem 
was  written  an  aroma  of  unfamiliarity  and  novelty  of  which  it  has 
since  been  robbed  by  daily  domestic  use,  and  this  single  example  of 
swift  modification  may  indicate  what  two  thousand  years  have  done  in 
blurring  the  impression  that  ^schylus  made  on  his  contemporaries. 
To  the  perfected  art  of  the  lyric  poets  he  added  an  intenser  meaning; 
what  threatened  to  become  a  mere  literary  form  was  made  by  him  an 
instrument  for  the  study  of  the  most  baffling  problems  that  at  rare 
intervals  in  literary  history,  as  in  men's  lives,  are  fairly  faced.  The 
origin  of  the  drama  in  religious  ritual  gave  it  a  background  of  univer- 
sal ethical  significance — for  the  classical  dictionary,  with  its  list  of 
indictable  offences  on  the  part  of  gods  and  goddesses,  is  as  silent  on 
their  higher  importance  as  is  a  modern  biography  on  the  loftier  merits 
of  the  man  or  woman  whose  petty  weaknesses  are  recounted  at  great 
length,  ^schylus  and  his  followers  set  before  the  Athenian  public 
the  eternal  conflict  between  the  divine  rule  of  the  universe  and  the 
impotent  longings  of  humanity  in  such  a  way  that  the  grandeur  of 
the  conflict  is  eternally  true.  His  turbid  eloquence,  confused  by  the 
overwhelming  brightness  of  the  vision  that  dazzled  him,  is  another  in- 
stance of  the  absence  of  the  last  touch  that  only  refining  art  can  give. 

V. 

We  find  in  the  Suppliants  another  instance  of  the  remoteness  of  the 
early  drama  from  its  later  development.  The  date  at  which  the  play 
was  written  is  uncertain,  but  its  construction  seems  to  show  that  it 
was  one  of  the  first  pieces  of  ^schylus.  As  we  shall  see,  the  play  is 
full  of  lyrical  utterances ;  the  chorus  holds  the  position  of  one  of  the 
actors,  and  the  dramatic  movement  is  at  a  minimum.  The  Suppliants 
are  the  well-known  Danaids,  or  daughters  of  Danaus,  who  have  fled 


THE  SUPPLIANTS— PREDOMINANCE  OF  THE  LYRICAL  ELEMENT.    257 

from  the  shores  of  the  Nile  to  escape  wedlock  with  their  cousins,  the 
sons  of  ^gyptus.  They  have  sought  an  asylum  in  Greece,  at  the 
city  of  Argos,  whence  their  ancestress  lo  had  departed  long  before. 
The  opening  scene  of  the  tragedy  shows  them  having  just  disem- 
barked near  sacred  ground,  offering  most  earnest  prayers  to  the 
gods.  To  them  comes  Pelasgus,  the  Pelasgic  king,  whose  aid  the 
Danaids  at  once  demand  by  reason  of  the  descent  from  the  Argive  lo. 
The  king  hesitates  between  the  conflicting  claims  of  hospitality  and 
of  his  duty  to  shun  the  war  that  his  assent  would  probably  excite.  In 
his  indecision  he  determines  to  appeal  to  the  assembly  of  his  people, 
and  at  his  request  Danaus,  who  holds  as  subordinate  a  position  in  the 


ARGOS  WATCHING  lO,    IS  BEGUILED  BV   HERMES. 
{^Wall painting,  Herculaneum.) 

presence  of  his  daughters  as  does  the  money-making  father  in  a  novel 
of  American  life,  carries  to  the  city  branches  as  signs  of  supplication. 
The  king  bids  the  Danaids  to  remain  where  they  are,  trusting  to  the 
protection  of  the  gods  until  he  shall  return,  and  then  goes  away. 
After  a  choral  passage  Danaus  returns  and  announces  that  all  has  gone 
well ;  whereupon  the  Danaids  sing  a  long  song  of  thanksgiving. 
Danaus,  however,  during  their  transports,  has  seen  a  vessel  approach- 
ing from  which  a  number  of  Egyptians  land.  He  bids  them  to  remain 
while  he  seeks  the  promised  aid  of  the  Argives,  and  after  considerable 
delay  starts  off.  In  spite  of  his  halting  departure,  he  brings  back 
Pelasgus  in  time  to  save  his  daughters,  when  the  froward  Egyptians 


258  ^SCHYLUS. 

are  hurrying  them  off  to  the  shore.  A  long  dispute  arises  between 
Pelasgus  and  the  Egyptian  herald,  which  terminates  in  a  declaration 
of  war,  and  the  whole  play  ends  with  the  songs  of  the  chorus,  in  which 
they  express  their  gratitude  for  the  hospitality  that  is  offered  to  them 
and  their  fears  about  the  strife  that  is  threatened.  In  defense  of  this 
lack  of  action,  it  is  to  be  said  that  this  play  is  but  part,  and  probably 
the  first  part,  of  a  tetralogy,  and  may  thus  be  regarded  as  scarcely 
more  than  a  first  act  in  which  the  main  lines  of  the  rest  are  simply  in- 
dicated. Yet,  even  with  this  explanation,  it  is  singularly  uneventful. 
It  has,  however,  merits  that  give  it  another  value  than  that  of  a  mere 
fragment  of  a  lost  series  of  plays.  The  lyric  portions  show  by  their 
ease  and  flow  how  rich  was  that  source  of  the  drama,  for  they  quite 
outweigh  the  dramatic  dialogue.  The  importance  given  to  the  chorus 
makes  it  clear  that  what  we  have  learned  to  connect  with  the  stage  was 
yet  but  dimly  known,  and  that  it  had  a  formidable  rival  in  the  lyric 
song.     Here  is  a  passage  : 

"  May  God  good  issue  give  ! 
And  yet  the  will  of  Zeus  is  hard  to  scan  : 

Through  all  it  brightly  gleams, 
E'en  though  in  darkness  and  the  gloom  of  chance  ; 

For  us  poor  mortals  wrapt. 

"  Safe,  by  no  fall  tripped  up, 
The  full-wrought  deed  decreed  by  brow  of  Zeus ; 

For  dark  and  shadowed  o'er 
The  pathways  of  the  counsels  of  his  heart. 

And  difficult  to  see. 

"  And  from  high-towering  hopes  He  hurleth  down 
To  utter  doom  the  heir  of  mortal  birth  ; 

Yet  sets  He  in  array 

No  forces  violent ; 
All  that  God  works  is  effortless  and  calm  : 

Seated  on  loftiest  throne. 

Thence,  though  we  know  not  how, 

He  works  His  perfect  will. 

"  Ah,  let  him  look  on  frail  man's  wanton  pride, 
With  which  the  old  stock  burgeons  out  anew. 

By  love  for  me  constrained. 

In  counsels  ill  and  rash. 
And  in  its  frenzied,  passionate  resolve 

Finds  goad  it  cannot  shun  : 

But  in  deceived  hopes, 

Shall  know,  too  late,  its  woe. 

"  Such  bitter  griefs,  lamenting,  I  recount, 
With  cries  shrill,  tearful,  deep, 
(Ah  woe  !     Ah  woe  ! ) 
That  strike  the  ear  with  mourner's  woe-fraught  cry. 


PRIMITIVE  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

Though  yet  alive,  I  wail  mine  obsequies  ; 
Thee,  Apian  sea-girt  bluff, 
I  greet  (our  alien  speech 
Thou  knowest  well,  O  land). 
And  ofttimes  fall,  with  rendings  passionate. 
On  robe  of  linen  and  Sidonian  veil. 


259 


But  to  the  gods,  for  all  things  prospering  well 

When  death  is  kept  aloof. 

Gifts  votive  come  of  right. 

Ah  woe  !     Ah  woe  ! 
Oh,  troubles  dark,  and  hard  to  understand ! 
Ah,  whither  will  these  waters  carry  me  } 

Thee,  Apian  sea-girt  bluff, 

I  greet  (our  alien  speech 

Thou  knowest  well,  O  land). 
And  ofttimes  fall,  with  rendings  passionate. 
On  robe  of  linen  and  Sidonian  veil." 


THE    DANAIDES. 
{From  a  bas-relief  in  the  Vatican^ 


In  such  passages  as  these  ^schylus  shows  his  readiest  movement 
and  his  greatest  facility.  The  perfection  to  which  his  predecessors  had 
brought  the  lyric  verse  stood  him  in  good  stead  when  he  thus  enlarged 
its  field,  and  secured  for  himself  this  important  ally  in  dramatic  com- 
position. The  other  constituents  of  the  plays  had  to  be  gradually 
brought  to  maturity,  this  alone  was  found  in  a  complete  form,  and  thus 
threatened  for  a  long  time  to  outweigh  all  the  rest  of  the  play.  Its 
sumptuousness  made  it  a  formidable  rival,  and  the  authority  that  it 
retained  from  its  long  success  enabled  it  for  a  time  to  overbalance  the 
cruder  charm  of  the  new  and  comparatively  clumsy  dialogue.  Yet  it 
was  the  dialogue  that  developed,  while  the  lyric  chorus  continually 
faded  away,  just  as  the  abstract  qualities  of  the  characters  in  this  play 
were  succeeded  by  preciser  individualities.  Indeed,  it  is  by  no  means 
impossible  that  in  the  Suppliants  we  have  the  earliest  of  the  Greek 
tragedies  ;  at  any  rate  the  internal  evidence  inclines  in  this  direction  ; 
all  the  archaic  qualities  of  which  mention  has  been  made   lead  the 


26o  JESCHYLUS. 

reader  to  suppose  that  he  has  here  a  very  early,  and  probably  the  ear- 
liest, specimen  of  the  Greek  drama.  The  impression  is  also  confirmed 
by  the  thoughts  uttered  in  the  play,  as  well  as  by  the  form  in  which 
they  are  set  ;  there  is  a  suggestion  of  youthful  simplicity  which  pre- 
sents a  noticeable  contrast  to  the  magnificent  strength  and  abundant 
wealth  of  the  greater  plays — the  Prometheus  and  the  Agamemnon,  for 
example  ;  and  the  lack  of  individuality  in  the  personages  only  makes 
the  impression  one  hard  to  be  shaken.  The  King  of  Argos  is  an  ab- 
stract being,  a  mythological  figment,  and  all  the  remoteness  of  personal 
interest  that  we  are  accustomed  to  associate  with  the  dialogue  of  a 
Greek  play  is  to  be  found  in  its  full  splendor  here,  as  this  extract  will 
show  : 

The  King  of  Argos. 
"  But  say,  what  cravest  thou,  with  olive-shoots 
New-plucked,  white-filleted,  upon  our  shrines  ? 

Chorus. 
Ne'er  to  be  slaves  unto  ^gyptus'  race. 

King. 
Doth  your  own  hate,  or  doth  the  law  forbid  ? 

Chorus. 
Not  as  our  lords,  but  as  unloved,  we  chide  them. 

King. 
'Tis  from  such  wedlock  that  advancement  comes. 

Chorus. 
Deny  us,  though  ^gyptus'  race  demand. 

King. 
A  heavy  task  thou  namest,  a  rash  war. 

Chorus. 
But  Justice  champions  them  who  strike  for  her. 

King. 
Yea,  if  their  side  was  from  the  outset  hers. 

Chorus. 
Revere  the  gods  thus  crowned,  who  steer  the  State. 

King. 
Awe  thrills  me,  seeing  these  shrines  with  leafage  crowned." 

At  this  point  the  dialogue  is  varied  by  the  lyric  song  of  the  chorus 
answering  the  speech  of  the  king,  and  throughout  the  simple  dialogue 
bears  all  the  marks  of  something  not  far  above  the  condition  of  exper- 
iment. And  the  dramatic  action  is  far  more  like  the  swaying  of  vast 
bodies  than  to  any  personal  movement.  The  whole  impression,  how- 
ever, that  is  left  on  the  mind  of  one  who  remembers  the  conditions,  is 
of  a  deep  and  memorable  sort.  It  is  the  awkwardness  of  a  massive 
body  that  we  are  called  upon  to  observe,  not  the  clumsiness  of  an 
ill-managed. 

Yet  even  in  this  play,  which  has  received  less  praise  than  any  written 
by  vEschylus,  some  of  the  dialogue  is  vivid  and  impressive,  as  in  the 
scene  between  Pelasgus  and  the  Egyptian  herald.  This  whole  con- 
versation reflects  the  admiration  that  ^schylus,  with  his  contempo- 


THE  LEGEND  OF  PROMETHEUS.  261 

raries,  felt  for  a  democratic  government,  and  the  contempt  of  the 
Greeks  for  the  Egyptians,  qualities  that  must  have  stood  out  in  bold 
relief  against  the  remoter,  more  abstract  beauty  of  the  songs  of  the 
chorus.  The  packed,  incisive  curtness  of  the  dialogue  was  at  first 
used  almost  tentatively,  but  it  grew  in  time  to  be  the  more  impor- 
tant part  of  the  play  with  its  greater  vividness  and  intelligibility. 
Doubtless  its  compactness,  every  line  being  filled  with  meaning,  gave 
to  the  spectators  of  the  play  a  continual  and  delightful  exercise  in 
developing  the  many  connotations.  The  dialogue  was  a  continual 
intellectual  exercise  for  the  audience,  and  in  its  gradual  development 
we  may  see  how  slow  is  the  growth  of  simplicity.  Direct  speech  is 
the  last  thing  learned,  and  while  the  tragedy  from  the  beginning 
abounded  in  remote  allusions  and  rich  poetry,  the  expression  of  the 
direct  conflict  of  two  minds  in  dialogue  was  attained  only  with 
difficulty. 

VI. 

While  we  have  so  far  seen  Aeschylus  struggling  with  the  difficulties 
that  clogged  the  path  of  the  drama  in  its  beginning,  we  may  see  in  his 
Prometheus  Bound  his  grand  spirit  treating  with  comparative  ease  a 
stupendous  subject.  That  the  play  is  probably  one  of  late  compo- 
sition is  rendered  probable  by  the  facility  of  the  style  in  which  it  is 
written,  and  by  the  subordination  of  the  lyric  to  the  spoken  passages. 
The  choruses  are  comparatively  brief,  and,  more  than  this,  they  have 
a  quality  of  grace  that  distinguishes  more  especially  the  later  form  of 
tragedy  as  it  was  developed  in  the  hands  of  Sophocles.  The  subject 
of  the  play  is  the  punishment  of  Prometheus  for  giving  to  men  knowl- 
edge of  the  use  of  fire.  We  are  at  once  in  a  region  that  is  remote  from 
our  ready  comprehension,  and  concerned  with  a  subject  that  has  called 
forth  numberless  most  conflicting  explanations.  Many  generations  of 
men  have  been  puzzled  to  know  why  Zeus  should  have  punished  Pro- 
metheus for  teaching  .human  beings  the  rudiments  of  the  arts  and  the 
sciences.  Still,  the  notion  that  the  introduction  of  civilization  was 
synonymous  with  the  introduction  of  vice  and  misery  is  one  that  has 
at  times  seemed  to  be  confirmed  by  observation,  as  truly  as  it  has  been 
commonly  received  without  much  thought  in  our  own  day.  The 
Golden  Age  has  for  many  centuries  existed  in  the  distant  past ;  not 
only  Hesiod,  but  Virgil  and  Horace,  expressed  this  view,  and  the 
beginning  of  its  decay  is  very  recent.  Only  the  study  of  savage  races 
has  piade  it  plain  that  barbarism,  instead  of  being,  as  poets  sang,  a 
period  of  happy,  guileless  innocence,  is  really  one  of  terror  and  anxiety. 
Yet  the  belief  in  the  greater  virtue  of  the  past  dies  hard,  as  is  shown 


262  ^SCHYLUS. 

by  Mr.  Ruskin's  recent  wail  over  the  evil  effects  of  coal  smoke  upon 
the  English  people  and  the  clouds.  For  ^schylus,  however,  the  myth 
already  existed,  and  the  first  thing  demanded  of  him  was  that  he  should 
not  wantonly  alter  it,  and  the  fact  that  as  it  stood  the  legend  required 
of  Prometheus  to  suffer  for  his  benefactions  to  humanity  furnished  at 
once  a  tragic  subject  that  appealed  to  every  emotion  of  piety  and 
human  dignity,  as  will  be  presently  seen. 

The  origin  of  the  myth  was  long  obscure,  and  called  forth  numerous 
more  or  less  ingenious  explanations.  Some  maintained  that  Prome- 
theus himself  was  nothing  but  an  amplification  of  a  forgotten,  unim- 
portant person,  an  Egyptian  ruler  who  built  dykes  against  the  inunda- 
tions of  the  Nile,  an  explanation  that  must  have  been  most  gratifying  to 
those  unreasonable  persons  who  were  averse  to  reading  too  much 
religious  feeling  into  the  myths.  In  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  interest  of  the  age  in  love-stories  inspired  one  writer  to 
detect  in  the  Titan  a  jilted  lover,  the  anguish  of  whose  bleeding  heart 
suggested  the  liver  torn  by  an  eagle.  Religious  explanations  have  been 
very  frequently  made,  and  it  has  been  supposed  that  the  self-sacrifice 
of  Prometheus  was  in  fact  an  unconscious  prophecy  of  the  Christian 
dogma  of  the  redemption  of  the  world.  Certainly  the  coincidences  are 
most  striking  and  interesting,  much  more  so  than  the  veiled  scientific 
instruction  which  other  critics  have  tried  to  unfold  from  the  pages  of 
the  tragedy.  Those,  however,  who  have  conjectured  that  the  play  was 
really  a  lesson  in  astronomy,  for  example,  have  had  but  a  small  follow- 
ing. The  explanation  of  the  strife  between  Zeus  and  Prometheus  as 
a  vague  recollection  of  the  contest  between  the  later  Aryan  invaders 
of  Greece  and  those  who  were  already  in  possession  of  the  soil  still 
demands  other  recommendations  than  its  ingenuity. 

Yet  while  the  myth  when  examined  directly  was  obscure  and  baf- 
fling, its  secret  history  became  known  in  the  light  of  comparative 
mythology,  and  in  the  earliest  Sanskrit  literature  was  found  the  miss- 
ing link  to  its  explanation.  Prometheus  is  but  the  Greek  name  of  the 
Sanskrit  pramantha,  a  fire-drill  (later  pramathyus),  the  name  given  to 
the  pointed  stick  by  rotating  which  against  a  circular  disk  of  wood  fire 
would  be  produced.  The  name  of  this  useful  instrument  which  first 
gave  fire  to  men  was  personified  into  that  of  the  Titan  who  stole  it 
from  the  gods,  and  in  this  tragedy  we  find  narrated  one  of  the  very 
earliest  steps  of  humanity  toward  civilization,  a  step  that  had  been 
taken  in  remote  antiquity,  but  had  left  its  mark  in  the  picturesque 
mythology  of  India  and  Greece. 

Thus  the  Greeks  were  free  to  draw  their  subjects  from  these  abun- 
dant legends,  as  well  as  from  solemn  events  of  recent  history,  although 
the  legendary  age  was  that  from  which  they  made  by  far  the  most  fre- 


THE  LEGEND  OF  PROMETHEUS.  263 

quent  selections.  No  one  of  them,  however,  came  near  yEschylus  in 
the  free  handling  of  what  may  be  called  divine  myths  ;  their  splendor, 
their  vastness  and  loftiness,  appealed  directly  to  what  was  colossal  in 
his  imagination. 

At  the  opening  of  the  play  Prometheus  is  brought  in  chains  by  two 
giants.  Strength  and  Force,  to  a  mountain  in  the  Caucasus,  or,  more 
exactly,  in  European  Scythia,  which  stood  for  the  remotest  end  of 
the  earth.  Hephaestus  accompanies  them  to  chain  Prometheus  to  the 
rock,  according  to  the  commands  of  Zeus.  As  they  enter  the  stage, 
Strength  says : 

"  Lo  !  to  a  plain,  earth's  boundary  remote. 
We  now  are  come, —  the  tract  as  Skythian  known, 
A  desert  inaccessible  :  and  now, 
Hephaestos,  it  is  thine  to  do  the  bests 
The  Father  gave  thee,  to  these  lofty  crags 
To  bind  this  crafty  trickster  fast  in  chains 
Of  adamantine  bonds  that  none  can  break." 

Hephaestus  does  their  bidding,  but  reluctantly : 

"  Against  my  will, 
I  fetter  thee  against  thy  will  with  bonds 
Of  bronze  that  none  can  loose,  to  this  lone  height 
Where  thou  shalt  know  nor  voice  nor  face  of  man. 
But, scorching  in  the  hot  blaze  of  the  sun, 
Shalt  lose  thy  skin's  fair  beauty.     Thou  shalt  long 
For  starry-mantled  night  to  hide  day's  sheen, 
For  sun  to  melt  the  rime  of  early  dawn  ; 
And  evermore  the  weight  of  present  ill 
Shall  wear  thee  down.     Unborn  as  yet  is  he 
Who  shall  release  thee  :  this  the  fate  thou  gain'st 
As  due  reward  for  thy  philanthropy. 
For  thou,  a  god  not  fearing  wrath  of  gods. 
In  thy  transgression  gav'st  their  power  to  men  ; 
And  therefore  on  this  rock  of  little  ease 
Thou  still  shalt  keep  thy  watch,  nor  lying  down, 
Nor  knowing  sleep,  nor  ever  bending  knee  ; 
And  many  groans  and  wailings  profitless 
Thy  lips  shall  utter  ;  for  the  mind  of  Zeus 
Remains  inexorable.     Who  holds  a  power 
But  newly  gained  is  ever  stern  of  mood." 

Then,  urged  by  Strength,  Hephaestus  proceeds  to  his  stern  task, 
under  compulsion  and  reluctantly.     Thus  Strength  says : 

'*  Now  drive  the  stern  jaw  of  the  adamant  wedge 
Right  through  his  chest  with  all  the  strength  thou  hast. 

Heph^STOS.  Ah  me  !  Prometheus,  for  thy  woes  I  groan. 

Strength.      Again,  thou'rt  loth,  and  for  the  foes  of  Zeus 

Thou  groanest :  take  good  heed  to  it  lest  thou 
Ere  long  with  cause  thyself  commiserate." 

All  the  work  of  riveting  and  chaining  Prometheus  to  the  rock  was 


264  MSCHYLUS. 

evidently  performed  on  the  stage  with  relentless  thoroughness,  yet 
the  Titan  utters  no  groan.  The  misery  that  he  suffered  is  only  ex- 
pressed by  the  impotent  pity  of  Hephaestus.  When  the  executioners 
have  gone  away,  and  the  taunts  of  Strength  have  come  to  an  end, 
Prometheus  at  last  gives  utterance  to  his  misery.  His  long  silence 
in  the  presence  of  his  tormentors,  in  part  a  result  of  a  convention 
of  the  Greek  drama  that  forbade  three  actors  to  speak  together  on 
the  stage,  and  in  part  a  frequent  device  of  ^schylus  to  make  the 
long-expected  words,  when  uttered,  more  impressive,  kept  the  audi- 
ence impatient  till  he  should  at  last  open  his  mouth.  This  he  does 
with  utterance  of  a  lyric  outburst  of  marvellous  beauty : 

"  Thou  firmament  of  God,  and  swift-winged  winds, 
Ye  springs  of  rivers,  and  of  ocean  waves 
Tliou  smile  innumerous  !     Mother  of  us  all, 

0  Earth,  and  Sun's  all-seeing  eye,  behold, 

1  pray,  what  I  a  god  from  gods  endure. 
Such  doom  the  new-made  monarch  of  the  Blest 

Hath  now  devised  for  me. 
Woe,  woe !     The  present  and  th'  oncoming  pang 

I  wail,  as  I  search  out 
The  place  and  hour  when  end  of  all  these  ills 

Shall  dawn  on  me  at  last. 
What  say  I .''     All  too  clearly  I  foresee 
The  things  that  come,  and  nought  of  pain  shall  be 
By  me  unlooked  for ;  but  I  needs  must  bear 
My  destiny  as  best  I  may,  knowing  well 
The  might  resistless  of  Necessity. 
And  neither  may  I  speak  of  this  my  fate. 
Nor  hold  my  peace.     For  I,  poor  I,  through  giving 
Great  gifts  to  mortal  men,  am  prisoner  made 
In  these  fast  fetters ;  yea,  in  fennel  stalk 
I  snatched  the  hidden  spring  of  stolen  fire, 
Which  is  to  men  a  teacher  of  all  arts, 
Their  chief  resource.     And  now  this  penalty 
Of  that  offense  I  pay,  fast  riveted 
In  chains  beneath  the  open  firmament." 

At  this  point  sweet  perfumes  and   the  rustling  of  wings  announce 
the  approach  of  some  divine  being,  whom  he  awaits  with  terror : 

"  Is  it  of  God  or  man,  or  blending  both? 
And  has  one  come  to  this  remotest  rock 
To  look  upon  my  woes .''     Or  what  wills  he  } 
Behold  me  bound,  a  god  to  evil  doomed, 

The  foe  of  Zeus,  and  held 

In  hatred  by  all  gods 

Who  tread  the  courts  of  Zeus  : 

And  this  for  my  great  love. 

Too  great,  for  mortal  men." 

This  fear,  which  is  yet  not  despair,  is  dispelled  by  the  appearance  of 
the  Oceanides,  who  are  friendly  deities  and  come  to  console  him  in  his 


COLOSSAL    BUST    OF     OCEAN. 


266  ^SCHYLUS, 

sufferings.  In  a  lyric  passage  he  describes  what  he  has  done  and  how 
he  has  been  punished,  his  gloomy  words  being  continually  interrupted 
by  the  gentle  and  sympathetic  consolations  of  the  chorus.  The  whole 
scene  brings  out  the  lofty  generosity  of  the  Titan  and  his  solemn  fear- 
lessness. One  episode  is  the  arrival  of  Ocean  himself,  who  brings  cold 
comfort  by  showing  Prometheus  how  he  suffers  by  his  own  fault : 

"  Lo  !  this,  Prometheus,  is  the  punishment 
Of  thine  o'er-lofty  speech,  nor  art  thou  yet 
Humbled,  nor  yieldest  to  thy  miseries. 
And  fain  would'st  add  fresh  evils  unto  these." 

This  species  of  consolation  reminds  one  of  Eliphaz  the  Temanite  to 
Job  (xv.  5,  6)  :  "  For  thy  mouth  uttereth  thine  iniquity,  and  thou 
choosest  the  tongue  of  the  crafty. 

"  Thine  own  mouth  condemneth  thee,  and  not  I  :  yea,  thine  own  lips 
testify  against  thee." 

Indeed,  in  these  early  productions  of  the  Hellenic  and  Semitic 
minds,  we  may  observe  certain  points  of  contact  as  well  as  very  dis- 
tinct differences. 

When  Prometheus  has  rid  himself  of  the  presence  of  Ocean,  the 
chorus,  in  a  lyric  passage,  give  expression  to  their  grief,  to  which 
Prometheus  answers  with  a  long  speech,  in  which  he  draws  a  singularly 
exact  picture  of  what  modern  science  has  shown  to  be  the  life  of  men 
in  the  Stone  Age : 

"  Like  forms 
Of  phantom-dreams,  throughout  their  life's  whole  length 
They  muddled  all  at  random  ;  did  not  know 
Houses  of  brick  that  catch  the  sunlight's  warmth, 
Nor  yet  the  work  of  carpentry.     They  dwelt 
In  hollowed  holes  like  swarms  of  tiny  ants, 
In  sunless  depths  of  caverns  ;  and  they  had 
No  certain  signs  of  winter,  nor  of  spring,  ^ 

Flower-laden,  nor  of  summer  with  her  fruits  ; 
But  without  counsel  fared  their  whole  life  long, 
Until  I  showed  the  risings  of  the  stars. 
And  settings  hard  to  recognize.     And  I 
Found  Number  for  them,  chief  of  all  the  arts. 
Groupings  of  letters,  Memory's  handmaid  that, 
And  mother  of  the  Muses." 

Yet,  although  the  description  might  make  it  seem  as  if  the  same 
story  were  gone  over  with  undesirable  repetition,  this  fault  can  not  be 
justly  said  to  exist.  Every  new  scene  throws  light  on  a  new  side  of 
Prometheus;  he  shows  that  Zeus  was  ungrateful  as  well  as  tyrannical, 
and  he  brings  out  more  strongly  his  consciousness  of  rectitude  when 
he  declines  with  firmness  the  advice  which  Ocean  gives  him  that  he 
should  let  the  clemency  of  the  father  of  the  gods  be  sought.     With  a 


PROMETHEUS' S  DEFIANCE— PROPHECIES.  267 

severity  that  comes  near  the  irony  of  humor,  he  suggests  that  Ocean 
might  incur  the  wrath  of  Zeus  by  interference,  and  that  god  takes 
himself  away  speedily.  The  Oceanides  themselves,  who  are  first  over- 
whelmed with  pity  at  the  recital  of  his  sufferings,  are  soon  intimidated 
by  his  audacity.  The  loneliness  of  Prometheus  is  made  most  vivid. 
The  author's  method  should  be  noticed  ;  in  this  severest  of  tragedies 
we  are  on  the  very  border-lines  of  comedy,  somewhat  as  we  often  are 
in  Shakspere.  yEschylus  had  no  difificulty  in  being  natural,  even 
when  writing  a  tragedy,  and  the  directness  of  speech  which  we  fre- 
quently find  in  his  plays — indeed  it  was  characteristic  of  Sophocles  as 
well — shows  how  independent  were  those  writers  of  the  rules  that  have 
since  lent  additional  gloom  to  tragedy. 

Yet  when  Ocean  has  speedily  abandoned  his  notion  of  interference 
at  the  suggestion  of  possible  peril  for  himself,  the  Oceanides  remain, 
and  the  tragedy  resumes  its  lofty  flow.  Even  these  faithful  friends, 
however,  despair ;  Prometheus  is  solitary  in  the  universe,  keeping  to 
himself  the  secret  of  the  future,  while  the  chorus  chant  their  regrets 
for  his  obstinacy  and  his  excessive  affection  for  human  beings,  which 
has  brought  him  to  this  apparently  hopeless  plight. 

At  this  point  there  is  introduced  a  new  episode,  which,  however,  un- 
like that  about  Ocean,  wherein  the  character  of  Prometheus  was  further 
developed,  foretells  the  remote  solution  that  time  will  bring.  lo  ap- 
pears on  the  stage,  changed  into  a  heifer — although  possibly  this  form 
was  only  indicated — lamenting  the  persecution  she  suffers  from  Zeus. 
As  Prometheus  was  the  victim  of  his  hate,  so  was  she  of  his  love,  and 
she  recounts  the  terrible  story  of  her  distress  to  the  sympathetic 
listeners.  Prometheus  listens  to  it,  to  the  recital  of  her  wandering  as, 
stung  by  the  gad-fly  that  was  sent  by  Hera,  she  wandered  over  the 
world.  He  also  foretells  her  further  wanderings,  and  announces  that 
by  a  descendant  of  hers  in  the  thirteenth  generation  he  shall  himself 
be  loosened  against  the  will  of  Zeus.  As  suddenly  as  she  came,  lo 
disappears.     Prometheus  continues  to  foretell  the  future  fall  of  Zeus : 

"  Yea,  of  a  truth  shall  Zeus,  though  stiff  of  will. 
Be  brought  full  low.     Such  bed  of  wedlock  now 
Is  he  preparing,  one  to  cast  him  forth 
In  darl<ness  from  his  sovereignty  and  throne. 
And  then  the  curse  his  father  Cronos  spake 
Shall  have  its  dread  completion,  even  that 
He  uttered  when  he  left  his  ancient  throne  ; 
And  from  these  troubles  no  one  of  the  gods 
But  me  can  clearly  show  the  way  to  'scape. 
I  know  the  time  and  manner ;  therefore  now 
Let  him  sit  fearless,  in  his  peals  on  high 
Putting  his  trust,  and  shaking  in  his  hands 
His  darts  fire-breathing.     Nought  shall  they  avail 
To  hinder  him  from  falling  shamefully, 


2  68  MSCHYLUS. 

A  fall  intolerable.     Such  a  combatant 
He  arms  against  himself,  a  marvel  dread. 
Who  shall  a  fire  discover  mightier  far 
Than  the  red  levin,  and  a  sound  more  dread, 
Than  roaring  of  the  thunder,  and  shall  shiver 
The  plague  sea-born  that  causeth  earth  to  quake. 
The  trident,  weapon  of  Poseidon's  strength  ; 
And  stumbling  on  this  evil   he  shall  learn 
How  dififerent  ruling  is  from  servitude." 

And  later,  after  the  chorus  have  suggested  that  the  suffering  Titan 
may  have  yet  worse  pains  to  endure,  Prometheus  adds: 

"  Let  Him  act,  let  Him  rule  this  little  while, 
E'en  as  He  will ;  for  long  He  shall  not  rule 
Over  the  gods." 

When  he  has  uttered  this  open  defiance  of  the  father  of  gods,  a 
mood  to  which  he  has  been  gradually  led  from  the  silent  resignation 
of  the  opening  of  the  play,  through  his  contemplations  of  the  injustice 
of  Zeus,  Hermes  appears.  The  words  of  Prometheus  have  not  been 
lost ;  his  direct  prophecy  of  the  fall  of  Zeus  has  reached  the  ears  of 
the  king  of  gods  and  men,  and  Hermes  is  sent  down  to  extort  from 
Prometheus  his  fatal  secret.  The  whole  scene  is  aglow  with  fiery 
indignation,  and  no  description  can  do  justice  to  its  vividness,  ^schy- 
lus  alone  among  poets  can  command  such  sublimity,  which  was  begot- 
ten in  him  apparently  by  the  unexpected  victory  over  the  hosts  of 
Persia,  by  the  complete  overthrow  of  that  power,  an  event  which  had 
all  the  appearance  of  a  miracle,  and  exalted  the  feeling  of  reverence 
for  the  divine  powers.  Such  an  issue  of  what  seemed  a  hopeless  con- 
flict made  over  the  existent  world  and  elevated  Greece  from  a  subor- 
dinate position  to  one  of  vast  power  and  responsibility.  The  first 
emotion  that  it  called  forth  was  awe,  and  its  reflection  is  to  be  seen 
throughout  the  work  of  ^schylus,  and  nowhere  more  distinctly  than 
in  this  majestic  play,  which  treats  the  most   tremendous  problems. 

Here  is  the  passage,  dimmed  to  be  sure  by  translation,  but  yet  with 
enough  left  to  show  the  original  force : 

Hermes.   Thee  do  I  speak  to  —  thee,  the  teacher  wise. 
The  bitterly  o'er-bitter,  who  'gainst  gods 
Hast  sinned  in  giving  gift  to  short-lived  men  — 
I  speak  to  thee,  the  filcher  of  bright  fire. 
The  Father  bids  thee  say  what  marriage  thou 
Dost  vaunt,  and  who  shall  hurl  Him  from  his  might ; 
And  this  too  not  in  dark  mysterious  speech. 
But  tell  each  point  out  clearly.     Give  me  not, 
Prometheus,  task  of  double  journey.     Zeus 
Thou  see'st  is  not  with  such  words  appeased. 
Prometheus.  Stately  of  utterance,  full  of  haughtiness 
Thy  speech,  as  fits  a  messenger  of  gods. 
Ye  yet  are  young  in  your  new  rule,  and  think 


270 


^SCHYLUS. 


Herm. 


Prom. 

Herm. 

Prom. 
Herm. 
Prom. 


Herm. 
Prom. 

Herm, 
Prom. 
Herm. 
Prom. 
Herm. 
Prom. 
Herm. 
Prom. 
Herm. 
Prom. 
Herm. 
Prom. 


Herm. 
Prom. 
Herm. 

Prom. 


Herm, 


To  dwell  in  painless  towers.     Have  I  not 

Seen  those  two  rulers  driven  forth  from  thence  ? 

And  now  the  third,  who  reigneth,  I  shall  see 

In  basest,  quickest  fall.     Seem  I  to  thee 

To  shrink  and  quail  before  these  new-made  Gods  .' 

Far,  very  far  from  that  am  I.     But  thou. 

Track  once  again  the  path  by  which  thou  earnest ; 

Thou  shalt  learn  nought  of  what  thou  askest  me. 

It  was  by  such  self-will  as  this  before 

That  thou  did'st  bring  these  sufferings  on  thyself. 

I  for  my  part,  be  sure,  would  never  change 

My  evil  state  for  that  thy  bondslave's  lot. 

To  be  the  bondslave  of  this  rock,  I  trow, 

Is  better  than  to  be  Zeus'  trusty  herald  ! 

So  it  is  meet  the  insulter  to  insult. 

Thou  waxest  proud,  'twould  seem,  of  this  thy  doom. 

Wax  proud  !     God  grant  that  I  may  see  my  foes 

Thus  waxing  proud,  and  thee  among  the  rest ! 

Dost  blame  me  then  for  thy  calamities  .-* 

In  one  short  sentence  —  all  the  Gods  I  hate. 

Who  my  good  turns  with  evil  turns  repay. 

Thy  words  prove  thee  with  no  slight  madness  plagued. 

If  to  hate  foes  be  madness,  mad  I  am. 

Not  one  could  bear  thee,  wert  thou  prosperous. 

Ah  me! 

That  word  is  all  unknown  to  Zeus. 
Time  waxing  old  can  many  a  lesson  teach. 
Yet  thou  at  least  hast  not  true  wisdom  learned. 
I  had  not  else  addressed  a  slave  like  thee. 
Thou  wilt  say  nought  the  Father  asks,  'twould  seem. 
Fine  debt  I  owe  him,  favor  to  repay. 
Me  as  a  boy  thou  scornest  then,  forsooth. 
And  art  thou  not  a  boy,  and  sillier  far, 
If  that  thou  thinkest  to  learn  aught  from  me  ? 
There  is  no  torture  nor  device  by  which 
Zeus  can  impel  me  to  disclose  these  things 
Before  these  bonds  that  outrage  me  be  loosed. 
Let  then  the  blazing  levin-flash  be  hurled  ; 
With  white-winged  snow  storm  and  with  earth-born  thunders 
Let  Him  disturb  and  trouble  all  that  is  ; 
Nought  of  these  things  shall  force  me  to  declare 
Whose  hand  shall  drive  him  from  His  sovereignty. 
See  if  thou  findest  any  help  in  this. 
Nay,  long  ago  I've  seen,  and  formed  my  plans. 
O  fool,  take  heart,  take  heart  at  last  in  time. 
To  form  right  thoughts  for  these  thy  present  woes. 
Like  one  who  soothes  a  wave,  thy  speech  in  vain. 
Vexes  my  soul.     But  deem  not  thou  that  I, 
Fearing  the  will  of  Zeus,  shall  e'er  become 
As  womanised  in  mind,  or  shall  entreat 
Him  whom  I  greatly  loathe,  with  upturned  hand, 
In  woman's  fashion,  from  these  bonds  of  mine 
To  set  me  free.     Far,  far  am  I  from  that. 
It  seems  that  I,  saying  much,  shall  speak  in  vain  ; 
For  thou  in  nought  by  prayers  art  pacified. 
Or  softened  in  thy  heart,  but  like  a  colt 
Fresh  harnessed,  thou  dost  champ  thy  bit,  and  strive 
And  fight  against  the  reins.     Yet  thou  art  stiff 
In  weak  device  ;  for  self-will,  by  itself, 
In  one  who  is  not  wise,  is  less  than  nought. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  PROMETHEUS. 


271 


Look  to  it,  if  thou  disobey  my  words, 
How  great  a  storm  and  triple  wave  of  ills 
Not  to  be  'scaped  shall  come  on  thee  ;  for  first 
With  thunder  and  the  levin's  blazing  flash 
The  Father  this  ravine  of  rock  shall  crush. 
And  hide  thy  carcase,  and  its  rocky  arms 
Shall  grasp  thee  tight  and  keep  thee  in  thy  place. 
And  having  traversed  space  of  time  full  long. 
Thou  shalt  come  back  to  light,  and  then  his  hound, 
The  winged  hound  of  Zeus,  the  ravening  eagle, 
Shall  greedily  make  banquet  of  thy  flesh. 
Coming  all  day  an  uninvited  guest, 
And  glut  himself  upon  thy  liver  dark. 
And  of  that  anguish  look  not  for  the  end. 
Before  some  God  shall  come  to  bear  thy  woes, 
And  will  to  pass  to  Hades'  sunless  realm. 
And  the  dark  cloudy  depths  of  Tartaros. 
Wherefore  take  heed.     No  feigned  boast  is  this. 
But  spoken  all  too  truly  ;  for  the  lips 
Of  Zeus  know  not  to  speak  a  lying  speech. 
But  will  perform  each  single  word.     And  thou, 
Search  well,  be  wise,  nor  think  that  self-willed  pride 
Shall  ever  better  prove  than  counsel  good. 
ChOR.    To  us  doth  Hermes  seem  to  utter  words 
Not  out  of  season  ;  for  he  bids  thee  quit 
Thy  self-willed  pride  and  seek  for  counsel  good. 
Hearken  thou  to  him.     To  the  wise  of  soul 
It  is  foul  shame  to  sin  persistently. 
Prom.  To  me  who  knew  it  all 

He  hath  this  message  borne  ; 

And  that  a  foe  from  foes 

Should  suffer  is  not  strange. 

Therefore  on  me  be  hurled 

The  sharp-edged  wreath  of  fire ; 

And  let  heaven's  vault  be  stirred 

With  thunder  and  the  blasts 

Of  fiercest  winds  ;  and  Earth 

From  its  foundations  strong. 

E'en  to  its  deepest  roots. 

Let  storm-winds  make  to  rock ; 

And  let  them  heap  the  waves 

Of  Ocean's  roughened  surge 

Up  to  the  regions  high, 

Where  move  the  stars  of  heaven  ; 

And  to  dark  Tartaros 

Let  Him  my  carcase  hurl, 

With  mighty  blasts  of  force  ; 

Yet  me  He  shall  not  slay. 
Herm.  Such  words  and  thoughts  from  one 

Brainstricken  one  may  hear. 

What  space  divides  his  state 

From  frenzy  }     What  repose 

Hath  he  from  maddened  rage  } 

But  ye  who  pitying  stand 

And  share  his  bitter  griefs. 

Quickly  from  hence  depart, 

Lest  the  relentless  roar 

Of  thunder  stun  your  soul. 
Chor.  With  other  words  attempt 

To  counsel  and  persuade. 


272  ^SCHYLUS. 

And  I  will  hear  :  for  now 
Thou  hast  this  word  thrust  in 
That  we  may  never  bear. 
How  dost  thou  bid  me  train 
My  soul  to  baseness  vile  ? 
With  him  I  will  endure 
Whatever  is  decreed. 
Traitors  I've  learned  to  hate, 
Nor  is  there  any  plague 
That  more  than  this  I  loathe. 
Herm.  Nay  then,  remember  ye 

What  now  I  say,  nor  blame 

Your  fortune  :  Never  say 

That  Zeus  has  cast  you  down 

To  evil  not  foreseen. 

Not  so  ;  ye  cast  yourselves  : 

For  now  with  open  eyes. 

Not  taken  unawares, 

In  Ate's  endless  net 

Ye  shall  entangled  be 

By  folly  of  your  own. 

[A  pause,  and  then  flashes  of  lightning  and  peals  of  thunder,] 

Prom.  Yea,  now  in  very  deed. 

No  more  in  word  alone, 
The  earth  shakes  to  and  fro 
And  the  loud  thunder's  voice 
Bellows  hard  by,  and  blaze 
The  flashing  levin-fires ; 
And  tempests  whirl  the  dust. 
And  gusts  of  all  wild  winds 
On  one  another  leap, 
In  wild  conflicting  blasts, 
And  sky  with  sea  is  blent. 
Such  is  the  storm  from  Zeus 
That  comes  as  working  fear, 
In  utter  chaos  whirled 
In  terrors  manifest. 
O  mother  venerable  ! 
O  Aether !  rolling  round 
The  common  light  of  all. 
See  ye  what  wrongs  I  bear  ! 

This  magnificent  termination  of  what  any  one  might  be  excused  for 
calling  the  sublimest  poem  ever  written,  with  the  ringing  cry  of  Pro- 
metheus as  the  earth  closes  over  him,  "  O  Mother  venerable !  O 
^ther !  rolling  round  the  common  light  of  all,  see  ye  what  wrongs  I 
bear  ?  "  must  have  appalled  the  audience.  In  these  later  days  the 
various  attempts  which  have  been  made  to  interpret  what  has  seemed 
the  heterodox  view  of  Zeus  as  a  remorseless  tyrant,  in  some  inoffensive 
shape,  fail  to  solve  the  mystery,because  there  is  too  little  ground  for 
them  to  rest  on.  Inasmuch  as  the  Greeks  were  not  pained  by  the  bit- 
ter denunciations  of  Zeus,  we  may  feel  sure  that  -^schylus  was  either 
justified  by  the  legend,  or  that  in  the  later  play  of  the  trilogy,  of  wliich 


FREEING     OF      PROMETHEUS     BY    HERMES. 
{Fragment  from  Pergamon.) 


2  74  ^SCHYLUS. 

the  Prometheus  Bound  formed  the  second  part,  a  solution  was  found 
that  enabled  the  Greeks  to  endure  the  apparent  irreverence.  As  it 
stands,  the  single  play  is  but  a  fragment  and  the  rest  is  in  great  part  a 
matter  of  conjecture.  A  small  part  of  the  final  number  of  the  trilogy, 
the  Freed  Prometheus,  has  come  down  to  us  in  brief  extracts,  but 
these  are  too  few  and  in  too  crumbled  condition  to  be  of  much  use. 
The  chorus  consists  of  Titans,  the  relatives  of  Prometheus,  who  have 
been  freed  by  Zeus  from  their  imprisonment.  Other  characters 
are,  besides  Prometheus,  his  mother  Themis,  Heracles,  and  prob- 
ably Hermes.  The  Titans  at  the  beginning  greeted  Prome- 
theus, who  was  yet  in  chains  upon  the  rock,  where  every  day 
an  eagle  devoured  his  liver.  The  answer  of  Prometheus  is  pre- 
served to  us  in  a  Latin  translation  given  in  Cicero's  "  Tusculan  Dis- 
putations ";  Prometheus  endures  his  hard  fate  with  resignation  and 
longs  for  death,  although  he  knows  that  he  can  not  die.  In  this  altered 
mood  may  be  the  secret  of  the  solution  ;  Zeus  has  already  shown  clem- 
ency in  his  remission  of  the  punishment  of  the  Titans,  and  Prometheus 
bends  under  his  long  sufferings.  The  episode  of  lo  in  the  Prometheus 
Bound  was  doubtless  justified  by  the  appearance  of  Heracles,  her  de- 
scendant in  the  thirteenth  generation,  who  in  some  way  secured  the 
Titans'  deliverance  after  slaying  the  eagle.  Whether  the  proud  spirit 
of  Prometheus  was  broken,  or  Zeus  of  his  own  choice  became  clem- 
ent, can  not  be  positively  afifirmed,  but,  apparently,  some  reconciliation 
was  devised.  Probably  the  generosity  of  Zeus  was  met  by  the  sub- 
mission of  Prometheus,  who,  it  should  be  noticed,  afterward  wore  a 
wreath  of  willows  as  a  symbol  of  his  sufferings,  and  the  Greek  custom 
of  wearing  wreaths  at  banquets  commemorated  this  tradition. 

We  can  not  sufificiently  regret  the  meagreness  of  our  knowledge 
of  this  play ;  and  conjecture  is  idle  with  regard  to  the  way  in  which  a 
poet  like  yEschylus  treated  the  baffling  questions  and  brought  into 
harmony  the  discords  of  this  myth.  It  is  a  hopeless  task  to  reunite 
his  missing  tragedies,  but  what  we  know  of  his  view  of  the  universe 
enables  us  to  form  some  notion  of  the  way  in  which  his  mind  must 
have  worked.  Doubtless,  too,  the  vigor  with  which  the  sufferings  of 
Prometheus  are  portrayed  in  the  play  that  we  have,  served  to  bring 
out  in  a  stronger  relief  the  reconciliation  of  this  apparently  hopeless 
schism  with  the  divine  harmony.  The  more  vivid  the  dissension,  the 
greater  was  the  poet's  glory  in  appeasing  it.  The  intensity  of  the  dis- 
cord elevated  the  importance  of  the  reconciliation,  and  the  more 
doubtful  this  seemed  at  the  end  of  the  second  play  of  the  trilogy, 
the  greater  was  the  art  of  the  writer  who  could  at  last  bring  it  about. 


THE    ORESTEI A— AGAMEMNON.  275 


VII. 


Fortunately  one  trilogy  from  the  hands  of  ^Eschylus  has  come  down 
to  us,  which  enables  us  to  see  the  relative  positions  of  its  component 
parts  with  one  another,  and  the  final  harmony  which  sets  right  a  long 
series  of  misdeeds.  This  trilogy  is  called  the  Oresteia,  in  spite  of 
numerous  efforts  to  give  it  other  and  more  accurately  descriptive 
names.  The  plays  composing  it  are  the  Agamemnon,  the  Libation- 
Poems,  and  the  Furies.  The  accompanying  satyric  piece,  Proteus,  is 
lost.  It  was  with  this  magnificent  series'of  plays  that  ^schylus  com- 
pleted his  work  for  the  stage,  and  we  are  hence  in  condition  to  judge 
what  was  his  ripest  handling  of  the  drama.  We  shall  notice  an  ad- 
vance in  the  matter  of  form  ;  action  takes  the  place  of  reflection  as 
the  subject  of  the  plays,  and  with  consummate  art  the  poet  calls 
forth  various  emotions  in  the  spectator.  The  early  predominance 
in  his  plays  of  the  lyrical  part  is  much  modified,  and,  throughout, 
the  style,  while  thoroughly  impressive,  has  lost  some  of  the  exagger- 
ation which  marked  his  earlier  work.  The  three  plays,  we  must 
remember,  were  yet  shorter  than  Hamlet,  and  they  were  not  given 
before  men  already  tired  by  a  day's  work,  but  were  presented  before 
an  audience  that  came  fresh  to  the  task  of  judging  the  masterpieces, 
and  to  one  that  differed  from  a  modern  audience  in  this,  that  like 
Shakspere's  spectators  it  possessed  the  tolerance  of  spoken  speech 
that  men  enjoy  who  do  not  diminish  their  power  of  listening  by 
absorbing  every  thing  through  their  eyes  in  reading. 

The  first  play,  the  Agamemnon,  is  the  one  that  most  immediately 
appeals  to  the  modern  reader.  Its  foundation  in  the  mythical  history 
gave  it  to  the  Greeks  a  significance  which  is  to  us  a  mere  bit  of  liter- 
ary information,  for  the  events  described  are  but  part  of  a  longer 
series,  the  shadow  of  which  lay  dark  over  the  opening  scene  of  the 
first  tragedy.  Yet  its  tragic  merit  does  not  rest  on  this  remote  chain 
of  circumstances  alone,  however  much  this  adds  to  the  impressiveness 
of  the  story.  Already  before  the  play  begins,  evil  had  accumulated 
over  Agamemnon's  head.  The  line  of  Pelops  had  inherited  an  irre- 
sistible tendency  to  deeds  of  violence  and  sudden  death.  Atreus  and 
Thyestes,  the  sons  of  Pelops,  left  their  father  and  lived  at  Argos 
with  the  king  of  that  country,  Eurystheus,  after  whose  death  Atreus 
became  ruler,  marrying  his  daughter.  Thyestes  seduced  his  brother's 
wife  and  was  banished  from  Argos.  But  after  a  time,  however,  he 
returned  to  Argos,  but  clung  to  the  altar,  so  that  Atreus  was  afraid 
to  kill  him.  Instead,  he  planned  this  trick  :  he  put  to  death  some  of 
his  brother's  children,  and,  inviting  him  to  a  banquet,  gave  Thyestes 


276 


yESCHYLUS. 


his  own  children's  flesh  to  eat.  When  Thyestes  discovered  this  deed 
he  cursed  Atreus,  saying  that  all  his  house  should  perish  by  a  like 
fate.  The  children  of  Atreus,  Agamemnon  and  Menelaus,  married 
the  daughters  of  Leda,  Clytemnestra  and  Helen.  Helen,  it  will  be 
remembered,  was  the  cause  of  the  Trojan  war.  Agamemnon  and 
Menelaus  started  forth  to    avenge    their    wrongs,    but    Artemis  was 


SACRIFICE   OF    IPHIGENEIA. 
{^Potnpeiian  "wall painting?) 


angry  with  the  brothers  and  forbade  their  ships  to  sail,  and  for  a 
long  time  they  remained  at  Aulis.  At  last  Calchas  the  prophet 
announced  that  they  could  not  put  forth  until  Agamemnon  should 
offer  up  his  daughter  Iphigeneia  as  a  sacrifice  to  Artemis.  After  some 
reluctance  Agamemnon  yielded  ;  he  sacrificed  his  daughter,  and  the 
fleet    sailed.      Clytemnestra,  the  wife    of    Agamemnon,  was    enraged 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  IDEAS  OF  HEREDITY— TROY.  277 

by  this  deed,  and  during  her  husband's  absence  she  had  sinned  with 
^gisthus,  the  youngest  son  of  Thyestes.  This  trilogy  recounts  the 
further  horrors  that  beset  this  unfortunate  family.  Even  this  account, 
black  as  it  is,  omits  many  of  the  details  by  which  guilt  was  amassed 
by  this  wretched  race.  The  very  name  of  any  member  of  it  recalled 
to  every  Greek  a  vast  mass  of  evil-doing  and  of  inherited  suffering. 
Curiously  enough,  the  modern  doctrine  that  rests  on  a  scientific  basis 
replaces  heredity  in  the  position  that  it  held  as  a  matter  of  religious 
tradition  among  the  Greeks.  With  them  it  had  a  supernatural  force  ; 
in  these  later  days  science  has  robbed  it,  as  it  has  many  phenomena, 
of  its  theological  bias,  but  the  facts  remain,  and  are  no  less  impressive 
for  being  proved  inherent  in  the  nature  of  things. 

With  the  opening  of  the  Agamemnon,  then,  the  audience  found 
itself  transported  to  the  period  of  the  greatest  glory  of  Greece,  when 
gods  and  heroes  lived  and  suffered.  This  heroic  past  had  all  the  au- 
thority of  religious  and  historical  tradition  behind  it,  and  the  com- 
bination of  the  two  was  indeed  impressive.  All  the  most  solemn 
feelings  of  reverence  were  nourished,  yet  without  being  trimmed  into 
an  unnatural,  an  artificial  voidness  of  human  interest.  The  Greeks 
enjoyed  the  same  intimate  freedom  with  their  religion  that  we  see 
inspiring  the  dramatic  literature  of  the  middle  ages,  but  with  this  direct- 
ness of  vision  they  combined  of  course  an  immeasurably  superior  intel- 
lectual power,  by  the  side  of  which  the  mediaeval  gropings  for  expression 
are  but  the  prattle  of  children.  And  in  the  Agamemnon  especially  do 
we  find  the  art  of  ^schylus  in  its  ripest  development.  The  trilogy 
was  brought  out  in  the  year  458  B.C.,  and  is  consequently  the  latest 
of  his  work  that  has  reached  us. 

The  opening  of  the  Agamemnon  shows  us  the  courtyard  of  the 
palace  of  the  Atreidae  in  Argos.  On  a  tower  is  a  watchman  who  for 
ten  years  has«been  awaiting  the  signal  lights  that  should  bring  tidings 
of  the  fall  of  Troy.  Suddenly,  while  he  is  speaking,  he  sees  the  fire 
flashing  on  the  appointed  height,  and  he  knows  that  Troy  is  captured 
and  that  Agamemnon  is  about  to  return  ;  he  hastens  away  to  carry 
the  tidings  to  Clytemnestra.  The  chorus  of  Argive  elders  makes  its 
appearance  seeking  information  about  Agamemnon  and  his  compan- 
ions. In  their  song  they  utter  their  forebodings  of  misery  that  might 
follow  upon  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigeneia,  so  that  the  minds  of  the  hearers 
were  attuned  for  the  swiftly  approaching  tragedy.  Meanwhile  prepa- 
rations for  thanksgiving  have  been  making,  and  soon  Clytemnestra 
appears  to  explain  the  reason.  She  tells  the  chorus  the  good  news, 
already  betraying  her  self-will  in  her  contemptuous  treatment  of  them, 
but  giving  a  magnificent  description  of  the  fall  of  Troy  and  of  the 
announcement  of  its  fate  by  signal  fires.     Here  is  the  scene  : 


278 


ACSCHYLUS. 


WATCH    TOWER. 


Chorus. 
Thy  station,  Klytaimnestra,  to  bid  bail, 
Hither  I  come.     For  just  it  is  the  wife     ' 
Of  royalty  to  honor,  when  the  throne 
Lacks  its  male  lord.     But  fain  I  am  to  know 
Whether  on  faith  of  happy  news,  or  not. 
Thine  altars  blaze,  propitiating  hope  * 

That  shall  be.     Yet  speak  not,  if  speech  seem  ill. 

Klytaimnestra. 
From  night,  its  mother,  as  the  saying  goes. 
Fraught  with  glad  tidings  may  the  morn  arise  ; 
So  shalt  thou  hear,  excelling  all  thine  hope, 
High  news,  how  Argive  spears  Troy  town  have  won.' 

Chorus. 
What  sayest  ?     Through  lack  of  faith  it  hath  fled  mine  ear. 

Klytaimnestra. 
The  Achaians  Troy  have  taken.     Speak  I  clear  ? 

Chorus. 
Joy  wins  my  heart,  and  prompts  the  honest  tear. 

Klytaimnestra. 
Thine  eye  bears  witness  to  thy  bosom's  truth. 

Chorus. 
Hast  thou  sure  tokens  that  thy  words  are  sooth  } 

Klytaimnestra. 
Sure  tokens  ;  if  some  god  deceive  me  not. 


EXTRACT  FROM  AGAMEMNON.  279 

Chorus. 
Have  flattering  dreams  this  hopeful  trust  begot  ? 

Klytaimnestra. 
I  t^ust  not,  I,  the  thought  of  a  sleeping  mind. 

Chorus. 
Dost  then  believe  some  wingless  presage  blind  ? 

Klytaimnestra. 
Am  I  a  girl,  that  thus  my  words  you  rack  ? 

Chorus. 
When  did  the  Greeks  the  royal  city  sack  ? 

Klytaimnestra. 
r  the  very  night  whence  springs  yon  dawning  sun. 

Chorus. 
What  herald  hither  could  so  quickly  run  ? 

Klytaimnestra. 
Hephaistos,  forth  from  Ida  sending  light, 
Thence  beacon  hitherward  did  beacon  speed 
From  that  fire-signal.     Ida  to  the  steep 
Of  Hermes'  hill  in  Lemnos  ;  from  the  isle 
Zeus'  height  of  Athos  did  in  turn  receive 
The  third  great  bale  of  flame.     The  vigorous  glare 
Of  the  fast-journeying  pine-torch  flared  aloft, 
Joy's  harbinger,  to  skim  the  ridgy  sea. 
Sending  its  golden  beams,  even  as  the  sun. 
Up  to  Makistos'  watch-towers.     Nothing  loath 
Did  he,  nor  basely  overcome  by  sleep, 
Perform  his  herald  part.     Afar  the  ray 
Burst  on  Euripos'  stream,  its  beaconed  news 
Telling  the  watches  on  Messapion  high. 
They  blazed  in  turn,  and  sent  the  tidings  on. 
Kindling  with  ruddy  flame  the  heather  gray. 
Thence,  nought  obscured,  went  up  the  mighty  glow. 
And,  hke  the  smiHng  moon,  Asopos'  plain 
O'erleaped,  and  on  Kithairon's  rock  awoke 
Another  pile  of  telegraphic  fire. 
Nor  did  the  watchmen  there,  with  niggard  hand, 
Deny  the  torch,  that  blazed  most  bright  of  all. 
Athwart  the  lake  Gorgopis  shot  the  gleam. 
Stirring  the  guards  on  Aigiplanctos'  hill. 
Lest  it  should  fail  to  shine,  the  appointed  blaze. 
Kindled  with  generous  zeal,  they  sent  aloft 
The  mighty  beard  of  flame,  that  streamed  so  high 
To  flash  beyond  the  towering  heights  which  guard 
The  gulf  Saronic.     Thence  it  shot  —  it  reached 
Arachnes'  cliff,  the  station  next  our  town, 
Down  darting  thence  to  the  Atreides'  roof, 
Child  of  that  fire  which  dawned  on  Ida's  hill. 
Such  was  the  order  of  the  beaconed  lights 
Arranged  before,  and  in  succession  swift 
Each  after  each  fulfilled.     The  first  and  last 
r  the  glittering  race  is  victor.     This  the  proof 
The  signal  which  I  tell  ye,  told  to  me 
By  my  good  lord  from  Troy. 

Chorus. 

To  the  gods,  anon 
My  voice  I'll  raise,  O  woman  !     Now  to  hear 
Thy  words,  and  marvel  to  the  end,  I  thirst. 
Please  you  relate,  from  first  to  last,  the  tale. 

Klytaimnestra. 
The  Achaians  Troy  have  won  this  very  day. 


200  ^SCHYLUS. 

A  double  din  i'  the  captured  city  now 
Roars  dissonant,  I  ween.     Acid  and  oil 
Poured  in  one  vessel  mix  not,  ye  would  say. 
In  amity ;  and  so,  the  diverse  cries 
Of  victors  and  of  vanquished  might  ye  hear. 
Confused,  not  blent,  of  triumph  or  of  woe. 
For  these,  upon  the  prostrate  bodies  lying 
Of  husbands,  brethren,  or  of  parents  old, 
With  piteous  wail  from  throats  no  longer  free 
Lament  the  fate  of  friends  most  loved  of  all. 
But  those  the  rugged  toil  of  the  nightly  fray 
Hath  set  keen-hungered  to  such  hasty  meat 
As  the  city  proffers,  in  no  ordered  ranks 
Marshalled  to  banquet,  but  as  each  hath  drawn 
The  lot  of  fortune.     In  the  spear-won  halls 
Of  Troy  they  revel  —  from  untented  frosts 
Rare  change,  and  dews  of  heaven. 

********** 

At  the  end  of  her  description  of  the  sack  of  Troy  she  utters  a  note 

of  warning : 

"  Ah  !  let  no  evil  lust  attack  the  host 
Conquered  by  greed,  to  plunder  what  they  ought  not ; 
For  yet  they  need  return  in  safety  home. 
Doubling  the  goal  to  run  their  backward  race. 
But  should  the  host  come  sinning  'gainst  the  gods. 
Then  would  the  curse  of  those  that  perished 
Wake,  e'en  though  sudden  evils  might  not  fall," 

This  threat,  though  ominous  to  the  spectator  of  the  play,  was  lost 
upon  the  chorus,  whose  dull  perceptions  are  clearly  indicated  ;  they 
only  feel  the  joy  of  victory,  and  in  a  song  they  recall  the  origin  of  the 
war.     Even  in  this,  however,  the  mutability  of  man's  fate  is  recalled : 

"  Fame  in  excess  is  but  a  perilous  thing  ; 
For  on  men's  quivering  eyes 
Is  hurled  by  Zeus  the  blinding  thunder-bolt. 
I  praise  the  good  success 
That  rouses  not  God's  wrath  ; 
Ne'er  be  it  mine  a  city  to  lay  waste." 

This  is  a  part  of  the  very  text  of  the  tragedy  that  is  uttered  uncon- 
sciously by  the  chorus,  who  are  the  last  to  have  any  understanding  of 
the  significance  of  their  words.  The  notion  of  fatality,  a  note  of 
gloomy  foreboding,  is  continually  appearing  through  this  choral  pas- 
sage, and  silently  preparing  the  tragic  outbreak.  The  herald  Thalthy- 
bios  then  appears,  and,  after  giving  expression  to  his  own  personal 
delight  in  getting  home  again,  he  confirms  the  good  news.  He  does 
not  omit  the  miseries  of  the  long  siege,  and  the  misfortunes  of  the  re- 
turning host,  especially  the  disappearance  of  Menelaus ;  this  recital 
again  reminds  the  timorous  chorus  of  the  woes  that  Helen  has  brought 
upon  the  Greeks.     Clytemnestra  has  meanwhile  appeared   and   inter- 


THE  RETURN  OF  AGAMEMNON.  281 

rupted  the  conversation  of  the  herald  and  the  chorus  to  boast  of  her 
swift  and  accurate  interpretation  of  the  burning  beacon-lights,  and  to 
urge  the  swift  return  of  Agamemnon.  Here  the  exposition  of  the 
play  ends.  We  see  that  Agamemnon  is  flushed  with  victory  and  is 
about  to  return  ;  the  future  deeds  are  hidden,  but  ominous  mutterings 
prepare  the  spectators  for  his  bloody  fate.  The  chorus  alternates  be- 
tween personal  joy  and  the  abstract  contemplation  of  the  vicissitudes 
of  humanity,  as  in  the  last  song  mentioned.     Thus  : 

"  There  lives  an  old  saw,  framed  in  ancient  days, 
In  memories  of  men,  that  high  estate 
Full-grown  brings  forth  its  young,  nor  childless  dies. 

But  that  from  good  success 
Springs  to  the  race  a  woe  insatiable. 

But  I,  apart  from  all, 

Hold  this  my  creed,  alone : 
For  impious  act  it  is  that  offspring  breeds. 

Like  to  their  parent  stock  : 

For  still  in  every  house 
That  loves  the  right,  their  fate  for  evermore 

Hath  issue,  good  arid  fair." 

These  words  show  clearly  the  great  ethical  importance  of  the  Greek 
tragedy,  and  are  of  historical  importance  as  marking  the  new  interpre- 
tation given  by  .^schylus  to  the  study  of  evil,  which  hitherto  had 
been  regarded  as  the  wayward  punishment  of  jealous  gods,  who  cursed 
prosperity  with  an  inevitable  blight. 

While  the  chorus  is  singing,  Agamemnon  is  seen  approaching  in  a 
chariot,  with  Cassandra  in  another  chariot,  and  doubtless  his  entrance 
was  represented  as  a  magnificent  pageant,  to  make  more  vivid  the  con- 
trast between  his  present  glory  and  his  swift  downfall.  The  chorus 
greet  him,  and  he  answers  in  a  long  speech.  Then  Clytemnestra  enters 
to  welcome  her  husband,  which  she  does  with  the  request  that  he  will 
not  set  foot  upon  the  ground,  but  only  on  the  purple  tapestries  which 
she  bids  her  attendants  to  lay  before  him.  Agamemnon  remonstrates 
against  this  ostentatious  luxury,  asking  to  be  honored  as  a  man,  not  as 
a  god,  but  he  is  overruled,  and  yields  to  his  wife's  request.  As  he  is 
about  to  enter  the  palace,  he  turns  to  direct  that  Cassandra  be  also 
kindly  led  in  : 

"  God  on  high 
Looks  graciously  on  him  whom  triumph's  hour 
Has  made  not  pitiless." 

As  Clytemnestra  follows  him,  she  pauses  to  pray  of  Zeus  that  he  will 
fulfill  all  her  wishes,  and  the  stage  is  emptied  except  for  Cassandra  and 
the  chorus.  At  this  point  the  clouds  thicken  ;  the  chorus  anticipate 
the  impending  doom  that  is  about  to   befall   the  returning  hero   in  a 


2»2  ^SCHYLUS. 

song  full  of  eternal  abstract   truth,  as  well  as  immediately  applicable 
to  the  circumstances  of  the  play  : 

"  Wherefore,  for  ever,  on  the  wings  of  Fear, 

Hovers  a  vision  drear, 
Before  my  boding  heart  ?  a  strain. 
Unbidden  and  unwelcome,  thrills  mine  ear. 

Oracular  of  pain. 
Not  as  of  old  upon  my  bosom's  throne 

Sits  confidence,  to  spurn 

Such  fears,  like  dreams  we  know  not  to  discern. 
Old,  old  and  gray,  long  since  the  time  has  grown. 
Which  saw  the  linked  cables  moor 
The  fleet,  where  erst  it  came  to  Ilion's  sandy  shore. 
And  now  mine  eyes  and  not  another's  see 

Their  safe  return. 

Yet,  none  the  less  in  me. 
The  inner  spirit  sings  a  boding  song. 

Self-prompted,  sings  the  Furies'  strain — 
And  seeks,  and  seeks  in  vain, 
To  hope  and  to  be  strong  ! 

Ah  !  to  some  end  of  Fate  unseen,  unguessed. 

Are  these  wild  throbbings  of  my  heart  and  breast — 

Yea,  of  some  doom  they  tell — 

Each  pulse  a  knell. 

Lief,  lief,  I  were,  that  all 
To  unfulfillment's  hidden  realm  might  fall. 

Too  far,  too  far  our  mortal  spirits  strive, 

Grasping  at  utter  weal,  unsatisfied — 
Fell  the  fell  curse,  that  dwelleth  hard  beside. 
Thrust  down  the  sundering  wall.     Too  fair  they  blow, 

The  gales  that  waft  our  bark  on  Fortune's  tide ! 

Swiftly  we  sail,  the  sooner  all  to  drive 

Upon  the  hidden  rock,  the  reef  of  Woe." 

Certainly  the  contribution  to  the  drama  from  the  lyric  poetry  was  a 
most  important  one,  and  especially  is  it  elevating  in  these  pieces 
in  which  it  blended  with  the  dramatic  part  to  form  a  harmonious  whole. 
Thus  what  this  song  indicates  makes  itself  perceptible  in  the  cold  in- 
solence of  Clytemnestra,  who  returns  to  bid  Cassandra  descend  from 
her  chariot  and  to  enter  the  palace.  Cassandra  remains  silent  and 
simply  glares  at  her  persecutor.  When  Clytemnestra  has  gone  away 
the  chorus  try  gentler  words : 

"But  I,  for  Pity  sits  in  Anger's  place 
Within  my  breast,  will  speak  a  kindlier  word. 
Poor  maiden,  come  thou  from  the  car;  no  way 
There  is,  but  this — take  up  thy  servitude." 

Thereupon  Cassandra,  who  is  cursed  by  the  gift  of  unaccepted 
prophecy,  bursts  forth  with  cries  to  the  gods,  in  so  vivid  contrast  with 


CASSANDRA'S  PROPHECY— AGAMEMNON'S  DEATH.  283 

the  gentle  words  of  the  chorus  that  the  blood  of  the  spectators  must 
have  been  nearly  frozen.  No  translation  can  do  this  passage  justice, 
can  do  more  at  the  best  than  say  what  is  there ;  to  give  it  again  in 
another  tongue  is  impossible.  Before  her  she  sees  her  own  death  and 
that  of  Agamemnon,  and  all  the  woes  of  the  house  of  Atreus,  the  fall 
of  Troy,  the  end  awaiting  Clytemnestra  ;  with  these  visions  are  min- 
gled memories  of  her  own  happy  childhood,  the  whole  being  animated 
with  unutterable  pathos.  Finally  she  moves  toward  the  palace  to 
meet  her  doom,  but  starts  back  with  renewed  horror  at  the  prescience 


MURDER   OF     AGAMEMNON. 
(Front  relief  on  Urn  o/very  early  date.) 

of  evil,  but  conquering  this  she  enters.  In  a  few  moments  the  cry  of 
Agamemnon  wounded  is  heard,  and  the  chorus  is  filled  with  senile 
doubts  about  what  had  best  be  done.  Soon  the  body  of  the  slain 
king  is  shown,  and  Clytemnestra  comes,  exultant  in  her  crime.  She 
describes  the  murder  vividly  and  explains  her  reasons,  showing  that 
besides  her  maternal  indignation  over  the  slaughter  of  her  daughter, 
there  was  another  cause — her  husband's  faithlessness  to  her.  At  the 
end  ^gisthus  comes  upon  the  stage  expressing  his  joy  at  the  event, 
his  satisfaction  being  only  marred  by  the  threatening  discontent  of  the 
chorus.  The  play  ends  with  vice  triumphant,  but  with  the  warning  of 
future  vengeance.      Here  is  a  version  of  these  last  lines  : 


^SCHYLUS. 

AlGISTHOS. 
O  blessed  light  of  this  avenging  day ! 
Now  can  I  say  the  unforgetting  gods 
From  their  supernal  height  the  woes  regard 
Of  men,  beholding  him  i'  the  woven  robes 
Of  the  Erinnyes  outstretched  —  a  sight 
Most  glad  —  atoning  thus  his  father's  deed, 
Done  long  ago.     His  father  monarch  then, 
Atreus,  in  Argos  here,  after  debate 
For  sovereignty  and  sway,  Thyestes  drave. 
My  father,  his  own  brother  sooth  to  say. 
From  home  and  country.     But  the  sad  exile, 
Returning  suppliant  to  the  hearth,  received 
Safety  and  life,  that  he  defiled  not 
Himself  his  native  soil  with  his  mortal  gore. 
But  Atreus,  the  ungodly  sire  of  who 
Lies  there,  at  the  guest-board  as  a  feast  of  faith  — 
Fiercely,  not  friendly  —  set  my  sire  before, 
When  most  he  seemed  the  festive  day  to  urge 
In  banqueting,  his  murdered  children's  flesh. 
Himself  apart,  sitting  aloft  the  deas, 
Severed  the  feet  and  fingers  from  the  trunk, 
That  so,  not  marking  what  he  ate,  he  ate 
A  meal  accursed,  and  ruinous  to  the  race. 
As  ye  behold  it  now.     But  when  he  knew 
The  horror,  he  howled  out,  and  backward  fell, 
Sick,  from  the  feast  of  slaughter ;  nor  did  not 
Most  justly  link  that  violated  board 
With  imprecated  death  to  one  and  all 
The  proud  Pelopidas,  that  so  might  perish 
The  race  entire  of  Pleisthenes.     By  these. 
By  these,  ye  see  him,  whom  ye  see,  so  fallen. 
And  I  it  is  who  this  his  slaughter  planned. 
Most  justly.     For  me,  yet  a  weanling  child, 
With  others  twelve,  my  brethren,  forth  he  drave, 
And  him  my  woful  father.     But  this  day 
Justice  hath  brought  me  back  full-grown,  a  man. 
And,  though  afar,  I  smote  him,  even  I, 
For  mine  the  plot,  the  counsel  only  mine. 
Happy  therefore  and  proud  to  fall  were  I, 
Who  have  beheld  my  foe  so  basely  die. 

Chorus. 
Aigisthos,  most  the  coward's  brag  I  scorn. 
Thyself,  thou  boastest  to  have  slain  this  man 
Aforethought,  and  alone  to  have  devised 
This  pitiful  murder.     Therefore  thou,  I  say. 
Nor  popular  doom  nor  stoning  shalt  escape. 

Aigisthos. 
Thou,  sitting  at  the  lowest  oar,  sayest  this. 
When  they  who  row  above  command  the  ship. 
Soon  shalt  thou  know,  being  old,  how  hard  it  is 
For  such  to  learn,  when  ordered,  wise  to  be. 
But  fetters  and  sharp  hunger's  pinching  pain 
Wondrous  mind-curers  are  the  old  to  teach. 
Prophetical.     Seeing  this,  wilt  not  see  ? 
Kick  not  against  the  spur,  or  spurred  shalt  be. 

Chorus. 
Woman,  hast  thou,  who  shouldst  have  kept  the  house 
For  those  late  come  from  war,  his  bed  defiled. 
And  planned  this  murder  for  thy  warrior  lord  } 


EXTRACT  FROM  AGAMEMNON.  285 

AlGISTHOS. 
Such  words  as  these  of  tears  the  prelude  are. 
The  tongue  of  Orpheus  was  most  unlike  thine  ; 
He  all  things  captive  led  by  his  joyous  strain. 
Thou,  having  angered  all  by  yelpings  vain, 
Captive  thyself,  reverence  shall  learn  through  pain. 

Chorus. 
And  dost  thou  think  in  Argos  to  be  king. 
Who,  when  thou  hadst  the  hero's  slaughter  planned, 
Daredst  not  to  do  it  with  thine  own  right  hand  .-* 

AlGISTHOS. 
Sure  was  it  that  his  wife  could  him  deceive. 
When  me  he  held  suspect  of  old  his  foe. 
But  by  his  treasures  here  his  realm  to  rule 
Straight  I  address  me.     Who  obeys  not,  he. 
Even  as  a  bean-fed  colt  that  draws  not  true, 
The  yoke  shall  feel  right  sore.     Darkness  combined 
With  hateful  hunger  soon  shall  see  him  kind. 

Chorus. 
Wherefore,  O  villain  of  a  coward  soul, 
Not  slay  the  man  thyself —  but  she,  the  wife. 
Pollution  of  the  country  and  the  country's  gods, 
Slew  him !     Oh,  lives  there  not,  somewhere  on  earth, 
Orestes,  who,  returning  both  shall  slay, 
A  great  avenger,  on  a  happy  day  .-* 

AlGISTHOS. 
If  so  wilt  speak,  so  do,  ere  long  shalt  better  know. 
Ready,  be  ready,  friends.     It  comes,  the  expected  blow. 

Chorus. 
So  be  it.     One  and  all,  on  every  hilt  a  hand  ! 

AlGISTHOS. 
To  die  refuse  I  not,  but  draw  the  deadly  brand. 

Chorus. 
We  would  have  thee  die  ;  so  hail  thy  words,  that  death  foreshow. 

Klytaimnestra. 
No  more,  beloved  of  men,  no  more  work  we  of  woe ! 
To  reap  this  harvest  hath  enough,  more  than  enough,  of  guilt. 
Horror  abounds.     Then  oh,  let  no  more  blood  be  spilt ! 
And  ye,  old  men,  to  his  appointed  house  each  one 
Away,  ere  aught  of  ill  be  suffered  or  be  done. 
What  we  have  wrought  was  fate.     But  if  enough  can  be 
Of  woes  and  sufferings  such  as  these,  enough  have  we, — 
We  whom  the  Daimon's  heavy  wrath  so  sore  hath  strook. 
These  be  a  woman's  words.     Who  deigns  learn,  to  them  look. 

Chorus. 
Not  for  the  Greeks  it  is  a  coward  to  revere. 

AlGISTHOS. 
I  shall  some  time  be  there,  that  ye  at  least  shall  fear. 

Chorus. 
Not  if  the  Daimon  bring  Orestes  home  again. 

AlGISTHOS. 
I  know  that  e.xiles  feed  on  fleeting  hopes  and  vain. 

Chorus. 
Sin  !  revel  in  your  sin  !  mock  justice  while  ye  may. 

AlGISTHOS. 
This  foolery,  be  sure,  right  dearly  shall  ye  pay. 

Chorus. 
Crow  cheerful,  like  the  cock  by  his  hen  at  break  of  day. 


2  86  ^SCHYLUS. 

Klytaimnestra. 
Heed  thou  their  yelpings  not.     For  I  and  thou  will  choose 
The  palace  how  to  order  best  —  as  monarchs  use. 

This  long  description  must  be  excused  in  view  of  the  importance  of 
the  Agamemnon,  not  merely  in  Greek,  but  in  all  literatures,  for 
the  masterpiece  of  Greek  literature  has  but  few  rivals  anywhere. 
Even  this  cold  account  will,  it  is  hoped,  show  how  intense  is  its  dra- 
matic interest,  and  what  part  of  this  survives  the  lapse  of  two  thousand 
years  may  indicate  to  us  what  the  play  must  have  been  to  the  original 
spectators,  familiar  with  the  legend,  and,  more  than  this,  believing  in 
it  as  a  part  of  their  ancient  religious  history.  For  a  long  time  com- 
mentators have  occupied  themselves  with  representing  the  thought  of 
the  time  concerning  the  nature  of  evil  by  means  of  quotations  from 
this  and  other  plays,  and  doubtless  the  subjects  chosen  and  the  method 
of  treatment  prove  the  wide  and  profound  interest  in  ethical  questions. 
Yet  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  those  who  look  into  a  mirror  find  their 
own  image  constantly  before  them,  hiding  every  other  object,  and  some- 
times in  taking  single  lines  out  of  their  context  we  run  the  risk  of  finding 
what  we  wish  rather  than  what  the  author  meant.  Nevertheless  it  is 
obvious  that  the  seriousness  and  majesty  of  the  Greek  tragedy  em- 
balm the  thought  of  the  Greeks  on  the  most  baffling  problems  of  life. 
In  this  play  we  find  the  old  myth  exalted  into  a  thoughtful  study  of 
wickedness.     In  the  succeeding  ones  is  to  be  seen  the  author's  solution. 

A  number  of  years  is  supposed  to  have  elapsed  between  the  termina- 
tion of  the  Agamemnon  and  the  beginning  of  the  Libation  Bearers, 
during  which  time  Orestes,  the  son  of  Agamemnon  and  Clytemnestra, 
who  has  been  carried  away  by  a  faithful  servant  to  save  him  from  his 
mother,  has  grown  up  at  the  court  of  Strophios,  the  king  of  Phocis,  and 
husband  of  a  sister  of  Agamemnon.  At  this  place  he  has  formed  a 
close  friendship  with  Pylades,  the  son  of  Strophios.  When  grown 
up,  he  is  confirmed  by  the  oracle  in  his  determination  to  avenge  his 
father  by  murdering  his  mother.  To  carry  out  this  plan,  he  betakes 
himself  in  the  company  of  Pylades  to  Argos,  where  his  sister  Electra 
has  remained,  suffering  much  from  the  hands  of  her  mother,  and  ever 
mourning  her  father's  sad  fate.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  second  play 
begins,  the  name  of  which  is  taken  from  the  chorus,  consisting  of 
maidens  from  the  palace,  who  every  day  offer  libations  with  Electra 
upon  the  grave  of  Agamemnon.  The  tragedy  opens  with  the  entrance 
of  Orestes  and  Pylades,  who  approach  the  grave.  Orestes  utters  a 
solemn  prayer  for  aid  in  his  plan,  and  lays  a  lock  of  his  hair  upon  the 
grave.  Meanwhile  the  chorus  of  captive  women  from  Troy,  bearing 
vessels  for  libations,  issue  from  the  palace,  followed  by  Electra,  and 
make  their  way  to   the  tomb,  while  Orestes  and  Pylades  withdraw. 


MEETING   OF   ORESTES  AND   ELECTRA. 


287 


Electra  and  the  accompanying 
maidens  were  arrayed  in  mourning 
dresses,  and  bore  every  sign  of 
grief.  The  chorus  begins  a  song 
of  lamentations,  and  when  it  is 
finished  Electra  goes  up  to  the 
grave  to  perform  the  customary 
libations,  and  to  offer  her  prayer ; 
the  chorus  sing  their  song  of  grief. 
On  the  grave  Electra  discovers 
the  lock  of  hair,  which  is  speedily 
adjudged  to  be  that  of  Orestes. 
It  is  at  first  supposed  that  he 
merely  sent  it,  and  this  explana- 
tion produces  great  regret.  Sud- 
denly, however,  Orestes  himself 
returns,  and  soon  settles  his  sister's 
doubts  concerning  his  identity. 
Electra's  swift  recognition  of  her 
brother's  hair,  and  the  corrobora- 
tion of  this  judgment  by  finding 
the  track  of  his  foot  to  correspond 
with  her  own,  called  forth  later 
the  derision  of  Euripides  over 
such  clumsy  devices.  When  Elec- 
tra first  sees  Orestes,  she  fails  to 
recognize  him,  and  he  reproaches 
her: 

"  My  very  face  thou  seest  and   know'st 

me  not, 
And  yet  but  now,  when  thou  didst  see 

the  lock 
Shorn  for   my  father's  grave,  and  when 

thy  quest 
Was  eager  on  the  footprints  I  had  made. 
Even  I,  thy  brother,  shaped  and  sized  as 

thou. 
Fluttered  thy  spirit,  as  at  sight  of  me  !" 

And  he  further  destroys  all 
doubts  by  showing  her  a  robe  she 
had  herself  made  for  him.  All 
this  scene  has  been  criticised  for 
its  crudity,  and  certainly  the  art 
of  -^schylus  was  less  manifest  in 


2«5  AESCHYLUS. 

these  simpler  relations  of  two  people  than  it  was  in  the  complexer 
contrast  of  colossal  passions.  This  becomes  clear  in  the  swift  outbreak 
of  emotion  with  which  the  brother  and  sister  encourage  each  other,  to 
vengeance  for  their  wrongs,  and  in  the  solemnity  of  the  invocation 
when  the  two  are  joined  by  the  chorus  and  unite  in  foretelling  and 
defending  the  speedy  justice  that  Orestes  is  about  to  inflict  on  the 
guilty  pair.  Orestes  exposes  his  whole  plan  of  action  to  his  sister,  and 
they  both  leave  the  stage.  The  interval  is  filled  with  a  song  of  the 
chorus  denouncing  the  murder  of  Agamemnon.  Then  Orestes  and 
Pylades  appear,  and  Orestes  knocks  at  the  door  of  the  palace  and  asks 
to  see  some  one  in  authority.  Clytemnestra  appears ;  he  represents 
himself  as  a  stranger,  and  announces  to  her  the  death  of  her  son  Ores- 
tes. She  is  far  from  overwhelmed  at  this  news,  and  goes  back  into  the 
palace.  The  chorus  outside  soon  sees  Kilissa,  the  old  nurse  of  Orestes, 
come  out  on  her  way  to  summon  yEgisthus.  This  poor  old  woman, 
in  marked  contrast  to  Clytemnestra,  is  affected  by  the  sincerest  grief, 
and  her  naive  reminiscences  of  the  familiar  incidents  of  her  nursling's 
babyhood  have  the  real  Shaksperian  flavor.  The  episode  shows  clearly 
how  great  likeness  there  is  between  the  best  men ;  the  conditions  of 
dramatic  literature  in  the  time  of  ^schylus  were  very  different  from 
those  of  the  time  of  Shakspere,  and  the  framework  of  their  plays 
attests  these  differences,  but  what  is  more  striking  is  the  frequent  op- 
portunity that  the  reader  has  of  observing  close  resemblances,  as  in 
this  case. 

To  go  on  with  the  play ;  the  chorus,  which  is  in  the  secret,  bids 
Kilissa  not  to  ask  ^gisthus  to  bring  his  armed  guard  with  him,  but  to 
let  him  come  unattended  ;  she  promises,  and  leaves  the  chorus  to  sing  a 
prayer  to  Zeus  for  aid  to  Orestes.  vEgisthus  enters  the  stage  in 
answer  to  the  summons,  and,  after  a  few  boastful  words  to  the  chorus, 
enters  the  palace  to  confront  the  messenger.  The  chorus  continues 
its  prayer,  when  suddenly  a  cry  is  heard  within,  and  a  slave  hurries 
forth  announcing  the  murder  of  i4igisthus,  and  demanding  the  presence 
of  the  queen.  She  at  once  appears  and  calls  for  the  axe  with  which 
she  murdered  Agamemnon.  Then  Orestes  comes  out,  bearing  his 
dripping  sword.  Immediately  there  begins  an  eager  debate  between 
them,  she  entreating  for  her  life,  and  he  avowing  and  defending 
his  resolution  to  slay  her.  Finally,  persuaded  by  Pylades,  he  drives 
her  within  to  accomplish  his  bloody  purpose  of  killing  her  by  the  side 
of  yEgisthus.  By  the  laws  of  the  Greek  drama,  no  such  deed  could 
be  committed  on  the  stage.  The  chorus  sing  a  solemn  song,  till 
the  scene  opens  disclosing  Orestes  standing  over  the  corpses  of 
.^gisthus  and  Clytemnestra,  holding  his  sword  in  one  hand,  and  in  the 
other  the  wrapper  that  was  cast  over  his  father  when  he  was  slain.   He 


ABSENCE    OF  SURPRISE  IN    THE  PLAYS. 


289 


comes  to  the  front  of  the  stage,  and 
brought  forward  by  attendants  to 
the  place  where  Agamemnon's  body 
had  once  lain.  Orestes  announces 
what  he  has  done  to  the  chorus,  who 
are  filled  with  horror,  and  makes 
repeated  assurances  that  he  com- 
mitted the  act  only  from  a  sense  of 
duty.  But  even  now  he  is  horrified 
at  what  he  has  done ;  he  feels  the 
curse  that  visits  the  matricide,  he 
begins  to  rave,  and  determines  to 
wander  to  the  shrine  of  the  Delphian 
Apollo,  where  alone  he  may  find 
peace.  The  Furies  appear  to  him, 
unseen  by  the  chorus,  and  he  rushes 
away.  The  chorus  sings  a  final  song 
of  uncertainty,  and  this  impressive 
play  ends. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  interest 
is  in  no  way  slackened,  even  if  we 
observe  a  certain  simplicity  in  the 
dramatic  construction,  as  in  Electra's 
recognition  of  her  brother,  and  in 
the  way  that  Orestes  announces  to 
the  chorus  his  plan  of  vengeance. 
The  Agamemnon  contains  no  such 
incidents ;  the  whole  play  is  as  com- 
pact in  form  as  it  is  rich  in  passion. 
Yet  in  the  second  play  we  see  most 
vividly  one  of  the  aims  of  the  early 
Greek  tragedy  in  its  very  indepen- 
dence of  surprise.  The  incidents 
are  robbed  of  that  accidental  quality, 
and  are  left  to  make  their  own  im- 
pression, the  different  parts  being 
united  in  a  vast  whole,  to  which  each 
division  is  subordinate,  as,  in  the 
sculpture  of  the  time,  masses  and 
combinations  of  figures  were  brought 
together  to  make  a  total  impression 
very  different  from  that  of  separate 
statues,      which      were      the      more 


the  bodies  of  his  victims  are 


290  JESCHYLUS. 

frequent  work  of  later  artists.  Individuality  had  not  yet  received 
its  full  development ;  it  was  still  a  contribution  to  the  total  force 
of  the  play,  very  much  as  the  separate  merits  of  distinct  figures 
combined  to  add  to  the  total  collections  of  images  in  the  group 
upon  a  frieze.  The  play,  at  any  rate,  possessed  to  a  higher  degree  the 
quality  of  presenting  familiar  things  than  that  of  alluring  the  specta- 
tor by  surprise,  and  it  is  only  the  best  work  that  can  dispense  with  the 
baser  attraction.  To  the  Greeks  these  tragedies  must  have  had  very 
much  the  same  charm  that  classical  music  possesses  for  us,  a  charm 
that  is  not  novelty,  but  the  lofty  delight  to  be  got  from  perfect  work. 
The  third  play  may  be  described  briefly.  The  action  quickly  follows 
that  of  its  predecessor,  and  brings  to  a  completion  the  accumulated 
suffering  that  had  advanced  a  stage  further  in  the  Libation  Bearers. 
Orestes  has  taken  his  revenge,  but  only  by  adding  new  guilt ;  he  has 
performed  one  duty,  but  by  violating  another.  If  he  has  obeyed  one 
god,  he  has  offended  another  divinity,  and  the  vendetta  might  have 
continued  indefinitely.  As  the  end  of  the  last  play  indicated,  he 
hastens  to  the  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi,  pursued  by  the  avenging 
Furies ;  and  as  he  clings  in  safety  to  the  altar  his  tormentors  lie  in  a 
circle  about  him.  At  this  point  the  third  tragedy,  the  Eumenides,  be- 
gins. The  Furies  are  the  chorus,  and  it  has  been  said  that  at  the  first 
representation  they  were  fifty  in  number,  but  that  this  multitude  was 
so  terrifying  to  the  spectators  that  the  number  was  reduced  to  fifteen. 
Yet,  like  most  positive  assertions  regarding  the  classics,  this  has  been 
quite  as  positively  denied,  and  some  have  again  af^rmed  that  they 
were  only  three  in  number  ;  but  definite  information  is  lacking.  How- 
ever many  there  were,  they  were  alarming,  and  Apollo's  protection  of 
Orestes  in  no  way  modifies  their  implacable  wrath.  They  really  rep- 
resent the  abstract  spirit  of  revenge.  Apollo  casts  them  into  a  brief 
slumber,  during  which  the  Pythian  priestess  enters  to  consult  the 
oracle,  but  the  ghastly  sight  of  a  bloody-handed  man  at  the  altar, 
holding  a  bare  sword,  and  the  sleeping  Furies  around  him,  fills  her  with 
the  horror  which  animates  her  description  of  what  meets  her  eye. 
From  the  background  comes  forth  Orestes  under  the  guardianship  of 
Apollo,  who  bids  the  unhappy  hero  to  hasten  to  Athens,  the  city  of 
Pallas,  where  his  cause  shall  be  judged.  As  soon  as  he  is  gone,  the 
ghost  of  Clytemnestra,  doomed  to  endless  wandering  in  the  shades, 
appears  and  bitterly  chides  the  Furies  for  the  remissness  of  their  watch  : 

"  Awake  and  hear 
My  plaint  of  dead  men's  hate  intolerable, 
Me,  sternly  slain  by  them  that  should  have  loved, 
Me  doth  no  God  arouse  him  to  avenge, 
Hew^n  down  in  blood  by  matricidal  hands. 
Mark  ye  these  wounds  from  which  the  heart's  blood  ran, 
And  by  whose  hand,  bethink  ye  ?  " 


PRODUCTION  OF  DRAMATIC  EFFECT.  291 

And  when  the  Furies  half  waking  mutter  and  cry  in  their  sleep,  she 
urges  them  still  further  : 

"  Up  !  thrill  your  heart 
With  the  just  tidings  of  my  tongue — such  words 
Are  as  a  spur  to  purpose  firmly  held, 
Blow  forth  on  him  the  breath  of  wrath  and  blood, 
Scorch  him  with  wreek  of  fire  that  burns  in  you. 
Waste  him  with  new  pursuit — swift,  hound  him  down." 

Their  awakening,  which  was  the  occasion  of  the  terror  mentioned 
above,  must  have  been  a  most  impressive  spectacle,  and  doubtless 
every  adjunct  of  art  was  brought  to  aid  the  vision  of  relentless  wrath. 
The  song  of  the  chorus  expresses  their  keen  regret  that  their  prey  has 
escaped  them,  and  it  gradually  turns  to  a  denunciation  of  the  younger 
gods,  and  notably  of  Apollo  for  his  disregard  of  the  Fates.  But  in  the 
hottest  of  their  song  the  god  Apollo  appears,  and  bids  them  to  depart. 

"  Out  !  I  command  you.     Out  from  this  my  home. 
Haste,  tarry  not !  Out  from  the  mystic  shrine. 
Lest  thy  lot  be  to  take  into  thy  breast 
The  winged  bright  dart,  that  from  my  golden  string 
Speeds  hissing  as  a  snake." 

Here  again  the  entrance  of  the  god,  silencing  the  bold  Furies,  offered 
an  admirable  chance  for  striking  dramatic  effect.  The  contrast  was 
great  between  the  terrifying  fiends  with  the  confused  and  confusing 
denunciations  of  their  song,  and  the  majestic,  awe-inspiring  command 
of  the  suddenly  appearing  god,  whose  words  were  doubtless  accom- 
panied by  an  authoritative  gesture.  It  was  in  passages  like  this  doubt- 
less that  the  artistic  arrangement  of  the  actors  on  the  Greek  stage  was 
most  carefully  arranged,  and  that  the  opportunity  for  a  magnificent 
tableau  was  used  in  the  fullest  measure.  Here  the  god,  after 
silencing  the  song  of  the  Furies  and  bidding  them  leave  his  sanctuary, 
listens,  for  a  few  moments,  to  their  arguments,  in  which  they  take  a 
much  more  reasonable  ground,  and  they  part  from  Apollo  almost  as 
friends.     They  say : 

"  Great  thy  name  among  the  thrones  of  Zeus ; 
But  I,  his  mother's  blood  constraining  me, 
Will  this  man  chase,  and  track  him  like  a  hound." 

To  which  he  answers  : 

"  And  I  will  help  him  and  my  suppliant  free  ; 
For  dreadful  among  gods  and  mortals  too 
The  suppliant's  curse,  should  I  abandon  him." 

But  this  deliberate  statement  of  the  tragic  conflict  soon  yields  to  far 
intenser  feelings.     There  is  a  change  of  scene  at   this  point,  for  the 


292  MSCHYLUS. 

Greeks  cared  as  little  for  the  imaginary  unities  of  time  and  place  when 
these  were  in  their  way  as  did  Shakspere  himself,  and  the  spectator  saw 
the  Acropolis  before  him,  with  Orestes,  after  long  travels,  supplicating 
the  aid  of  Pallas  Athene.  Almost  immediately  the  Furies  track  him, 
and  their  song  is  one  of  the  most  magnificent  things  that  ^schylus 
ever  composed. 

Thee  not  Apollo  nor  Athena's  strength 

Can  save  from  perishing,  a  castaway 

Amid  the  lost,  where  no  delight  shall  meet 

Thy  soul  —  a  bloodless  prey  of  nether  powers, 

A  shadow  among  shadows.     Answerest  thou 

Nothing  ?     Dost  cast  away  my  words  with  scorn  — 

Thou,  prey  prepared  and  dedicate  to  me  ? 

Not  as  a  victim  slain  upon  the  shrine, 

But  living  shalt  thou  see  thy  flesh  my  food. 

Hear  now  the  binding  chant  that  makes  thee  mine. 

Weave  the  weird  dance  —  behold,  the  hour 

To  utter  forth  the  chant  of  hell. 

Our  sway  among  mankind  to  tell, 

The  guidance  of  our  power. 

Of  justice  are  we  ministers. 

And  whosoe'er  of  men  may  stand 

Lifting  a  pure,  unsullied  hand. 

That  man  no  doom  of  ours  incurs, 

And  walks  thro'  all  his  mortal  path 

Untouched  by  woe,  unharmed  by  wrath. 

But  if,  as  yonder  man,  he  hath 

Blood-dropping  hands  he  strives  to  hide. 

We  stand  avengers  at  his  side. 

Decreeing,  Thou  hast  wronged  the  dead : 

We  are  doom's  witnesses  to  thee. 

The  price  of  blood  his  hands  have  shed 

We  wring  from  him  ;  in  life,  in  death. 

Hard  at  his  side  are  we ! 


Night,  Mother  Night,  who  brought  me  forth,  a  torment 

To  living  men  and  dead, 
Hear  me,  O  hear !     By  Leto's  stripling  son 

I  am  dishonored  ! 
He  hath  ta'en  from  me  him  who  cowers  in  refuge, 

To  me  made  consecrate  ■ — 
A  chosen  victim,  him  who  slew  his  mother. 

Given  o'er  to  me  and  fate. 


Hear  the  hymn  of  hell. 
O'er  the  victim  sounding  — 
Chant  of  frenzy,  chant  of  ill. 
Sense  and  will  confounding ! 
Round  the  soul  entwining 
Without  lute  or  lyre  — 
Soul  in  madness  pining, 
Wasting  as  with  fire  ! 


THE    SONG   OF    THE    ''FURIES."  293 

Fate,  all  pervading  fate,  for  me  this  work  hath  woven, 

That  1  should  bide  therein  : 
Whosoe'er  of  mortals,  made  perverse  and  lawless, 

Is  stained  with  blood  of  kin, 
By  his  side  are  we,  and  hunt  him  ever  onward. 

Till  to  the  silent  land. 
The  realm  of  death,  he  cometh  ;  neither  yonder 

In  freedom  shall  he  stand. 

Hear  the  hymn  of  hell, 
O'er  the  victim  sounding  — 
Chant  of  frenzy,  chant  of  ill. 
Sense  and  will  confounding  ! 
Round  the  soul  entwining 
Without  lute  or  lyre  — 
Soul  in  madness  pining. 
Wasting  as  with  fire  ! 

When  from  womb  of  Night  we  sprang,  on  us  this  labor 

Was  laid  and  shall  abide. 
Gods  immortal  are  ye,  yet  beware  ye  touch  not 

That  which  is  our  pride. 
None  may  come  beside  us  gathered  round  the  blood-feast  — 

For  us  no  garments  white 
Gleam  for  a  festal  day  ;  for  us  a  darker  fate  is. 

Another  darker  rite  ! 
That  is  mine  hour  when  falls  an  ancient  line  — 

When  in  the  household's  heart 
The  god  of  blood  doth  slay  by  kindred  hands  - 

Then  do  we  bear  our  part : 
On  him  who  slays  we  sweep  with  chasing  cry : 

Though  he  be  triply  strong, 
We  wear  and  waste  him  ;  blood  atones  for  blood, 

New  pain  for  ancient  wrong. 
I  hold  this  task  —  'tis  mine,  and  not  another's, 

The  very  gods  on  high, 
Though  they  can  silence  and  annul  the  prayers 

Of  those  who  on  us  cry. 
They  may  not  strive  with  us  who  stand  apart, 

A  race  by  Zeus  abhorr'd, 
Blood-bolter'd,  held  unworthy  of  the  council 

And  converse  of  heaven's  lord  ! 
Therefore,  the  more  I  leap  upon  my  prey  — 

Upon  their  head  I  bound. 
My  foot  is  hard  ;  as  one  that  trips  a  runner 

I  cast  them  to  the  ground. 
Yea,  to  the  depth  of  doom  intolerable  ; 

And  they  who  erst  were  great. 
And  upon  earth  held  high  their  pride  and  glory. 

Are  brought  to  low  estate. 
In  underworld  they  waste  and  are  diminished. 

The  while  around  them  fleet 
Dark  wavings  of  my  robes,  and,  subtly  woven, 

The  paces  of  my  feet. 

Who  falls  infatuate,  he  sees  not  neither  knows  he 

That  we  are  at  his  side. 
So  closely  round  about  him,  darkly  flitting, 

The  cloud  of  guilt  doth  glide. 


2  94  ^SCHYLUS. 

Heavily  'tis  uttered,  how  round  his  hearthstone 

The  mirk  of  hell  doth  rise. 
Stern  and  fixed  the  law  is  ;  we  have  hands  t'achieve  it, 

Cunning  to  devise. 
Queens  are  we  and  mindful  of  our  solemn  vengeance  ; 

Not  by  tear  or  prayer 
Shall  a  man  avert  it.     In  unhonored  darkness. 

Far  from  gods,  we  fare. 
Lit  unto  our  task  with  torch  of  sunless  regions  ; 

And  o'er  a  deadly  way  — 
Deadly  to  the  living  as  to  those  who  see  not 

Life  and  light  of  day  — 
Hunt  we  and  press  onward.     Who  of  mortals  hearing 

Doth  not  quake  for  awe. 
Hearing  all  that  fate  thro'  hand  of  God  hath  given  us 

For  ordinance  and  law .'' 
Yea,  this  right  to  us,  in  dark  abysm  and  backward 

Of  ages  it  befell ! 
None  shall  wrong  mine  office,  tho'  in  nether  regions 

And  sunless  dark  I  dwell. 

At  the  end  of  this  superb  choral  song,  Athene,  who  heard  it  far  off, 
returned  in  order  to  seek  some  explanation. 

Who  are  ye  .-*  of  all  I  ask, 
And  of  this  stranger  to  my  statue  clinging. 
But  ye  —  your  shape  is  like  no  human  form, 
Like  to  no  goddess  whom  the  gods  behold. 
Like  to  no  shape  which  mortal  women  wear. 

Here  again  we  notice  the  composure  of  a  divinity  in  contrast  with 
the  wild  excitement  the  chorus  had  just  shown,  which  now  resolves 
itself  into  the  more  deliberate  utterance  of  dialogue,  each  party  com- 
pressing its  speech  into  a  single  line  after  the  usual  habit.  Nowhere 
was  the  directness  that  characterized  the  Greek  mind  more  conspic- 
uous than  in  these  swift  interchanges  of  repartee.  Every  speech  was 
like  a  single  thrust  of  a  rapier;  profusion  of  words  was  unknown.  In 
a  dialogue  of  this  compact  form,  Athene  and  the  chorus  arrange  that  the 
conflict  which  seemed  to  be  without  an  issue  should  be  brought  to  final 
judgment.  Orestes  agrees,  and  Athene  leaves  to  secure  the  judges. 
The  chorus,  as  if  foreseeing  their  defeat,  mourn  the  blow  that  will  be 
given  to  the  stern  morality  which  they  enforce,  until  Athene  returns 
with  the  judges.  A  herald,  at  her  command,  convokes  the  populace 
with  a  blast  from  a  trumpet,  and  when  Apollo,  who  presents  himself 
as  a  witness  and  as  the  defender  of  the  accused  Orestes,  has  come  for- 
ward, the  trial  begins.  In  spite  of  the  difificulty  that  attends  making 
remarks  that  can  not  be  proved,  so  that  contradiction  is  a  cheap  as  well 
as  a  tempting  luxury,  we  may  be  safe  in  conjecturing  that  the  incidents 
of  the  trial  that  now  follows  bore  a  recognizable  likeness  to  the  form- 
ulas of  trials  as  the  Greeks  knew  them   from  their  own   experience. 


THE    TRIAL   OF  ORESTES.  295 

But  again,  this  was  doubtless  a  similarity  modified  by  the  laws  of  the 
drama,  very  much  as  in  Shakspere's  plays  the  rigid  representation  was 
affected  by  poetical  necessities.  Certainly,  if  we  may  start  on  the 
ground  that  is  often  forgotten  by  critics,  that  the  master  of  an  art 
knows  tolerably  well  what  he  undertakes  to  do,  the  refinements  and 
splittings  of  hairs  that  characterize  the  discussion  represent  subtleties 
of  argument  familiar  to  the  Greeks  of  that  time,  and  in  Apollo's  words 
we  perhaps  find  more  of  a  contemporary  advocate  than  of  a  purely 
ideal  divinity.  Certainly  the  insinuations  of  the  rare  excellence  of  the 
judge  and  the  benefits  that  will  follow  the  decision  he  desires  have  an 
earthly  flavor. 

When  Athene  calls  on  the  men  of  Athens  to  cast  their  ballots,  she 
breaks  into  an  eloquent  outburst  of  praise  of  Athens,  which  must  have 
delighted  the  audience.  While  the  voting  is  going  on,  Apollo  and  the 
Furies  vie  with  each  other  in  their  solicitations  of  favorable  ballots, 
but  with  this  result  that  the  two  sides  have  cast  an  equal  number  of 
votes,  and  that  Orestes  is  consequently  acquitted.  In  the  glow  of 
gratitude  he  swears  eternal  friendship  to  the  Athenians,  and  if  the 
Argives  ever  break  this  solemn  compact  he  vows  that  his  shade  shall 
punish  them.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Furies  express  their  wrath 
against  the  upstart  deities  who  have  no  regard  for  the  old  gods,  and 
they  make  ready  to  utter  terrible  and  fateful  imprecations  against  the 
land. 

Athene,  however,  intervenes ;  she  tells  them 

"  Orestes  slew  ;  and  his  slaying  is  atoned," 

and  promises  them  a  sanctuary  where  they  shall  be  honored,  and  after 
some  persuasion  melts  their  wrath,  and  the  play  ends  with  the  final 
reconciliation.  Athene  leads  the  procession  down  into  the  cave  of  the 
Furies,  while  an  escort  of  women  and  children  chant  aloud  a  song  of 
joyous  welcome.  The  Furies  are  changed  into  the  Eumenides,  or 
gentle  ones.  The  whole  terrible  history  of  crime  and  bloodshed  is  thus 
brought  to  a  reconciliation  that  establishes  new  and  bountiful  deities 
in  Attica.  The  allusions  to  an  alliance  with  Argos  probably  referred 
to  a  contemporary  movement  in  the  political  chequer-board,  just  as  the 
final  part  of  the  play  won  the  sympathies  of  the  Athenians  by  its 
presentation  of  familiar  scenes  and  ceremonies.  Yet  the  last  playin- 
contestably  makes  a  less  vivid  impression  than  its  predecessors  on  the 
modern  reader;  the  local  coloring  which  endeared  to  the  Greeks  the 
conclusion  of  the  trilogy  has  for  us  mainly  an  archaeological  interest. 
It  remains  true,  however,  that  in  this  termination  of  the  trilogy,  as 
throughout  the  work  of  ^schylus,  we  see  how  far  the  Greek  tragedy 
was  from  being  a  mere  literary  presentation  of  familiar  stories ;  it  was 


296 


^SCHYLUS. 


rather,  as  a  German  writer  has  pointed  out,  an  effort  to  express  the 
philosophy  of  history.  The  inspiration  came  from  the  sudden  impor- 
tance of  Attica  after  the  Persian  wars,  when  the  strongest  power  in 
the  world  had  been  overthrown  by  a  petty  state.  Obviously  some  ex- 
planation for  so  marvellous  an  occurrence  had  to  be  found,  and  it  was 
sought  in  the  examination  of  man's  relation  to  divinity.  All  historical 
research  led  to  the  same  ground; for  the  profane  and  sacred  history 


of  Hellas  were  blended  in  the  mythological  past,and  in  examining  the 
past,  students  were  soon  brought  face  to  face  with  the  direct  action  of 
the  gods  on  the  affairs  of  men.  Of  the  wealth  of  instances  we  have 
seen  abundant  proofs  in  the  works  of  the  lyric  poets ;  in  Pindar 
especially  do  we  find  continual  reference  to  the  myths  that  had  gath- 
ered around  every  place  that  might  be  mentioned.  Just  as  every  spot 
in  Italy  recalls  to  the  student  incidents  of  modern  history  in  that  of 
the  middle  ages,  and  is  full  of  memories  of  ancient  times  until  these 
are  lost  in  the  gray  mists  of  antiquity,  so  could  the  contemporary  of 
vEschylus  recall  a  long  list  of  mythological  reminiscences,  the  abun- 
dance and  variety  of  which,  we  are  justified  in  supposing,  indicated  a 
similar  long  period  of  growth.     Fortunately  for  the  Greeks,  they  en- 


TREATMENT  OF  LIFE  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS  BY  yESCHYLUS.         297 

joyed  sufficient  intellectual  freedom  to  be  able  to  study  the  myths 
without  slavish  superstition.  Their  religion  was,  to  a  very  great  ex- 
tent, a  survival  of  the  imaginations  of  a  forgotten  past,  but  into  these 
they  breathed  new  life  by  recognizing  a  grand  movement  of  which  the 
different  stories  were  separate  manifestations.  In  the  eyes  of  ^schy- 
lus,  who  herein  did  but  express  the  thoughts  of  the  best  men  of  his 
time,  while  happiness  and  unhappiness  were  the  direct  result  of  human 
actions,  there  yet  existed  the  power  of  the  gods  that  made  itself  mani- 
fest in  inexplicable  forms.  The  contest  between  individual  freedom 
and  the  rigid  laws  of  the  universe  is  his  constant  subject,  and  both 
are  drawn  with  largeness  of  treatment  that  is  an  important  element  in 
the  total  impression  of  grandeur  that  the  work  of  ^Eschylus  leaves. 
The  old  conflicts  are  resolved  by  the  new  forces  to  which  every  thing 
is  subordinated.  The  Furies,  for  instance,  are  turned  into  gentle 
beings ;  the  command  of  Zeus  everywhere  compels  obedience,  and 
Zeus  expresses  right  and  wisdom.  In  this  way  the  apparently  baffling 
confusion  of  life  is  reconciled  with  the  divine  rule.  The  contending 
forces  are  tremendous,  but  the  final  harmony  is  complete. 

This  treatment,  it  will  be  noticed,  is  distinguished  by  other  qualities 
than  subtlety;  it  was  the  ready  solution  that  was  natural  to  a  period 
when  unsuspected  success  had  begotten  a  ready  optimism.  The  broad 
lines  in  which  the  thought  of  ^schylus  moved  show  the  newness  of 
the  ethical  judgments  that  fill  his  plays,  just  as  the  frequency  of  de- 
scription in  the  place  of  action  in  the  early  tragedies  indicates  the 
authority  of  the  earlier  epics,  and  the  certainty  of  completer  dramatic 
machinery  in  the  future  development  of  the  drama.  As  time  went  on, 
the  stage  became  modified  by  inevitable  laws,  and  the  grandeur  of 
iEschylus  was  succeeded  by  the  more  delicate  psychological  analysis 
of  Sophocles,  in  whose  hands  a  more  perfect  art  brought  the  drama 
to  a  wonderful  completion.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
this  difference  between  ^schylus  and  Sophocles  was  not  so  much  a 
personal  one  as  it  was  the  necessary  result  of  their  relative 
positions  in  the  history  of  the  Greek  drama.  In  all  literature  there  is 
behind  the  artist  the  world,  and  the  way  in  which  any  genius  shall  ex- 
press itself  is  rigidly  determined  by  circumstances.  It  is  by  no  mere 
coincidence  that  we  uniformly  find  certain  conditions  invariably  repeat- 
ing themselves  in  art  and  letters.  The  man  who  draws  in  bold  lines  is 
followed  by  others  who  fill  in  the  outlines,  as  Dryden  was  succeeded 
by  Pope,  as  Shakspere  by  men  who  subdivided  the  passions  in  their 
plays,  and  lost  hold  of  the  grander  ethical  purpose  that  characterized 
the  master  of  the  English  stage.  These  later  poets  were  controlled 
by  the  same  necessities  as  are  those  men  who  develop  the  principles 
of  the  great  inventions  in  a  thousand  practical  minutiae,  or  those  who, 


298  ^SCHYLUS. 

following  the  conquerors  of  a  new  country,  have  to  devote  themselves 
to  the  less  glorious  task  of  introducing  all  the  works  of  civilization. 
It  is  one  thing  to  take  possession  of  a  vast  country  with  firing  of  guns, 
hoisting  of  flags,  and  general  holiday,  and  another  to  fight  with  savages, 
hew  down  trees,  make  roads,  drain  swamps,  in  the  task  of  making  the 
wild  region  habitable. 

In  yEschylus  we  find  the  comparative  simplicity  that  marks  a  dis- 
coverer; to  the  epic  traditions  which  had  faded  to  the  condition  of  a 
memorial  of  past  glory  he  lent  a  new  life,  and  to  the  lyric  song  which 
for  centuries  had  wound  around  all  sorts  of  pleasing  and  pathetic  emo- 
tions he  had  opened  a  new  life,  just  as  Petrarch  used  the  wonderful 
contrivances  of  mediaeval  song  to  convey  the  first  messages  of  modern 
times.  Every  such  period  of  elevation  is  inspiratory  and  hopeful.  The 
awakening  from  the  monotonous  circular  movement  of  the  Greek 
lyrics,  the  glow  of  the  early  Renaissance,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Roman- 
tic outbreak,  all  shared  the  same  sublime  confidence  in  the  final 
victory  of  the  new  principles  by  which  they  were  animated.  Hence, 
y^schylus  needed  only  to  state  his  conditions  to  show  the  ultimate 
solution  that  necessarily  followed.  In  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  for 
example,  the  absence  of  dramatic  development  makes  clear  his  confi- 
dence in  the  certainty  and  distinctness  of  the  higher  law  which  he  saw 
ruling  the  universe.  To  every  man  and  to  every  nation  success  will 
always  seem  the  one  normal  thing ;  no  one  is  appalled  or  startled  by 
accomplishing  what  he  undertakes  to  do;  and  to  the  generation  to 
which  vEschylus  belonged,  the  victory  over  the  Persians  was  natural 
and  just.  Even  if  it  had  to  be  explained  as  the  result  of  the  inter- 
ference of  the  gods,  men  find  no  difficulties  in  adjudging  themselves 
worthy  of  divine  affection  and  aid.  It  is  a  mere  matter  of  self-confi- 
dence, and  success  is  sure  to  produce  this  quality. 

There  was  a  marked  change  in  the  period  that  followed,  when  the 
ideal  impulse  was  succeeded  by  the  necessity  of  practical  action.  The 
divine  aid  was  no  longer  visible  in  a  great  and  unexpected,  almost 
miraculous,  manner;  but  with  the  growth  of  Athens  in  political  power, 
the  heavenly  powers  had  withdrawn  from  direct  interference  in  human 
events,  and  men  had  been  left  to  their  own  devices.  At  once  the  com- 
plication of  life  became  manifest.  The  new  cultivation  declared  itself 
in  numberless  new  forms,  in  art  as  well  as  in  literature,  while  each 
of  these  branches  of  intellectual  interest  helped  the  others,  and  the 
sculpture  of  the  great  Greek  artists  by  its  purity  and  beauty  refined 
the  literary  perceptions  of  the  people.  Yet,  it  must  be  remembered, 
both  art  and  letters  were  then,  as  they  always  are,  not  two  distinct 
entities,  but  only  different  manifestations  of  the  same  feeling.  Both 
expressed  the  same  artistic  ideal  of  beauty  and  dignity,  grace  and  sub- 


INDIVIDUAL  PORTRAITURE  LACKING  IN  MSCHYLUS'  PLAYS.      299 

limity.  The  new  possibilities  that  had  opened  before  the  human  in- 
telligence had  altered  the  position  of  men  in  the  eyes  of  artists  and 
poets,  and  doubtless  many  things  concerning  the  divine  control  of  the 
world  which  yEschylus  had  stated  with  difficulty  had  found  a  secure 
place  among  the  accepted  truths  of  the  next  generation,  yet  these  had 
been  modified  by  the  novel  importance  which  the  individual  had  ac- 
quired in  the  eager  competition  of  political  life.  For  in  ^schylus 
nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  absence  or,  when  it  exists  at  all,  the 
frequent  crudity  of  the  character-drawing.  Individuals  at  times  seem 
scarcely  to  exist  for  him.  When  they  are  most  nearly  drawn,  as  in  the 
Agamemnon,  they  possibly  depend  for  their  vividness  on  the  intimacy 
of  the  audience  with  the  old  myths  that  were  comparatively  discon- 
nected with  the  religious  beliefs,  and  were  more  venerable  as  contribu- 
tions to  poetry  than  as  elements  of  faith.  It  may  perhaps  be  conjec- 
tured— with  timidity,  as  befits  one  who  is  warned  by  the  fate  that 
surely  awaits  the  person  who  ventures  to  make  any  suggestion  about  the 
classics — that  the  Homeric  legends  retained  some  of  the  Ionic  quality, 
and  the  poetry  of  that  race  was  but  loosely  connected  with  religion. 
Indeed,  when  we  first  find  the  lonians  we  notice  that  they  have  out- 
grown, or  at  least  do  not  share,  the  communal  life  which  is  prominent 
among  the  Dorians.  Their  authors  do  not  form  a  class ;  we  find  no 
groups  in  their  individualized  society  where  they  are  personified  in  a 
king  or  leader,  and  this  condition  of  things  is  naturally  reflected  in 
their  mythical  concepts.  If  there  is  any  thing  in  this  suggestion,  it 
may  explain  the  formality  that  is  more  prominent  in  the  Agamemnon 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  plays  of  ^schylus,  where  we  generally  find 
abstract  principles  represented  rather  than  living  people.  The  mere 
prominence  of  the  chorus  in  his  plays  illustrates  this  ;  in  the  Suppliants, 
for  example,  the  play  depends  on  the  action  and  nature  of  the  chorus, 
the  daughters  of  Danaus.  The  chorus  of  twelve  Persians  are  the  main 
persons  in  the  Persians.  In  the  Eumenides  again  we  notice  a  similar 
thing,  and  in  the  Prometheus  the  allegorical  figures  of  Strength,  or 
Violence,  and  Force  show  how  possible  it  was  for  impersonal  figures  to 
appear  in  place  of  actual  beings.  With  Sophocles  it  was  different ;  in 
his  hands  the  chorus  shrank  away  before  the  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  finally  Euripides  left  it  a  mere  spectator  of  the  action  with 
but  a  shadow  of  its  early  importance.  In  Aristophanes,  again,  we 
shall  observe  the  two-fold  tendency,  and  a  divided  allegiance  to  indivi- 
duality on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  old-fashioned  allegorical  figures, 
such  as  Demos  and  Eirene,  or  Peace,  on  the  other.  The  comedian's 
conservatism,  and  the  inherited  approval  of  stock  figures,  made  the  last 
form  acceptable,  for  nothing  has  a  sturdier  life  than  a  jest  or  a  conven- 
tional figure  of  fun.     Punch  has  outlived  many  dynasties  and  religions. 


300  ^SCHYLUS. 

The  changes  that  altered  conditions  produced  in  Sophocles  combined 
to  bring  forth  in  his  plays  a  quality  that  secured  admiration  for  them 
at  different  periods  of  the  world's  history,  when  the  sterner  majesty 
of  yEschylus  only  aroused  repulsion.  In  the  last  century  the  earlier 
poet  was  despised,  but  Sophocles  was  greatly  admired  for  his  work- 
manship and  the  prominence  that  he  gave  to  the  human  element.  The 
religious  tendency  of  the  tragedies  of  ^schylus  failed  to  appeal  to  a 
time  of  narrow  intellectual  interest,  but  the  comparative  worldliness 
of  Sophocles  attracted  sympathetic  attention.  This  distinction  will 
be  clearer  when  we  examine  the  plays  of  the  later  dramatist,  especially 
if  we  remember  that  the  term  worldliness  is  only  true  in  comparing 
him  with  yEschylus,  and  that  it  means  no  more  than  that  the  conflict 
between  human  beings  and  the  contest  of  their  personal  hopes,  wishes, 
and  fears,  takes  the  place  of  the  simpler  struggle  between  characters 
who  stand  as  representatives  of  divine  principles  of  fate.  This  prin- 
ciple of  fatality  underlies  the  work  of  Sophocles,  for  it  is  part  of  the 
myths,  from  which  he  too  drew  his  subjects;  but  he  developed 
his  characters  into  more  complicated  human  beings,  after  the  process 
that  invariably  rules  literature,  as  every  thing  else,  that  progress  is, 
in  the  language  of  philosophers,  from  the  homogeneous  to  the  hetero- 
geneous. A  similar  change,  it  is  interesting  to  notice,  is  going  on  at 
the  present  time,  in  the  change  of  the  novel  from  the  romantic  de- 
lineation of  heroes  to  the  more  careful  drawing  of  complexer  beings, 
who  do  not  depend  for  importance  on  the  mysterious  grandeur  of  their 
qualities,  but  on  the  combination  of  human  traits  that  they  represent. 
The  difference  between  Sophocles  and  ^Eschylus  corresponds  in  many 
respects  to  the  difference  now  manifesting  itself  between  realism  and 
romanticism,  and  the  change  from  Sophocles  to  Euripides  will  only 
strengthen  the  resemblance. 


CHAPTER  III.— SOPHOCLES. 

I.  The  Life  of  Sophocles  ;  His  Relation  to  the  Persian  Wars — The  Position  he 
Held — His  Relation  to  the  Time  of  Pericles  ;  the  Main  Qualities  of  that  Bril- 
liant Period — His  Work  Compared  with  That  of  vEschylus.  II.  The  Electra, 
Compared  with  the  Treatment  of  the  Oresteian  Myth  by  ^schylus — The  Play 
Described — Importance  of  Oratory  among  the  Greeks  Illustrated  by  the  Plays — 
Fullness  of  the  Art  of  Sophocles.  III.  The  Antigone;  Its  Adaptability  to 
Modern  Tastes — The  Modification  in  the  Treatment  of  the  Chorus.  IV.  The 
King  CEdipus — Its  Vividness  and  Impressiveness.  V.  The  CEdipus  at  Colonus — 
Its  Praise  of  Athens.  VI.  The  Ajax — Its  Treatment  of  a  Bit  of  Homeric 
Story — The  Interference  of  a  Deity — The  Growth  of  Individuality.  VII.  The 
Phiioctetes  ;  Again  Homeric  Characters — The  Individual  Traits  Strongly  Brought 
out.  VIII.  The  Maidens  of  Trachis — General  View  of  the  Art  of  Sophocles, 
with  its  Rounded  Perfection. 

I. 

THE  life  of  Sophocles  contains  but  few  events  of  interest,  although 
such  details  as  have  been  handed  down  to  us  are  of  value,  as 
showing  how  all  men  of  ability  at  the  time  he  lived  were  likely  to  be 
drawn  into  the  service  of  the  state.  Sophocles,  the  son  of  Sophillus, 
was  born  about  the  fourth  year  of  the  seventieth  Olympiad,  496  B.C. 
at  Colonus,  a  suburb  of  Athens.  He  belonged  to  a  family  in  easy  cir- 
cumstances, and  hence  received  careful  instruction  in  music  and  gym- 
nastic exercises,  the  two  essentials  of  the  Greek  education.  At  the 
age  of  sixteen  he  was  chosen  for  his  beauty  to  lead  the  chorus  of 
youths  who  .danced  and  sang  in  the  paean  that  was  performed  over  the 
trophies  of  Salamis.  He  made  his  first  appearance  as  a  tragedian  in 
the  year  468.  On  this  occasion  he  entered  into  rivalry  with  -^schylus, 
who  was  thirty  years  his  senior,  and  the  decision  with  regard  to  the 
first  prize  found  the  audience  closely  divided.  The  archon  threw  the 
matter  for  adjudication  into  the  hands  of  Cimon  and  the  generals  who 
had  just  returned  with  him  from  transferring  the  bones  of  Theseus 
from  the  island  of  Scyros  to  Athens.  These  novel  judges  settled  the 
question  by  awarding  the  first  prize  to  Sophocles,  who  remained  the 
unrivalled  master  of  the  stage  for  many  years.  The  departure  of 
^schylus  for  Sicily  freed  him  from  his  most  serious  competitor.  Dur- 
ing the  supremacy  of  Sophocles  the  changes  in  the  technical  construc- 
tion of  the  drama  were  very  slight,  scarcely  more,  indeed,  than  the 
natural  development  of  what  was  indicated  by  his  predecessors.     To 


U- 


SOPHOCLES. 
(/«  the  Lateran  Museum^ 


THE  LIFE  OF  SOPHOCLES.  303 

the  two  actors  that  yEschylus  employed  he  added  a  third,  thus  estab- 
lishing a  number  that  was  never  enlarged.  In  his  hands,  furthermore, 
the  importance  of  the  chorus  underwent  a  continuance  of  the  change 
that  already  began  in  the  work  of  ^schylus,  and  from  an  important 
representative  of  dramatic  action  it  became  a  lyrical  accompaniment. 
A  weakness  of  the  voice  prevented  Sophocles  from  appearing  himself 
in  a  prominent  part  upon  the  stage,  as  was  the  custom  among  dramatic 
authors.  Of  his  popularity  we  may  judge  from  the  fact  that  he  ob- 
tained the  first  prize  thirty  times,  while  ^schylus  won  it  but  thirteen; 
moreover,  if  Sophocles  failed  of  this  highest  reward,  he  was  adjudged 
the  second. 

The  prominence  that  he  thus  acquired  caused  him  to  be  chosen  to 
various  positions  which  required  far  different  qualities.  He  was  one 
of  ten  generals  serving  with  Pericles  and  Thucydides  in  the  war 
against  Samos.  We  do  not  hear  that  he  distinguished  himself  in  this 
office.  On  his  return  he  was  appointed  priest  to  Alon,  one  of  the. 
ancient  heroes,  and  doubtless  he  found  this  a  more  congenial  position. 
We  know,  too,  that  he  was  interested  in  his  civic  duties,  and  that  in 
his  old  age  he  was  a  member  of  a  commission  to  investigate  the  public 
affairs,  and  that  he  gave  his  consent  to  the  establishment  of  the 
oligarchy  which  wrought  such  confusion  in  Athens. 

With  regard  to  his  private  life  the  accounts  are  conflicting.  A  nat- 
ural son  of  his  was  the  father  of  a  younger  Sophocles,  who  acquired 
some  reputation  as  a  writer  of  tragedies.  lophon,  the  great  poet's 
son,  became,  we  are  told,  jealous  of  his  father's  affection  for  his  name- 
sake, and  was  led  to  seek  aid  from  the  courts  in  placing  his  father  under 
guardianship  for  dotage  and  incompetence.  Sophocles  in  self-defense 
read  to  the  judges  parts  of  his  QEdipus  at  Colonus,  which  he  had  just 
composed,  and  the  suit  was  at  once  decided  in  his  favor.  lophon,  it 
may  be  said  by  the  way,  was  a  not  unsuccessful  tragic  writer.  While 
these  incidents  rest  on  somewhat  uncertain  traditions,  it  is  known  that 
Sophocles  lived  to  a  great  age  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  respect  and 
admiration  of  his  fellow-citizens,  and  that  he  died  at  about  the  age  of 
ninety,  in  the  year  406.  His  life  covered  the  brief  period  of  Athenian 
glory,  and,  dying  when  he  did,  he  just  escaped  seeing  the  defeat  of 
the  naval  forces  of  his  native  city  by  Lysander  at  yEgospotamos,  the 
event  which  sealed  the  fate  of  Athens  and  established  the  supremacy 
of  Sparta. 

Obviously  Sophocles  is  the  great  poet  of  the  age  of  Pericles,  as  is 
Shakspere  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  Racine  of  that  of  Louis  XIV. ;  this 
existence  of  the  perfected  national  art  with  that  of  national  impor- 
tance is  a  coincidence  that  may  be  safely  compared  with  the  familiar 
instance  of  large  towns  being  found  on  large  rivers.     It  was  not  in  the 


304  SOPHOCLES. 

drama  alone  that  great  success  was  attained  ;  prose  writing  had  acquired 
an  ease  and  grace  that  was  reflected  in  some  of  the  forms  of  verse,  and 
in  the  fine  arts  the  spirit  that  animated  both  found  a  form  of  expres- 
sion that  has  never  been  surpassed.  The  political  condition  of  Athens 
was  also  especially  favorable  to  the  production  of  the  superiority  that 
at  this  time  distinguished  its  work,  wherein  it  set  a  model  which  has 
exercised  a  vast  influence  on  modern  literature.  The  whole  Athenian 
civilization  rested,  to  be  sure,  on  a  democratic  basis,  yet  this  democracy 
was,  so  to  speak,  one  formed  on  aristocratic  principles,  and  was  as  dif- 
ferent from  a  universal  democracy,  such  as  at  present  terrifies  half  the 
world,  as  was  the  rigid  "  town-autonomy  "  of  Greece  from  the  pliant 
principle  of  federal  union  that  has  lent  itself  to  the  formation  of  the 
United  States.  It  is  true  that  the  Athenian  populace,  the  demos,  ex- 
ercised complete  control  of  the  state  without  the  intervention  of  the 
principle  of  representation,  and  that  the  world  has  never  known  so 
direct  management  of  public  affairs  by  private  citizens.  War  and 
peace  lay  in  the  hands  of  the  demos  ;  it  appointed  generals  and  defined 
public  policy,  besides  discharging  many  administrative  functions,  yet — 
and  this  is  a  most  important  condition — the  men  who  exercised  this 
power  were  a  chosen  band  who  enjoyed  a  practical  immunity  from 
overwhelming  work  by  the  possession  of  a  host  of  slaves.  In  Corinth 
and  .^gina  these  must  have  been  ten  times  as  many  as  the  free  citi- 
zens ;  in  Athens  it  is  estimated  that  there  were  at  least  four  times 
as  many.  Hence,  the  free  citizens  of  most  of  the  countries  of  Greece 
formed  a  large  aristocracy,  bearing  many  likenesses  to  the  condition  of 
the  Southern  States  before  the  war,  and  presenting  a  great  contrast  to 
the  NorthjWhere  citizenship  was  possessed  by  the  unfranchised  working- 
men.  The  Greek  slaves  were  treated  with  great  kindness ;  the  subordi- 
nation was  not  violent  subjection  ;  they  were  ignorant,  and  were  em- 
ployed in  congenial  pursuits.  On  them  the  whole  Greek  populace 
rested. 

Consequently  art  and  literature  grew  up  among  a  chosen  multitude, 
whom  immunity  from  sordid  cares  did  not  lead  to  idleness  and  corrup- 
tion. From  these  perils  of  slave-ownership  they  were  preserved  by 
their  natural  energy,  and  by  the  constant  call  of  public  duty.  Indiffer- 
ence to  civic  functions  was  held  to  be  criminal,  and  the  apathy  which 
is  the  curse  of  modern  civilization  was  practically  unknown.  The  lei- 
sure that  was  secured  by  the  employment  of  slaves  gave  the  people  an 
opportunity  for  higher  culture.  Gymnastic  exercises  were  enforced  by 
law  upon  all  the  free  populace,  and  this  was  robbed  of  the  appearance 
of  odious  compulsion  by  the  fact  that  not  only  was  the  right  of  citizen- 
ship dependent  on  the  performance  of  physical  exercise,  but  that  skill 
in  these  was  encouraged  by  the  importance  given  to  the  great  public 


PEACE     WITH     PLENTY     ON     HER     ARM. 


3o6  SOPHOCLES. 

games.  While  before  the  Persian  war  Athens  had  thus  trained  the 
forces  that  were  to  repel  the  invader,  after  the  war  the  prominence  of 
that  city  brought  to  it  from  all  quarters  the  men  who  led  the  young 
into  countless  paths  of  intellectual  and  artistic  entertainment  and  in- 
struction. What  private  luxury  had  begun  to  take  root  before  the  war 
diminished  in  the  face  of  the  new  interests  and  enthusiasms,  when 
tragedy,  comedy,  philosophy,  history,  art,  and  science  met  for  that 
brief  glow  that  has  immortalized  the  name  of  Athens,  and  left  a  yet 
unattained  model  for  all  posterity.  What  had  previously  been  possessed 
by  separate  cities  and  different  islands  was  now  concentrated  within 
the  walls  of  a  single  town,  and  the  union  of  forces  was  and  remains 
unequalled.  It  was  a  combination  that  was  far-reaching  and  inspiring, 
not  a  mere  co-existence  of  separate  men  of  genius  ;  these  were  differ- 
ent instruments  for  the  expression  of  one  inspiring  feeling,  of  a  com- 
mon enthusiasm,  in  the  support  of  which  they  harmonized  as  fellow- 
workers  and  lived  together  as  friends.  In  the  brief  interval  of  peace 
for  Athens  under  Pericles,  before  the  long  calamity  of  the  Peloponne- 
sian  war,  this  gifted  people  reached  its  highest  development,  and  it  is 
in  the  work  of  Sophocles  that  it  left  its  completest  literary  expression. 
The  inevitable  comparison  between  his  work  and  that  of  ^schylus 
makes  clear  the  difference  between  the  man  who  works  with  unfa- 
miliar tools  in  rapidly  changing  conditions, and  his  successor  who  finds 
the  paths  cut  and  laid  out  so  that  it  falls  to  him  to  devote  himself  to 
perfecting  the  task  in  hand.  Sophocles  found  the  drama  established, 
and  he  developed  its  capacities.  As  has  been  indicated,  what  had  been 
impressive  by  its  sublimity  he  modified  by  lending  to  it  human  inter- 
est ;  what  depended  for  its  interest  on  great  emotional  development 
was  brought  down  to  a  statement  of  the  complexity  and  wonder  of 
life.  The  difference  was  more  than  the  result  of  the  personal  charac- 
teristics of  the  two  men.  If  the  position  of  the  three  great  tragedians 
had  been  altered,  so  that  Euripides  had  been  the  oldest,  and  ^schylus 
had  been  the  youngest,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  development 
of  the  drama  would  have  been  exactly  opposite  to  the  form  that 
we  are  now  studying.  It  was  rather  the  state  of  the  dramatic  art  and 
of  society  that  created  and  presented  the  conditions  under  which  these 
men  worked,  and  as  the  growing  individualism  of  the  time  developed 
it  left  its  mark  on  the  work  of  these  great  tragedians.  How  it  grew 
is  to  be  observed  in  the  history  and  literature  of  the  period,  and  no- 
where is  it  more  vivid  than  in  the  drama  which  was  the  immediate  re- 
flection of  the  swift  development  of  the  period.  The  study  of  the 
plays  of  Sophocles  will  show  us  the  corporate  elements,  as  we  may  call 
them,  of  the  older  time,  which  we  see  in  the  work  of  ^schylus  exist- 
ing alongside  of  the  individualities  that  are  most  prominent  in  that  of 


CONTRASTED  METHODS  OF  ^SCHYLUS  AND  SOPHOCLES.        307 

Euripides.     Sophocles  occupies  the  mean   between  two  extremes,  as 
further  analysis  will  show. 

n.  . 

Since  the  chronological  order  of  the  plays  of  Sophocles  is  uncertain, 
we  may  be  justified  in  beginning  with  the  Electra,  which  has  this 
advantage  that  it  treats  the  myths  celebrated  by  ^Eschylus  in  his  im- 
mortal tragedy.  This  will  serve  to  show  us  how  the  characters  received 
an  individual  stamp,  and  how  details  take  the  place  of  the  earlier 
broad  treatment.  The  conflict  between  them,  it  will  be  seen,  bears 
rather  the  appearance  of  personal  antagonism  than  of  the  collision  of 
diverse  fates.  We  shall  notice  other  changes,  too,  such  as  the  closer 
interweaving  of  the  scenes, and,  in  general,  greater  care  in  the  technical 
construction  of  stage  effect,  all  of  which,  as  well  as  the  others  that 
strike  the  reader's  attention,  are  in  the  nature  of  a  fuller  evolution 
of  the  capacities  of  the  Greek  drama. 

The  first  technical  difference  between  Sophocles  and  his  master  is 
this  :  that  the  later  writer  abandoned  the  form  of  the  trilogy  and  wrote 
single  plays,  without  regard  to  the  principle  of  construction  that  ar- 
ranged three  tragedies  in  orderly  and  dependent  sequence.  Possibly 
the  growing  competition  enforced  this  change.  At  any  rate  we  have 
the  Electra  standing  alone,  unconnected  with  any  other  play.  The 
other  most  prominent  distinction  between  this  play  and  that  of  ^schy- 
lus  is  that  it  is  Electra  and  not  Orestes  who  is  the  prominent  charac- 
ter. Her  brother,  though  he  wreaks  vengeance  with  his  own  hand,  is 
a  comparatively  unimportant  character.  The  very  choice  of  Electra 
for  heroine  marks  an  important  difference  ;  she  is  not  compelled  by 
resistless  fate  to  be  an  instrument  in  the  terrible  series  of  alternate 
vengeance  that  makes  up  the  bloody  story,  and,  by  selecting  her, 
Sophocles  at  once  lent  the  myth  a  human  aspect.  He  was  able  to 
represent  her  as  the  despised  daughter  of  the  detested  Agamemnon, 
leading  a  wretched  existence  in  her  stepfather's  house,  a  condition 
which  was  only  made,  vivid  to  the  spectators  by  their  own  experience 
or  observation,  and  was  not  a  part  of  the  shadowy  mythical  inheri- 
tance, ^schylus  was  able  to  rest  on  the  general  knowledge  of 
the  legend ;  Sophocles  modified  this  by  letting  his  heroine  appear  in 
almost  a  domestic  character.  How  he  developed  this  personage  the 
play  will  show.  It  is  interesting,  by  the  way,  to  notice  with  what  free- 
dom the  myths  could  be  treated.  We  have  already  seen  their  abun- 
dance in  examining  the  poems  of  Pindar,  and  the  poet  could  find  some- 
where in  this  rich  collection  authority  for  variations.  Moreover,  he 
was  not  held  down  to  over-precision  ;  he  enjoyed  a  certain  amount  of 
liberty,  as  did  Shakspere  in  his  historical  plays,  and  Sir  Walter  Scott 


3o8  SOPHOCLES. 

and  Alexandre  Dumas  in  their  romances.  The  way  in  which  the  last- 
named  made  over  history  to  suit  his  purpose,  as  in  the  conflicting 
accounts  of  the  death  of  Henry  11. ,  in  his  "  Deux  Dianes"  and  his  "  Le 
Page  du  Due  de  Savoie,"  indicate  the  sort  of  freedom  that  the  Greek 
writers  enjoyed.  Precision  of  detail  was  regarded  less  than  vividness 
of  impression. 

The  play  opens  with  the  entrance  of  Orestes  with  Pylades  and  his 
attendant,  and  the  first  speech  of  the  play,  that  of  the  aged  servant, 
at  once  sets  before  the  spectator,  or,  in  these  days,  the  reader,  the 
motive  of  the  tragedy. 

"  Now,  son  of  Agamemnon,  who  of  old 
Led  our  great  hosts  at  Troy,  'tis  thine  to  see 
What  long  thou  hast  desired.     For  lo  !  there  lies 
The  ancient  Argos,  which,  with  yearning  wish, 
Thou  oft  didst  turn  to  ;  here  the  sacred  grove 
Of  her  who  wandered,  spurred  by  ceaseless  sting, 
Daughter  of  Inachos  :  and  this,  Orestes, 
Is  the  wide  agora,  Lykeian  named 
In  honour  of  the  god  who  slew  the  wolves  ; 
Here  on  the  left,  the  shrine  of  Hera  famed  ; 
And  where  we  stand,  Mykense,  rich  in  gold, 
Thou  look'st  upon,  in  slaughter  also  rich, 
The  house  of  Pelops'  line.     Here,  long  ago. 
After  thy  father's  murder  I  received  thee. 
At  thy  dear  sister's  hands,  to  kindred  true  ; 
And  took  thee,  saved  thee,  reared  thee  in  my  home, 
To  this  thy  manhood,  destined  to  avenge 
Thy  father's  death.     Now,  therefore,  O  my  son, 
Orestes,  and  thou,  Pylades,  most  dear 
Of  all  true  friends,  we  needs  must  quickly  plan 
What  best  to  do.     For  lo  !  the  sun's  bright  rays 
Wake  up  the  birds  to  tune  their  matin  songs. 
And  star-decked  night's  dark  shadows  flee  away  ; 
Ye,  then,  before  ye  enter,  taking  rest. 
The  roof  of  living  man,  hold  conference ; 
For  as  things  are,  we  may  not  linger  on  : 
The  time  is  come  for  action." 

This  compact  exposition  of  the  conditions  under  which  the  play 
opens  is  followed  by  a  speech  of  Orestes  in  which  he  announces  the 
plan  he  has  formed  :  the  servant,  who  from  lapse  of  time  is  no  longer 
to  be  recognized,  is  to  introduce  himself  to  vEgisthus  and  Clytemnes- 
tra  as  a  stranger,  a  Phokaean,  recommended  to  them  by  Phanoteus, 
their  friend.  He  is  to  tell  the  guilty  pair  that  Orestes  was  killed  by 
an  accident  at  the  Pythian  games — a  pardonable  anachronism,  for 
these  games  were  established  586  B.C.,  and  the  statement  is  to  be  con- 
firmed by  Orestes  himself,  who  shall  appear  with  Pylades,  bearing  an 
urn  that  is  to  be  presented  as  the  receptacle  of  the  young  man's  ashes. 
Then,  suspicion  being  allayed,  Orestes  will  take  .swift  vengeance.  So 
far  the  prologue  confines  itself  to  the  familiar  legendary   plot,  except 


THE   PLAINT  OF  ELECTRA. 


309 


in  the  introduction  of  the  urn,  and  presents  as  a  distinctive  trait  per- 
haps nothing  more  than  a  compressed  though  vivid  style.  Yet,  at  the 
very  end  of  his  speech,  when  Orestes  is  saying  : 

"  And  now,  old  friend,  'tis  thine  to  watch  thy  task  : 
We  twain  go  forth.  The  true,  right  time  is  come, 
That  mightiest  master  of  all  works  of  men," 

at  that  moment  Electra  is  heard  within, saying  : 

"  Woe,  woe  is  me  !     O  misery  !  " 

This  cry  sounds  the  key-note  of  the  tragedy,  which    practically  lies 
in  the  torn  soul  of  Electra.     The  attendant  says  that  he  thought  he 


anMn^JT^n^iT^ff^JTMfT^/T^JT^fT^/r^Ji^/i^. 


iifBJf^lBJ/aJiajlMiiBliBiigJl^riairmJ 


DECORATING    A   TOMB. 


heard  the  sound  of  some  one  wailing  within,  and  Orestes  suggests  that 
it  may  be  Electra,  and  asks  if  they  shall  remain  and  listen,  but  this 
plan  is  condemned  by  the  attendant  and  they  all  depart.  No  sooner 
are  they  gone  than  Electra  appears  wailing  her  misery  in  an  ode  that 
runs  as  follows : 

"O  holy  light,  and  air  that  overcanopiest  the  whole  earth,  thou  hast  heard 
many  songs  of  my  wailings,  many  blows  straight-handed  on  my  bleeding 
breast,  when  dark  night  has  sunk.  The  bed — I  hate  it — in  this  doleful 
house  knows  well  how  I  keep  revel  in  the  long  night,  and  weep  for  my  un- 
happy father,  whom  in  a  strange  land  murdering  Ares  did  not  welcome,  but 
my  mother  and  her  bedfellow,  ^gisthus,  as  woodcutters  cleave  an  oak's  head 


3IO  SOPHOCLES. 

with  a  murdering  axe.  And  for  this  no  pity  revokes  from  another,  but  from 
me — that  you  died,  my  father,  so  shamefully,  pitifully  !  I  will  not  cease  my 
wailing,  and  miserable  weeping,  so  long  as  I  shall  see  the  bright  shiverings 
of  the  stars  and  this  daylight.  But  like  a  nightingale  whose  children  are 
dead,  with  wailing  before  these  my  father's  doors  I  will  cry  aloud  for  all  to 
hear.  O  home  of  Hades  and  Persephone,  O  Hermes  of  the  under  world, 
and  holy  Ara,  and  the  Erinnyes,  august  children  of  the  gods,  who  see  those 
that  die  unjustly,  and  those  that  steal  their  wives  from  other  men,  come, 
help  avenge  my  father's  murder,  and  send  me  my  brother  ;  since  alone  I  can 
no  longer  set  in  the  scale  a  weight  to  match  my  woe." 

With  this  the  prologue  ends,  and  is  followed  by  the  kommos,  or  the 
dirge  sung  by  the  chorus  and  an  actor.  The  time  that  Orestes  is  de- 
voting to  funeral  sacrifices  is  employed  by  Electra  in  bewailing  her 
misery  and  in  rejecting  the  well-meant  consolations  of  the  chorus.  The 
lyrical  expression  of  her  grief  is  followed  by  a  long  exposition  of  her 
sufferings  in  the  usual  language  of  tragedy.  The  chorus  ask  after  her 
brother  ;  she  says  : 

He  speaks  of  coming ;  yet  he  nothing  does. 
Cho.    One  who  works  great  things  oft  is  slow  in  them. 

To  which  Electra  answers  with  a  touch  of  personal  feeling  that  con- 
tinually flashes  into  the  tragedy  : 

"  I  was  not  slow  when  I  did  save  his  life," 

a  phrase  that  at  once  shows  more  vividly  than  even  her  eloquent  ex- 
pounding of  her  woes  that  it  is  an  impatient  sister,  not  a  remote  crea- 
ture of  a  legend,  who  is  speaking.  This  same  character  is  further 
brought  out  in  the  conversation  that  follows  between  Electra  and  her 
younger  sister  Chrysothemis,  an  absolutely  commonplace  person,  who 
comes  forward  to  remonstrate  with  Electra  for  excessive  lamentation : 

"  What  plaint  is  this  thou  utterest,  sister  dear, 
Here  at  the  outlet  of  the  palace  gates  .-* 
And  wilt  not  learn  the  lessons  time  should  teach 
To  yield  no  poor  compliance  to  a  wrath 
That  is  but  vain  ?     This  much  myself  I  know  : 
I  grieve  at  what  befalls  us.     Had  I  strength, 
I  would  show  plainly  what  I  think  of  them ; 
But  now  it  seems  most  wise  in  weather  foul 
To  slack  my  sail,  and  make  no  idle  show 
Of  doing  something  when  I  cannot  harm,"  etc.,  etc. 

We  are  not  in  the  accustomed  region  of  the  ^schylean  tragedy,  but 
where  the  tragic  condition  is  rendered  human  by  this  flavor  of  misun- 
derstanding. We  see  a  proud,  long-suffering  girl  compelled  to  listen 
to  the  jarring  worldly  wisdom  of  a  weak,  time-serving  sister,  and  the 
familiar  complexities  of  domestic  life  at  once  set  forth  the  heroine's 
distress  in  the  most  universally  intelligible   manner.     The  chafing  of 


WOMEN  IN  SOPHOCLES'   FLAYS.  3" 

family  life  appealed  to  every  listener.  The  change  was  a  subtle  one. 
We  think  of  the  domesticity  of  the  characters  of  yEschylus  as  little 
as  we  do  of  that  of  statues,  yet  that  author  must  have  often  chosen 
women  for  the  leading  roles  ;  thus  among  the  titles  of  his  last  trag- 
edies are  Iphigeneia,  Niobe,  Penelope,  Semele,  Europe,  etc.,  so  that 
Sophocles  was  not  the  first  to  give  women  prominence  in  tragedy  ; 
what  he  did  was  to  draw  them  with  some  of  the  traits  of  human 
life.  Not  with  all,  for  the  obvious  peril  of  the  change  was  triviality, 
and  this  he  avoided  by  the  same  art  that  Shakspere  employed  in 
delineating  Desdemona,  Juliet,  and  Lady  Macbeth. 

If  Chrysothemis  is  represented  rather  as  a  light-weight,  she  has 
at  least  the  advantage  of  possessing  some  judgment,  and  Electra, 
intense  as  is  her  feeling,  escapes  shrewishness.  The  younger  sister 
indeed  gives  discreet  advice  ;  she  gives  Electra  warning  of  Clytem- 
nestra's  determination  to  imprison  her ;  naturally  Electra  is  not  intimi- 
dated by  this  news.     Chrysothemis  asks  her  : 

"  Hast  thou  no  care  for  this  thy  present  life  ?  " 

Electra  answers  : 

A  goodly  life  for  men  to  wonder  at ! 
Chrys.  So  might  it  be  if  thou  would'st  wisdom  learn. 

Elec.  Teach  me  no  baseness  to  the  friends  I  love. 
Chrys.  I  teach  not  that,  yet  kings  must  be  obeyed. 

Elec.  Fawn  as  thou  wilt  ;  thy  fashion  is  not  mine. 

One  perceives  the  wisdom  of  weakness  and  the  folly  of  enthusiasm 
in  their  unending  and  unequal  strife.  The  anger  of  Electra  is  only 
heightened  when  she  hears  that  Chrysothemis  had  been  sent  out  to 
place  funeral  offerings  on  her  father's  tomb  by  Clytemnestra,  who 
was  terrified  by  an  alarming  dream.  She  bids  her  sister  to  set  the 
offerings  aside,  and  instead  to  lay  on  the  tomb  locks  from  the  head 
of  both  herself  and  Chrysothemis,  and  to  pray  that  Orestes  may  soon 
return.  This  Chrysothemis  agrees  to  do,  being  further  urged  by  the 
chorus,  and  after  she  is  gone  the  chorus  sing  an  ode  preparatory  to 
the  following  scene,  which  brings  Clytemnestra  herself  face  to  face 
with  Electra.  Here  the  dramatic  action  halts  while  the  exposition 
goes  on,  but  this  is  most  vivid.  Clytemnestra  is  flown  with  insolence ; 
she  abuses  Electra  for  taking  advantage  of  the  absence  of  ^Egisthus  to 
go  outside  of  the  palace,  thereby  disgracing  her  friends.  It  is  never 
forgotten,  the  reader  will  notice,  that  Electra  is  a  stepdaughter  as  well 
as  an  unfortunate  heroine.  Then  Clytemnestra  takes  up  the  subject  of 
enmity  between  them  and  boldly  defends  the  murder  of  Agamemnon, 
on  the  ground  that  he  had  sacrificed  Iphigeneia. 


312  SOPHOCLES. 

"  Was  he  not 
In  this  a  reckless  father  found  and  base  ? 
I  answer,  yes,  though  thou  refuse  assent  ; 
And  she  that  died  would  say  it,  could  she  speak. 
1  then  feel  no  remorse  for  what  is  done." 

She  thus  attains  the  height  of  exultation  in  her  crime,  and,  in  her 
arrogant  security,  gives  Electra  leave  to  plead  her  cause.  She  is  not 
backward : 

"  Thou  say'st  thy  hand 
Did'st  slay  my  father  !     Is  there  aught  of  shame 
Than  this  more  shameful,  whether  thou  can'st  urge. 
Or  not,  the  plea  of  justice  ?     But  I  say 
Thou  did'st  not  justly  slay  him,  but  wast  led 
By  vile  suggestion  of  the  coward  base 
Who  now  lives  with  thee." 

And  further  on  : 

"  For  should  we  evermore  take  blood  for  blood, 
Thou  would'st  fall  first,  if  thou  did'st  get  thy  due." 

And,  to  make  one  more  quotation  : 

"  But  since  to  speak 
A  word  of  counsel  is  not  granted  us. 
Though  thou  dost  love  to  speak  all  words  of  ill, 
That  '  we  revile  a  mother  ';  yet  I  look 
On  thee  as  more  my  mistress  than  my  mother. 
Living  a  woeful  life,  by  many  ills 
Encompassed  which  proceed  from  thee,  and  him. 
The  partner  of  thy  guilt.     That  other  one. 
My  poor  Orestes,  hardly  'scaped  from  thee. 
Drags  on  a  weary  life.     Full  oft  hast  thou 
Charged  me  with  rearing  him  to  come  at  last 
A  minister  of  vengeance  ;  and  I  own, 
Had  I  but  strength,  be  sure  of  this,  'twere  done." 

After  fierce  recriminations  between  the  mother  and  daughter,  Electra 
retires  to  the  back  of  the  stage  to  let  her  mother  place  the  funeral 
offerings  and  to  pray  that  the  evil  that  the  dreams  forebode  may  be 
prevented,  and  further  that  the  god  may  grant  the  secret,  unspoken 
wishes  of  her  heart,  meaning  by  these  release  from  peril  at  the  hands 
of  Orestes.  The  exposition  is  complete ;  the  queen  could  go  no 
further. 

If  this  scene  offends  us  moderns  by  the  long  arguments  that  com- 
pose it,  we  must  remember  how  important  a  thing  was  eloquence  in 
the  life  of  the  Athenians.  One  reason  of  its  influence  was  the  lack  of 
material  for  reading,  a  condition  that  augmented  the  power  of  public 
speech  just  as  the  present  facility  for  addressing  others  with  the  aid 
of  the  printing-press  tends  to  destroy  the  power  of  eloquence.     Not 


GREEK  ORATORY  AND    THE  DRAMA.  313 

only  were  public  matters  publicly  debated  with  all  the  openness  of 
a  New  England  town-meeting,  but  it  was  also  customary  for  private 
litigants  to  argue  their  own  causes.  We  shall  meet  many  additional 
proofs  of  the  dependence  of  the  quick-witted  Athenians  on  discus- 
sion and  conversation,  which  were  still  a  part  of  eloquence.  Perhaps 
the  most  marked  instance  of  its  predominance  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
fact  that  Thucydides  in  his  history  continually  let  the  course  of 
events  be  presented  in  the  form  of  the  speeches  of  prominent  states- 
men. That  was  the  language  which  most  nearly  addressed  his  coun- 
trymen, and  Sophocles  in  these  speeches  of  Clytemnestra  and  Electra 
was  affected  by  the  same  influence.  Just  as  Shakspere  in  the  quib- 
bles that  are  to  be  found  in  his  speeches  or  conversations  reflects  the 
new-born  euphemisms  of  his  day,  so  did  Sophocles  reflect  the  argumen- 
tative eloquence  of  Athens.  Every  art,  indeed,  mirrors  the  conditions 
in  which  it  flourishes,  just  as  every  man  bears  some  marks  of  his 
education.  In  the  Greek  sculpture  it'  is  not  more  impossible  to  trace 
the  influence  of  the  material  which  abounded  in  Attica  than  it  is  to  see 
the  authority  of  the  Byzantine  mosaics  in  early  modern  painting.  The 
calm  self-possession  of  the  faces,  the  broad  masses,  of  the  Greek  sculp- 
ture indicate,  as  Curtius  has  said,  another  origin  than  that  of  the 
lighter,  bolder  figures  which  are  worked  in  metal.  And  the  condi- 
tions of  the  material  demanded  from  the  artist  in  marble  a  grace 
and  seriousness,  a  dignity  of  repose,  which  would  not  have  been  re- 
quired by  another  material.  Somewhat  like  this  is  the  influence  that 
the  Greek  eloquence  had  upon  the  forms  of  literature  and  notably 
upon  the  drama.  It  affected  the  modes  of  thought  and  their  expres- 
sion in  a  way  that  does  not  at  first  explain  itself  to  us,  and  while  to 
the  Greeks  this  controversy  helped  to  give  a  human  setting  to  the 
play,  it  may  seem  to  us  to  retard  the  action.  We  have  seen  another 
illustration  in  the  predominance  of  the  choral  passages  in  the  early 
tragedies,  which  was  the  direct  result  of  the  absorption  by  the  drama 
of  the  ripest  form  of  literary  expression,  and  in  the  eloquence  and 
arguments  of  Sophocles  we  see  again  the  direct  influence  of  the 
habits  of  the  time  in  which  he  lived.  Exactly  in  the  same  way  do 
we  see  the  marks  of  the  heroic  romances  throughout  Shakspere,  in  the 
language,  in  the  indistinct  geographical  setting,  in  fact  in  all  the  hues 
of  local  color.  For  a  single  example  take  the  Prince  of  Morocco  in 
the  Merchant  of  Venice ;  he  has  stepped  straight  out  of  a  romance, 
and  his  origin  could  never  have  been  for  a  moment  doubtful  to  the 
playwright's  contemporaries.  Moreover,  the  protracted  discussions 
which  begin  to  be  frequent  in  Sophocles,  and  are  almost  the  whole 
stock  in  trade  of  Euripides,  also  represent  the  new  spirit  of  doubt  that 
was  to  make  itself  felt  in  philosophy,     .^schylus  believed    without 


\ 


314  SOPHOCLES. 

misgiving  ;  but  that  quality  disappeared    gradually,  and  here  we    see 
the  traces  of  its  decay. 

To  return  to  the  tragedy  after  this  long  digression  :  we  find  the 
prayer  of  Clytemnestra  followed  by  the  entrance  of  the  guardian  of 
Orestes,  who,  as  has  been  planned,  brings  false  tidings  of  that  young 
hero's  death  at  the  Pythian  games.  This  he  does  in  a  vivid  descrip- 
tion of  a  chariot  race,  and  while  the  chorus  lament  Clytemnestra 
gasps  out : 

"  O  Zeus  !     What  means  this  .  .  .  shall  I  say,  good  news .'' 
Or  fearful,  yet  most  gainful  ?     Still  'tis  sad 
If  by  my  sorrows  I  must  save  my  life." 

Certainly  tragedy  sweeps  by  here. 

When  the  guardian  asks  with  curious  affectation  of  curiosity,  she 

answers : 

"  Wondrous  and  strange  the  force  of  motherhood  ! 
Though  wronged,  a  mother  cannot  hate  her  children." 

This  may  well  be  counted  among  the  few  intense  points  of  tragedy 
which  the  long  life  of  the  human  race  and  its  many  miseries  have  been 
able  to  leave  on  the  page  of  literature.     The  guardian  goes  on : 

"We  then,  it  seems,  are  come  to  thee  in  vain." 

To  which  Clytemnestra  makes  reply  : 

"  Nay,  not  in  vain.     How  could  it  be  in  vain  } 
Since  thou  bring'st  proofs  that  he  is  dead,  who,  born 
Child  of  my  heart,  from  breasts  that  gave  him  suck 
Then  turned  aside,  and  dwelt  on  foreign  soil 
In  banishment ;  and  since  he  left  our  land 
Ne'er  came  to  see  me,  but  with  dreadful  words, 
His  father's  death  still  casting  upon  me. 
Spake  out  his  threats,  so  that  nor  day  nor  night 
I  knew  sweet  sleep,  but  still  the  sway  of  time 
Led  on  my  life,  as  one  condemned  to  death. 
But  now,  for  lo !  this  day  has  stopped  all  fear    ■ 
From  her  and  him,  for  she  was  with  me  still. 
The  greater  mischief,  sucking  out  my  life. 
My  very  heart's  blood  :  now  for  all  her  threats, 
We  shall  live  on  and  pass  our  days  in  peace." 

We  are  back  again  in  the  relentless  tragedy,  and  after  the  faint  flick- 
ering of  a  mother's  love  Clytemnestra  clenches  her  teeth  and  hardens 
her  heart  against  every  trace  of  human  affection.  She  is  ready  to 
carry  out  what  Lady  Macbeth  says : 

"  I  have  given  suck,  and  know 
How  tender  'tis  to  love  the  babe  that  milks  me  ; 
I  would,  while  it  was  smiling  in  my  face, 
Have  pluck'd  my  nipple  from  his  boneless  gums, 
And  dash'd  the  brains  out,  had  I  so  sworn  as  you 
Have  done  to  this." 


> 


ELECTRA     WITH   THE  FUNERAL    URN  OF  ORESTES.  315 

Against  this  extreme  of  wanton  insolence  and  unnatural  cruelty,  the 
poet  sets  the  agony  of  Electra,  who  feels  that  every  hope  is  gone. 
Her  lamentations,  however,  are  interrupted  by  her  sister,  who  comes 
running  in  with  the  tidings  that  she  has  just  found  on  the  tomb  the 
offering  that,  it  will  be  remembered,  Orestes  had  placed  there,  and  that 
she  felt  sure  that  they  had  been  laid  there  by  him.  Electra,  who 
meanwhile  has  heard  of  the  death  of  Orestes,  pays  no  attention  to 
these  facts,  which  seem  of  no  importance,  but  entreats  her  sister's  aid 
in  murdering  .^gisthus.  Naturally  Chrysothemis  refuses  to  further 
this  bold  plan. 

In  the  next  scene  Orestes  and  Pylades  appear  with  an  attendant 
who  carries  a  funeral  urn  ;  Electra  takes  this  urn  in  her  hands,  and 
utters  the  most  pathetic  lament.  This  speech  and  the  scene  of  recog- 
nition between  her  and  Orestes  will  be  found  just  below.  The  reader 
will  notice  how  much  Sophocles  has  altered  the  story  as  it  is  told  by 
yEschylus,  and  how  much  these  changes  add  to  the  pathos  of  the  play. 
The  steady  accumulation  of  misery  exalts  her  desire  for  vengeance, 
and  brings  out  more  clearly  her  hopeless  loneliness,  with  her  mother 
cruel,  her  sister  timid  and  indifferent,  her  brother,  as  she  believes, 
dead. 

The  slaying  of  Clytemnestra  follows  quickly,  and,  by  a  wise  modifi- 
cation, she  is  the  first  to  fall,  while  Orestes  is  hot  with  wrath,  rather 
than  from  the  determination  to  fulfill  the  commands  of  the  gods,  as  in 
the  Choephorae.  ^gisthus  then  enters,  and  on  approaching  to  see  the 
body  of  Orestes  the  veil  is  removed,  and  he  sees  Clytemnestra  dead 
before  him.  The  rest  is  done  in  a  moment,  and  the  play  ends  with 
iEgisthus  killed. 

Elec.  [Taking  the  urn  in  her  /lands.]     O  sole  memorial  of  his  life  whom 
most 
Of  all  alive  I  loved  !  Orestes  mine, 
With  other  thoughts  I  sent  thee  forth  than  these 
With  which  I  now  receive  thee.     Now,  I  bear 
In  these  my  hands  what  is  but  nothingness  ; 
But  sent  thee  forth,  dear  boy,  in  bloom  of  youth. 
Ah,  would  that  I  long  since  had  ceased  to  live 
Before  I  sent  thee  to  a  distant  shore. 
With  these  my  hands,  and  saved  thee  then  from  death  ! 
So  had'st  thou  perished  on  that  self-same  day, 
And  had  a  share  in  that  thy  father's  tomb. 
But  now  from  home,  an  exile  in  a  land 
That  was  not  thine,  without  thy  sister  near, 
So  did'st  thou  die,  and  I,  alas,  poor  me  ! 
Did  neither  lay  thee  out  with  lustral  rites 
And  loving  hands,  nor  bear  thee,  as  was  meet. 
Sad  burden,  from  the  blazing  funeral  pyre ; 
But  thou,  poor  sufferer,  tended  by  the  hands 
Of  strangers,  comest,  in  this  paltry  urn, 
In  paltry  bulk.     Ah  !  miserable  me  ! 


V 


ELECTRA     WITH   THE  FUNERAL    URN  OF  ORESTES.  3^7 

For  all  the  nurture,  now  so  profitless, 

Which  I  was  wont  with  sweetest  toil  to  give 

For  thee,  my  brother.     Never  did  she  love. 

Thy  mother,  as  I  loved  thee ;  nor  did  they 

Who  dwell  within  there  nurse  thee,  but  'twas  I, 

And  I  was  ever  called  thy  sister  true  ; 

But  now  all  this  has  vanished  in  a  day 

In  this  thy  death ;  for,  like  a  whirlwincl,  thou 

Hast  passed,  and  swept  off  all.     My  father  falls  ; 

I  perish  ;  thou  thyself  hast  gone  from  sight ; 

Our  foes  exult.     Thy  mother,  wrongly  named. 

For  mother  she  is  none,  is  mad  with  joy. 

Of  whom  thou  oft  did'st  sent  word  secretly 

That  thou  would'st  come,  and  one  day  show  thyself 

A  true  avenger.     But  thine  evil  fate, 

Thine  and  mine  also,  hath  bereaved  me  of  thee, 

And  now  hath  sent,  instead  of  that  dear  form, 

This  dust,  this  shadow,  vain  and  profitless. 

Woe,  woe  is  me  ! 

0  piteous,  piteous  corpse  ! 
Thou  dearest,  who  did'st  tread 

(Woe,  woe  is  me !) 
Paths  full  of  dread  and  fear. 
How  hast  thou  brought  me  low. 
Yea,  brought  me  very  low,  thou  dearest  one  ! 
Therefore  receive  thou  me  to  this  thine  home. 
Ashes  to  ashes,  that  with  thee  below 

1  may  from  henceforth  dwell.     When  thou  wast  here 
I  shared  with  thee  an  equal  lot,  and  now 

I  crave  in  dying  not  to  miss  thy  tomb ; 

For  those  that  die  I  see  are  freed  of  grief. 
Chor.  Thou,  O  Electra,  take  good  heed,  wast  born 

Of  mortal  father,  mortal,  too,  Orestes ; 

Yield  not  too  much  to  grief.     To  suffer  thus 

Is  common  lot  of  all. 
Ores.  [Trembling.']  Ah,  woe  is  me  ! 

What  shall  I  say?     Ah,  whither  find  my  way 

In  words  confused  ?     I  fail  to  rule  my  speech. 
Elec.  What  grief  disturbs  thee?     Wherefore  speak'st  thou  thus? 
Ores.  Is  this  Electra's  noble  form  I  see? 
Elec.  That  self-same  form,  and  sad  enough  its  state. 
Ores.  Alas,  alas,  for  this  sad  lot  of  thine  ! 
Elec.  Surely  thou  dost  not  wail,  O  friend,  for  me? 
Ores.  O  form  most  basely,  godlessly  misused  ! 
Elec.  Thy  words  ill-omened  fall  on  none  but  me. 
Ores.  Alas,  for  this  thy  life  of  lonely  woe  ! 
Elec.  Why,  in  thy  care  for  me,  friend,  groanest  thou? 
Ores.  How  little  knew  I  of  my  fortune's  ills  ! 
Elec.  What  have  I  said  to  throw  such  light  on  them  ? 
Ores.  Now  that  I  see  thee  clad  with  many  woes. 
Elec.  And  yet  thou  see'st  but  few  of  all  mine  ills. 
Ores.  What  could  be  sadder  than  all  this  to  see  ? 
Elec.  This,  that  I  sit  at  meat  with  murderers. 
Ores.  With  whose?     What  evil  dost  thou  mean  by  this? 
Elec.  My  father's;  next,  I'm  forced  to  be  their  slave. 
Ores.   And  who  constrains  thee  to  this  loathed  task  ? 
Elec.  My  mother  she  is  called,  no  mother  like. 
Ores.  How  so  ?     By  blows,  or  life  with  hardships  full  ? 
Elec.  Both  blows  and  hardships,  and  all  forms  of  ill. 
Ores.  And  is  there  none  to  help,  not  one  to  check  ? 


3l8  SOPHOCLES. 

Elec.  No,  none.     Who  was  .  .  .  thou  bringest  him  as  dust. 

Ores.  O  sad  one  !     Long  I  pitied  as  I  gazed  ! 

Elec.  Know,  then,  that  thou  alone  dost  pity  me. 

Ores.  For  I  alone  come  suffering  woes  like  thine. 

Elec.  What }     Can  it  be  thou  art  of  kin  to  us  } 

Ores.  If  these  are  friendly,  I  could  tell  thee  more. 

Elec.  Friendly  are  they ;  thou'lt  speak  to  faithful  ones. 

Ores.  Put  by  that  urn,  that  thou  may'st  hear  the  whole. 

Elec.  Ah,  by  the  gods,  O  stranger,  ask  not  that. 

Ores.  Do  what  I  bid  thee,  and  thou  shalt  not  err. 

Elec.  Nay,  by  thy  beard,  of  that  prize  rob  me  not. 

Ores.  I  may  not  have  it  so. 

Elec.  Ah  me,  Orestes, 

How  wretched  I,  bereaved  of  this  thy  tomb  ! 
Ores.  Hush,  hush  such  words ;  thou  hast  no  cause  for  wailing. 
Elec.  Have  I  no  cause,  who  mourn  a  brother's  death  } 
Ores.  Thou  hast  no  call  to  utter  speech  like  this. 
Elec.  Am  I  then  deemed  unworthy  of  the  dead .'' 
Ores.  Of  none  unworthy.     This  is  nought  to  thee. 
Elec.  Yet  if  I  hold  Orestes'  body  here. 
Ores.  'Tis  not  Orestes'  save  in  show  of  speech. 
Elec.  Where,  then,  is  that  poor  exile's  sepulchre.'' 
Ores.  Nay,  of  the  living  there's  no  sepulchre. 
Elec.  What  say'st  thou,  boy  } 

Ores.  No  falsehood  what  I  say. 

Elec.  And  does  he  live  ? 

Ores.  He  lives,  if  I  have  life. 

Elec.  What  ?     Art  thou  he  } 
Ores.  Look  thou  upon  this  seal, 

My  father's  once,  and  learn  if  I  speak  truth. 
Elec.  O  blessed  light ! 

Ores.  Most  blessed,  I  too  own. 

Elec.  O  voice  !     And  art  thou  come  .'* 
Ores.  No  longer  learn 

Thy  news  from  others. 
Elec.  And  I  have  thee  here, 

Here  in  my  grasp  ? 
Ores.  So  may'st  thou  always  have  me  ! 

Elec.  O  dearest  friends,  my  fellow-citizens, 

Look  here  on  this  Orestes,  dead  indeed 

In  feigned  craft,  and  by  that  feigning  saved. 
Chor.  We  see  it,  daughter,  and  at  what  has  chanced 

A  tear  of  gladness  trickles  from  our  eyes. 
Elec.  O  offspring,  offspring  of  a  form  most  dear. 

Ye  came,  ye  came  at  last. 

Ye  found  us,  yea,  ye  came. 

Ye  saw  whom  ye  desired. 
Ores.  Yes,  we  are  come.     Yet  wait  and  hold  thy  peace. 
Elec.  What  now  ? 

Ores.  Silence  is  best,  lest  some  one  hear  within. 
Elec.  Nay,  nay.     By  Artemis, 

The  ever-virgin  One, 

I  shall  not  deign  to  dread 

Those  women  there  within, 

With  worthless  burden  still 

Cumbering  the  ground. 
Ores.  See  to  it,  for  in  women  too  there  lives 

The  strength  of  battle.     Thou  hast  proved  it  well. 
Elec.  [sobbing]  Ah,  ah  !     Ah  me  ! 


ORESTES     AND     ELECTRA. 
(^Known  as  the  Menelaus  Group.) 


320 


SOPHOCLES. 


There  thou  hast  touched  upon  a  woe  unveiled, 

That  knows  no  heahng,  no 

Nor  ever  may  be  hid. 
Ores.  I  know  it  well.     But,  when  occasion  bids. 

Then  should  we  call  those  deeds  to  memory, 
Elec.  All  time  for  me  is  fit, 

Yea,  all,  to  speak  of  this 

With  wrath  as  it  deserves  ; 

Till  now  I  had  scant  liberty  of  speech. 
Ores.  There  we  are  one.     Preserve,  then,  what  thou 

hast. 
Elec.  And  what,  then,  shall  I  do  } 
Ores.  When  time  serves  not, 

Speak  not  o'ermuch. 
Elec.  And  who  then  worthily. 

Now  thou  art  come,  would  choose 

Silence  instead  of  speech  } 

For  lo  !  I  see  thee  now  unlooked,  unhoped  for. 
Ores.  Then  thou  did'st  see  me  here. 

When  the  gods  urged  my  coming. 
Elec.  Thou  hast  said 

What  mounts  yet  higher  than  thy  former  boon. 

If  God  has  sent  thee  forth 

To  this  our  home,  I  deem 

The  work  as  heaven's  own  deed. 
Ores.  Loth  am  I  to  restrain  thee  in  thy  joy, 

And  yet  I  fear  delight  o'ermasters  thee. 
Elec.  O  thou  who  after  many  a  weary  year 

At  last  has  deigned  to  come 

(Oh,  coming  of  great  joy  !) 

Do  not,  thus  seeing  me 

Involved  in  many  woes  .... 
Ores.  What  is  it  that  thou  ask'st  me  not  to  do  } 
Elec.  Deprive  me  not,  nor  force  me  to  forego 

The  joy  supreme  of  looking  on  thy  face. 
Ores.  I  should  be  wroth  with  others  who  would  force 

thee. 
Elec.  Dost  thou  consent,  then  ? 
Ores.  How  act  otherwise  } 

Elec.  Ah,  friends,  I  heard  a  voice 

Which  never  had  I  dreamt  would  come  to  me  ; 

Then  I  kept  in  my  dumb  and  passionate  mood, 
Nor  cried  I,  as  I  heard : 

But  now  I  have  thee ;  thou  hast  come  to  me 

With  face  most  precious,  dear  to  look  upon. 

Which  e'en  in  sorrow  I  can  ne'er  forget. 
Ores.  All  needless  words  pass  over.     Tell  me  not 

My  mother's  shame,  nor  how  ^gisthos  drains 

My  father's  wealth,  much  wastes,  and  scatters  much  ; 

Much  speech  might  lose  occasion's  golden  hour  ; 

But  what  fits  in  to  this  our  present  need, 

That  tell  me,  where,  appeanng  or  concealed. 

We  best  shall  check  our  boasting  enemies, 

In  this  our  enterprise  ;  so  when  we  twain 

Go  to  the  palace,  look  to  it,  that  she  note  not. 

Thy  mother,  by  thy  blither  face,  our  coming, 

But  mourn  as  for  that  sorrow  falsely  told. 

When  we  have  prospered,  then  shalt  thou  have  leave 

Freely  to  smile,  and  joy  exultingly. 


COMPARISON  OF  EURIPIDES,   ^SCHYLUS  AND   SOPHOCLES.        2>2l 

Elec.  Yes,  brother  clear  !     Whatever  pleaseth  thee, 

That  shall  be  my  choice  also,  since  my  joy 

I  had  not  of  mine  own,  but  gained  from  thee, 

Nor  would  I  cause  thee  e'en  a  moment's  pain. 

Myself  to  reap  much  profit.     I  should  fail. 

So  doing-,  to  work  His  will  who  favors  us. 

What  meets  us  next,  thou  knowest,  dost  thou  not  ? 

.^gisthos,  as  thou  hearest,  gone  from  home  ; 

Thy  mother  there  within,  of  whom  fear  not 

Lest  she  should  see  my  face  look  blithe  with  joy  ; 

For  my  old  hatred  eats  into  my  soul, 

And,  since  I've  seen  thee,  I  shall  never  cease 

To  weep  for  very  joy.     How  could  I  cease. 

Who  in  this  one  short  visit  looked  on  thee 

Dead,  and  alive  again  ?     Strange  things  to-day 

Hast  thou  wrought  out,  so  strange  that  should  there  come 

My  father,  in  full  life,  I  should  not  deem 

'Twas  a  mere  marvel,  but  believe  I  saw  him. 

But,  since  thou  com'st  on  such  an  enterprise. 

Rule  thou  as  pleases  thee.     Were  I  alone, 

I  had  not  failed  of  two  alternatives. 

Or  nobly  had  I  saved  myself,  or  else 

Had  nobly  perished. 
Ores.  Silence  now  is  best  : 

I  hear  the  steps  of  some  one  from  within. 

As  if  approaching. 

From  this  account  of  the  Electra  the  reader  may  judge  of  the  dif- 
ference between  the  art  of  Sophocles  and  that  of  ^schylus,  and 
since  Euripides  also  wrote  a  play  on  the  same  subject  we  shall  be  able 
later  to  make  a  comparison  of  the  three  masters  of  tragedy.  Yet,  as 
will  be  seen,  a  hasty  generalization  will  have  to  be  avoided,  because 
the  Electra  of  Euripides  does  that  poet  less  credit  than  some  of  his 
other  plays.  The  Electra  of  Sophocles,  though  not  his  greatest  piece, 
contains  a  good  share  of  what  is  best  in  his  work,  pathos,  for  example, 
eloquence,  ingenious  construction,  and,  above  all,  the  seriousness  which 
is  so  marked  a  characteristic  of  the  great  Greek  tragedians  as  it  is  of 
Shakspere.  This  is  shown  in  the  way  that  all  the  diverse  merits  are 
subordinated  to  the  utterance  of  the  profoundest  truths  regarding 
human  life.  In  the  earlier  lyric  poety  of  Greece,  literary  excellence 
of  a  rare  sort  was  to  be  found,  but  it  had  one  of  the  qualities  that  ac- 
crue to  complete  art  finding  expression  in  an  artificial,  conventional, 
and  above  all  in  so  compact  form,  namely,  that  it  lacks  life,  whatever 
other  qualities  it  may  possess,  just  as  a  witticism  generally  lacks  the 
highest  wisdom.  The  Greeks  when  writing  lyrics  were  cutting  gems, 
and  that  is  an  occupation  which  possesses  a  certain  insignificance  by 
the  side  of  sculpture,  and  their  tragedies  possess  a  fullness  of  life,  an 
abundance  of  suggestion  and  implication,  such  as  only  the  highest  art 
can  convey.  Every  detached  statement  is  but  partly  true  ;  it  is  only  an 
accumulation  of  them  that  can  really  throw  light  on  life,  and  while  the 


32  2  SOPHOCLES. 

brilliant  flashes  of  the  lyrics  delight  us,  tease  us  with  vivid,  brief  frag- 
ments of  truth,  it  is  from  the  great,  glowing  mass  of  the  tragedy,  with 
its  wholeness  of  vision,,  that  we  get  the  feeling  of  great  aid,  or  of  the 
vast  solemnity  of  human  existence. 

III. 

In  the  Antigone  we  find,  as  it  were,  a  distinct  resemblance  to  the 
Electra  that  may  justify  its  examination  in  this  place.  It  is  known 
that  it  was  the  thirty-second  play  in  the  order  of  composition,  and  was 
thus  written  when  the  art  of  Sophocles  had  reached  its  highest  per- 
fection. The  qualities  of  the  play  would  alone  prove  this.  In  antiq- 
uity it  received  especial  admiration,  and  although  the  plot  depends 
on  conditions  that  do  not  forcibly  appeal  to  us  this  fact  does  not  lessen 
the  enthusiasm  of  modern  readers ;  the  skill,  the  grace,  the  pathos  of 
the  poet  yet  and  ever  exercise  their  charm.  The  reader  will  remem- 
ber that  at  the  end  of  the  Seven  against  Thebes  the  body  of  Poly- 
neices,  slain  in  his  attack  on  the  city,  was  ordered  to  be  left  unburied, 
and  that  Antigone  avowed  her  determination  to  inter  it,  in  spite  of 
this  direct  command.  This  is  the  whole  subject  of  the  Antigone, 
though  whether  it  was  from  vEschylus,  or  from  some  one  else  who 
added  to  the  play,  is  a  debated  question.  Whoever  wrote  it,  this  is 
the  plot  of  the  play  of  Sophocles. 

As  in  the  Electra,  we  have  two  sisters  holding  different  views  ;  Antig- 
one urges  Ismene  to  join  her  in  the  plan  she  has  formed  of  burying 
their  brother,  but  is  met  by  timidity  and  reluctance.  In  the  first  scene 
not  only  the  action  of  the  play,  but  the  character  of  Antigone  and  the 
opposition  that  she  is  to  meet  with,  are  clearly  indicated  with  the 
swiftness  and  vividness  that  mark  a  master's  hand.  Antigone  has  all 
the  determination,  but  not  violence,  that  is  required  for  the  deliberate 
violation  of  a  king's  command,  and  it  is  the  firmness  and  unswerving 
courage  of  her  character  that  is  enforced  throughout.  Naturally 
enough  these  traits  cannot  be  brought  out  without  the  sacrifice  of  the 
opposite  qualities;  hence  there  adheres  to  Antigone  a  flavor  of  harsh- 
ness which  can  scarcely  fail  to  strike  modern  readers,  whose  womanly 
ideal  for  centuries  has  been  a  docile  and  yielding  being  without  a  will 
or,  one  may  say,  a  mind  of  her  own.  The  prudent  and  timid  Ismene 
is  much  more  nearly  a  modern  heroine  than  is  her  sister,  who,  single 
handed,  fights  in  defense  of  piety  against  despotic  law. 

After  Creon  has  pronounced  his  edict  that  no  one  shall  pay  any 
honors  to  the  corpse  of  Polyneices,  a  guard  enters,  and  with  all  the 
clumsiness  that  in  our  novels  and  plays  is  put  in  the  mouth  of  an  Irish 
or  Scotch  peasant   informs  the  king  that  some  one  has  paid  honors  to 


GREEK   TRAGEDY  NOT  ARTIFICIAL.  323 

the    dead  soldier ;    soon    the   guilty  Antigone    is    brought  in  before 
Creon,  who  asks  if  it  was  she  who  dared  to  disobey  his  laws. 

"  Yes,"  she  answers,  "  for  it  was  not  Zeus  that  gave  them  forth, 
Nor  Justice,  dwelling  with  the  gods  below, 
Who  traced  these  laws  for  all  the  sons  of  men  ; 
Nor  did  I  deem  thy  edicts  strong  enough, 
That  thou,  a  mortal  man,  should'st  over-pass 
The  unwritten  laws  of  God  that  know  not  change. 
They  are  not  of  to-day  nor  yesterday. 
But  live  forever,  nor  can  man  assign 
When  first  they  sprang  to  being.     Not  through  fear 
Of  any  man's  resolve  was  I  prepared 
Before  the  gods  to  bear  the  penalty 
Of  sinning  against  these.     That  I  should  die 
I  know,  (how  should  I  not  Y)  though  thy  decree 
Had  never  spoken.     And,  before  my  time 
If  I  shall  die,  I  reckon  this  a  gain  ; 
For  whoso  lives,  as  I,  in  many  woes. 
How  can  it  be  but  he  shall  gain  by  death  ? 
And  so  for  me  to  bear  this  doom  of  thine 
Has  nothing  painful.     But,  if  I  had  left 
My  mother's  son  unburied  on  his  death. 
In  that  I  should  have  suffered  ;  but  in  this 
I  suffer  not.     And  should  I  seem  to  thee 
To  do  a  foolish  deed,  'tis  simply  this, — 
I  bear  the  charge  of  folly  from  a  fool." 

Here  we  have  a  complete  statement  of  Antigone's  ground  of  action, 
and  in  the  last  fling  we  have  a  vigorous  disproof  of  the  error  that  has 
become  a  part  of  the  conception  of  Greek  tragedy  as  a  cold  and  arti- 
ficial thing. 

Just  before,  the  half-amusing  thick-wittedness  of  the  soldier  has 
shown  that  not  in  modern  times  alone  have  writers  been  able  to  enrich 
their  work  with  little  touches  of  nature,  such  as  one  is  unaccustomed 
to  expect  in  Greek  tragedies ;  for  these  have  been  spoken  of  as  remote 
and  inaccessible  storehouses  of  difficult  figures  of  speech,  icy  meta- 
phors, and  fantastic  feeling.  Yet  the  more  they  are  examined  the 
richer  are  they  found  in  human  sympathies.  It  is  not  easy  for  us  to 
form  a  satisfactory  conception  of  the  extent  to  which  this  very  play 
would  appeal  to  all  Greeks  with  their  vivid  feeling  of  the  necessity  of 
conferring  funeral  rites  upon  their  dead ;  but  through  this  crust  of  ob- 
solete ceremonial  there  breathes  the  human  soul  in  trouble,  and  that 
is  enough.  In  the  speech  just  given  of  Antigone  it  is  not  lack  of 
sympathy  that  we  feel ;  we  see  the  earnest  sense  of  duty  that  animates 
the  heroine,  her  wrath,  and  the  engaging  candor  of  her  tongue.  She 
is  preparing  her  own  fate,  just  as  truly  as,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may 
see  in  Creon  the  personification  of  rigid  laws  obstinately  deaf  to  all 
the  surrounding  influences  that  gradually  place  themselves  in  oppo- 
sition to  his  cruelty. 


324 


SOPHOCLES. 


Ismene  is  accused  by  him  of  aiding  Antigone  in  her  opposition  to 
his  commands,  and  wishes  to  share  her  sister's  punishment,  but  her 
generosity  only  serves  as  a  foil  to  Antigone's  cruel  isolation.  Ismene 
further  entreats  Creon  to  pardon  Antigone,  who  is  betrothed  to  his  son 
Haemon,  and  the  chorus  add  their  prayers,  but  the  tyrant  is  obstinate. 
Haemon  himself  urges  his  father  to  clemency,  pointing  out  the  king's 
advantage  rather  than  his  own  personal  wishes,  but  in  vain.  Creon 
orders  Antigone  to  be  immured  in  a  cave  to  die  alone.  Every  interfer- 
ence is  fruitless,  and  Antigone  is  borne  to  her  living  tomb,  mourning 
her  untimely  fate,  but  not  shaken  in  her  consciousness  of  right-doing. 
The  chorus  sympathize  with  her,  and  it  is  interesting  to  notice  how 
certainly,  if  slowly,  sympathy  is  aroused  in  behalf  of  the  doomed 
heroine.     Their  pity,  too,  is  made  to  appear  more  valuable  by  her 

rigidity  and  harshness.  Had  she 
shown  an  appealing  gentleness  or 
grace,  she  would  have  never  lacked 
defenders,  but  without  them  she 
finally  won  the  sincerest  pity. 

After  Creon's  orders  have  been 
carried  out,  the  old  seer  Teiresias 
appears  and  foretells  all  manner  of 
woe  to  Creon,  who  finally  consents 
to  yield.  But  it  is  too  late.  The 
messenger  enters  with  tidings  of 
Haemon's  death  by  his  own  hands, 
after  a  vain  effort  to  kill  his  father,  by 
the  side  of  Antigone,  who  had 
lianged  herself.  Eurydice,  Creon's 
wife,  hears  this  news  with  horror  and 
disappears ;  soon  another  messen- 
ger comes  in  to  announce  that  she 
too  has  slain  herself,  and  Creon's  cup 
of  unhappiness  is  full,  his  spirit  is 
broken.  The  tragic  conflict  has  at 
least  not  been  complicated  by  sym.- 
pathy  with  him.  Indeed,  there  is  a 
repellant  quality  in  both  Creon 
and  Antigone  which  gives  them 
a  similitude  rather  to  abstract  personifications  than  to  living  beings,.- 
and  when  we  remember  how  frequently  this  play  was  translated  at  the 
time  of  the  Renaissance  we  may  perhaps  conjecture  that  some  of  the 
coldness  of  the  early  imitations  of  the  classical  plays  was  inspired  by 
the  willful  copying  of  this  fault,  which  seemed  to  have  all  the  authority 


TEIRESIAS. 


REALITIES  OF  LIFE    THE   SUBJECTS  OF  SOPHOCLES.  325 

of  Greece  behind  it.  It  is  not  at  first  clear  how  much  fanaticism  Hke 
that  which  possessed  Antigone  fills  the  heart  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
qualities,  and  the  time  had  not  yet  come  when  poets  had  learned  that 
bitterness  and  determination  might  be  found  in  combination  with 
softness  and  gentleness,  and  Antigone  is  a  legendary  heroine,  not  a 
modern  Nihilist. 

Yet  while  the  play  moves  in  a  remote  region,  there  is  scarcely  any 
other  work  of  Sophocles  in  which  the  lyrical  part  sounds  a  higher 
note,  where  the  especial  dramatic  interest  so  thoroughly  combines  with 
the  universal,  lasting  truth.  Here  we  have  Sophocles  at  his  best,  as 
in  the  first  stasimon.  The  reader  will  notice  at  once  the  fact  that  the 
poet  has  chosen  for  his  subject  the  realities  of  life,  and  is  far  removed 
from  the  consideration  of  the  remote  questions  that  agitated  the  soul 
of  ^schylus.     It  is  a  modern  who  is  speaking. 

STROPH.  I. 

Chor.  Many  the  forms  of  life, 

Wondrous  and  strange  to  see, 

But  nought  than  man  appears 

More  wondrous  and  more  strange. 

He,  with  the  wintry  gales. 

O'er  the  the  white  foaming  sea, 

'Mid  wild  waves  surging  round, 

Wendeth  his  way  across  : 

Earth,  of  all  Gods,  from  ancient  days  the  first, 

Unworn  and  undecayed. 

He,  with  his  ploughs  that  travel  o'er  and  o'er, 

Furrowing  with  horse  and  mule. 

Wears  ever  year  by  year. 

ANTISTROPH.  I. 

The  thoughtless  tribe  of  birds. 

The  beasts  that  roam  the  fields. 

The  brood  in  sea-depths  born, 

He  takes  them  all  in  nets 

Knotted  in  snaring  mesh, 

Man,  wonderful  in  skill. 

And  by  his  subtle  arts 

He  holds  in  sway  the  beasts 

That  roam  the  fields,  or  tread  the  mountain's  height, 

And  brings  the  binding  yoke 

Upon  the  neck  of  horse  with  shaggy  mane. 

Or  bull  on  mountain  crest. 

Untamable   in  strength. 

STROPH.  II. 

And  speech,  and  thought  as  swift  as  wind, 
And  tempered  mood  for  higher  life  of  states. 
These  he  has  learnt,  and  how  to  flee 
Or  the  clear  cold  of  frost  unkind, 
Or  darts  of  storm  and  shower, 


326  SOPHOCLES. 

Man  all-providing.     Unprovided,  he 

Meeteth  no  chance  the  coming  days  may  bring ; 

Only  from  Hades,  still 

He  fails  to  find  escape, 

Though  skill  of  art  may  teach  him  how  to  flee 

From  depths  of  fell  disease  incurable. 

ANTISTROPH.  II. 

So,  gifted  with  a  wondrous  might, 

Above  all  fancy's  dreams,  with  skill  to  plan, 

Now  unto  evil,  now  to  good. 

He  turns.     While  holding  fast  the  laws. 

His  country's  sacred  rights. 

That  rest  upon  the  oath  of  Gods  on  high, 

High  in  the  State  :  an  outlaw  from  the  State, 

When  loving,  in  his  pride, 

The  thing  that  is  not  good  ; 

Ne'er  may  he  share  my  hearth,  nor  yet  my  thoughts, 

Who  worketh  deeds  of  evil  like  to  this. 

Even  more  impressive  is  the  second  stasimon,  given  below,  although 
in  both  of  these  extracts  it  is  impossible  not  to  observe  how  much  the 
author  seems  to  be  sitting  outside  of  his  work,  and  to  be  commenting 
upon  it,  in  a  most  impressive  and  beautiful  way,  to  be  sure,  but  yet 
with  a  different  conception  of  the  quality  of  the  choral  performance 
from  that  which  we  saw  in  .^schylus.  In  other  words,  the  drama  was 
undergoing  its  normal  development,  in  which  action  becomes  more 
prominent,  and  the  lyric  part  is  still  a  graceful  accompaniment, 
but  distinctly  an  accompaniment ;  its  further  modification  will 
be  seen  in  the  work  of  Euripides.  It  is  not  an  actor  in  the 
play  who  indulges  in  these  reflections  on  human  life,  but  the 
author,  who  takes  advantage  of  the  pause  in  the  action  to  accen- 
tuate the  mood  into  which  he  wishes  to  throw  his  hearers.  The 
whole  conception  of  the  drama  is  in  process  of  change — he  would  be 
a  bold  man  who  would  say  whether  for  the  better  or  the  worse,  for 
in  the  whole  modification  something  is  lost  for  everything  that  is 
gained  ;  it  remains  for  us  to  notice  the  course  of  events,  and,  by 
understanding  it,  to  be  able  to  appreciate  what  was  done.  Such  con- 
duct has  at  least  one  swift  and  sure  reward  :  comprehension  of  dif- 
ferent conditions  can  not  fail  to  bring  an  enlargement  of  the  capacity 
of  enjoyment.     A  botanist,  for  example,  will  love  all  flowers. 

STROPH.  I. 

Chor.  Blessed  a.re  those  whose  life  no  woe  doth  taste ! 
For  unto  those  whose  house 
The  Gods  have  shaken,  nothing  fails  of  curse 
Or  woe,  that  creeps  to  generations  far. 
E'en  thus  a  wave,  (when  spreads. 
With  blasts  from  Thrakian  coasts. 


EXTRACT  FROM  ''ANTIGONE:'  3^7 

The  darkness  of  the  deep,) 

Up  from  the  sea's  abyss 

Hither  and  thither  rolls  the  black  sand  on, 

And  every  jutting  peak, 

Swept  by  the  storm-wind's  strength, 

Lashed  by  the  fierce  wild  waves. 

Re-echoes  with  the  far-resounding  roar. 

ANTISTROPH.   I. 

I  see  the  woes  that  smote,  in  ancient  days. 

The  seed  of  Labdacos, 

Who  perished  long  ago,  with  grief  on  grief 

Still  falling,  nor  does  this  age  rescue  that ; 

Some  god  still  smites  it  down. 

Nor  have  they  any  end  : 

For  now  there  rose  a  gleam. 

Over  the  last  weak  shoots. 

That  sprang  from  out  the  race  of  CEdipus  ; 

Yet  this  the  blood-stained  scythe 

Of  those  that  reign  below 

Cuts  off  relentlessly. 

And  maddened  speech,  and  frenzied  rage  of  heart. 

STROPH.  II. 

Thy  power,  O  Zeus,  what  haughtiness  of  man, 

Yea,  what  can  hold  in  check  ? 

Which  neither  sleep,  that  maketh  all  things  old, 

Nor  the  long  months  of  Gods  that  never  fail. 

Can  for  a  moment  seize. 

But  still  as  Lord  supreme. 

Waxing  not  old  with  time. 

Thou  dwellest  in  Thy  sheen  of  radiancy 

On  far  Olympos'  height. 

Through  future  near  or  far  as  through  the  past. 

One  law  holds  ever  good. 

Naught  comes  to  life  of  man  unscathed  throughout  by  woe. 

ANTISTROPH.  II. 

For  hope  to  many  comes  in  wanderings  wild, 

A  solace  and  support ; 

To  many  as  a  cheat  of  fond  desires. 

And  creepeth  still  on  him  who  knows  it  not, 

Until  he  burn  his  foot 

Within  the  scorching"  flame. 

Full  well  spake  one  of  old, 

That  evil  ever  seems  to  be  as  good 

To  those  whose  thoughts  of  heart 

God  leadeth  unto  woe, 

And  without  woe,  he  spends  but  shortest  space  of  time. 

IV. 

It  is  to  these  choruses  as  well  as  to  the  vigor  with  which  the  char- 
acter of  Antigone  is  drawn  that  the  play  owes  its  long-lived  reputation. 
Yet  while  a  trace  of  coldness  adheres  to  this  play,  against  the  King 


>^ 


v^ 


<h 


328  SOPHOCLES. 

CEdipus  no  such  charge  can  be  brought.     This  tragedy  is  by  general 
assent  the  best  that  Sophocles  wrote,  and  none  shows  more  clearly  the 
changes  that  he  introduced  into  the  dramatic  art.     Then,  too,  there  is 
, '^^  perhaps  some  uncertainty  as  to  how  much  blame  is  to  be  ascribed  to 
A    ^  the  guilty  king  and  how  much  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  work  of  blind 
\^  fate,  but  to  the  Greeks  this  question  may  have  been  less  important 

\ -5^    than  it  appears  to  us.     The  story  was  part  of  an  old  myth,  and  these 
myths,  with  all  their  obscurity,  were  practically  ancient    history,  and 
\y  were  not  subject  to  critical  examination.     They  were  frankly  accepted 

>{v  ^  ^S  *  without  questioning,  and  even  in  the  play,  as  we  read  it,  the  fault  by 
which  CEdipus  falls  is  made  to  coincide  with  a  defect  in  his  character, 
and  the  vast  impression  of  sympathy  with  the  wretched  hero  dulls  our 
desire  to  determine  his  strict  accountability.  Misery  is  misery,  how- 
ever caused  ;  and  we  do  not  always  have  a  case  submitted  to  legal 
adjudication  before  granting  our  pity. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  play,  CEdipus,  King  of  Thebes,  appears 
among  the  populace,  who  are  praying  at  the  altar  for  divine  aid  against 
the  pestilence  that  is  afflicting  them.  An  aged  priest,  in  answer  to  his 
questions,  asks  him,  who  had  long  been  their  chief  supporter,  to  find 
some  succor  for  them.  He  makes  reply  that  he  had  already  sent 
Creon,  his  kinsman,  to  Delphi  to  learn  what  was  to  be  done  to  save 
the  state,  and  just  then  Creon  returns  with  the  order  that  the  city 
purge  itself  of  guilt  by  expelling  from  within  its  walls  the  murderers 
of  Laius,  a  former  king.  CEdipus  is  at  once  anxious  to  obey  the 
behest  of  the  oracle,  and  promises  all  the  assistance  in  his  power,  and 
to  carry  out  his  purpose  he  consults  Teiresias,  the  blind  seer,  for  such 
revelations  as  he  may  be  able  to  make.  Teiresias,  however,  declines 
to  give  any  satisfactory  information,  on  the  ground  that  by  so  doing  he 
will  inflict  pain  on  CEdipus.  This  answer  makes  the  king  furious, 
and  he  charges  Teiresias  with  being  an  accomplice  of  the  murderers 
of  Laius.  Thereupon  the  seer  asserts  that  it  is  CEdipus  who  is 
the  defiler  of  the  land,  that  he  is  the  murderer  whom  they  seek,  and 
that  he  lives  in  shame  with  his  nearest  kin,  and  he  foretells  his 
speedy  downfall.  These  utterances  CEdipus  mistakes  for  mere  angry 
denunciation,  and  he  suspects  that  they  are  part  of  Creon's  work, 
and  when  Creon  appears  he  accuses  him  of  treachery.  CEdipus  is 
full  of  wrath  and  distraught  with  pain  at  the  discovery  that  he  im- 
agines that  he  has  made,  while  Creon  is  calm  and  reasonable.  At  the 
"^  height  of  the  quarrel,  when  the  king  has  threatened  Creon   with  death 

and  Creon  has  refused  to  submit,  Jocasta,  the  wife  of  CEdipus,  the  sis- 
ter of  Creon,  appears  and  tries  to  pacify  her  husband.  She  urges  him 
to  renew  his  trust  in  Creon,  and  as  to  Teiresias,  she  says  tha:t  his 
pretended  knowledge  is  mere  pretension,  for  long  since  he  told  Laius 


4 


CEDIPUS  AND    THE   SEER.  329 

that  the  gods  had  said  he  was  to  die  by  his  son's  hand,  whereas  he  was 
slain  by  robbers,  and  as  to  their  son,  they  pierced  his  ankles  and  cast 
him  forth  on  a  lonely  hill  when  but  three  days  old.  How  then  could 
he  have  been  his  father's  murderer  ?  The  truth  then  unrolls  itself 
before  CEdipus  ;  he  remembers  how  he  slew  a  stranger  on  the  highway, 
and  the  worst  fears  threaten  him  lest  he  should  be  proved  the  mur- 
derer of  Laius.  But  he  does  not  yet  suspect  that  Laius  was  his 
father  ;  he  only  fears  lest,  expelled  from  Thebes,  he  shall  be  a  wan- 
derer on  the  face  of  the  earth,  unable  to  visit  his  parents  from  dread 
of  the  curse  that  awaits  him,  that  he  shall  slay  his  father  and  marry 
his  mother.  He  sends  for  the  servant  who  brought  the  news  of  the 
murder  of  Laius ;  meanwhile  news  is  brought  to  Jocasta  of  the  death 
of  Polybus  of  Corinth,  who  was  thought  to  be  the  father  of  QEdipus, 
and  the  inaccuracy  of  the  oracle  appears  to  be  certain,  for  the  hands  of 
CEdipus  were  not  stained  with  his  father's  blood.  The  queen  rejoices 
at  this  news,  but  her  husband's  anxiety  is  not  wholly  allayed  ;  the 
other  peril,  incestuous  union  with  his  mother,  appears  still  to  threaten 
him.  The  messenger,  however,  is  able  to  assure  him  that  he  is  not  in 
fact  the  son  of  Polybus  and  Merope,  but  a  foundling  whom  he  him- 
self gave  to  Merope,  and  that  she  brought  him  up  as  her  own  son. 
This  statement  unfolds  the  whole  terrible  truth  to  Jocasta,  who  en- 
treats her  husband  to  push  his  questioning  no  further,  but  he,  on  the 
track  of  his  origin,  can  not  pause,  and  when  the  shepherd  appears  who 
had  been  commissioned  to  make  way  with  him  but  had  spared  his 
life  out  of  pity,  CEdipus  plies  him  with  eager  inquiry.  The  whole 
horror  then  comes  out  ;  Jocasta  was  his  mother,  and  had  plotted  her 
son's  death  to  evade  the  oracle,  which  had  been  completely  fulfilled. 
CEdipus  in  horror  leaves  the  stage.  After  a  lyric  interlude  of  the 
chorus,  a  messenger  enters  who  tells  how  Jocasta  had  hanged  herself 
and  CEdipus  had  blinded  himself;  scarcely  has  he  finished  when  the 
doors  of  the  palace  are  thrown  open,  and  CEdipus  comes  forward  over- 
whelmed with  misery.  Creon,  on  whom  the  government  has  fallen, 
relieves  the  fierce  strain  of  unhappiness  that  marks  this  scene  by  his 
generosity.  CEdipus  asks  that  he  may  go  into  banishment,  and  that 
his  two  daughters,  Antigone  and  Ismene,  may  be  kindly  cared  for. 
He  begs,  too,  to  have  them  brought  in  : 

"  Could  I  but  touch  them  with  my  hands,  I  feel 
Still  I  should  have  them  mine,  as  when  I  saw." 

The  children  appear,  and  the  whole  black  night  of  tragedy  is  at 
once  condensed  into  a  form  of  pathos  that  appeals  to  every  reader 
who  can  place  himself  in  the  position    of   a  spectator  of  the  acted 


330 


SOPHOCLES. 


play.  The  groping  hands  of  the  guilty  king  and  the  unconscious 
innocence  of  the  children  present  a  contrast  that  needs  no  comment. 
It  is  a  touch  that  melts  the  heart  heavy  with  the  slow  accumulation 
of  guilt,  as  some  tender  memorial  of  lost  happiness  brings  tears  to  the 
eyes  of  those  who  are  petrified  with  inexpressible  grief. 

When  the  father  is  bidden  to  part  from  them,  the  play  ends,  and  the 
chorus  utters  its  last  injunction  to  call  no   one  happy  until  his  death. 


BLINDING   OF   CEDIPUS. 


This  tragedy  certainly  enforces  the  lesson  of  the  vicissitudes  of  life, 
and,  as  it  stands,  it  is  a  worthy  memorial  of  the  perfection  of  the  Greek 
tragic  art.  Not  only  is  the  story  impressive,  but  the  way  in  which  the 
incidents  are  accumulated  and  the  interest  is  advanced  from  point  to 
point  is  most  noteworthy.  The  action  does  not  move  in  one  steady 
course,  like  the  slow  rising  of  a  tide  which  gradually  submerges  the 
characters,  but  they  are  rather  overwhelmed  by  successive  waves. 
After  CEdipus  is  charged  with  the  murder  of  Laius,  alarm  fills  the 
soul,  but  the  worst  dread  of  the  fate  the  oracle  foretells  is  dispelled  for 
a  moment  by  hearing  of  the  death  of  Polybus ;  his  fear  of  committing 
incest  with  his  mother  is  temporarily  removed  by  learning  that  he  is 
not  the  son  of  Merope  ;  only  by  successive  steps  does  the  truth  appear, 
and  it  is  in  these  gradations  that  we  see  the  successive  complications 
of  the  plot  and  their  close  interweaving. 

That  the  ancients  regarded  the  play  as  a  masterpiece  of  skill  is 
evident  from  Aristotle's  many  references  to  it  as  a  model  play,  and 
the  admiration  of  moderns  is  no  less  genuine.     When  it  was  brought 


MODERN  REPRESENTATIONS  OF    THE    GREEK  PLAYS.  331 

out  is  uncertain,  but  it  was  apparently  after  the  Antigone  and  before 
the  CEdipus  at  Colonus,  that  is  to  say,  between  439  and  412  B.C. 

Those  who  saw  this  play  acted  at  Harvard  College  in  the  spring 
of  1881,  or  those  who  have  seen  any  of  the  not  infrequent  represen- 
tations of  Greek  plays,  such  as  the  Antigone  and  the  Agamemnon, 
have  learned  what  reading  in  the  closet  can  scarcely  teach,  how  won- 
derfully adapted  for  the  stage  are  these  pieces.  Only  by  such  means 
can  one  understand  their  vivacity  and  action,  as  well  as  the  inaccuracy 
of  the  literary  notion  that  they  are  cold  and  statuesque.  Far  from  it ; 
they  abound  with  life  and  are  in  no  way  scholastic  accumulations  of 
declamatory  dialogue,  as  they  have  been  sometimes  regarded  when 
spelled  out  from  a  lexicon.  It  is  to  this  weariness  of  the  dictionary 
that  is  in  part  due  the  artificial  solemnity  of  the  modern  imitations 
of  Greek  plays,  for  the  difference  is  very  great  between  the  freedom 
enjoyed  by  men  who  are  making  literary  models  and  the  heavy  bonds 
worn  by  the  men  who  are  imitating  them  in  cold  blood. 

V. 

The  CEdipus  at  Colonus,  which  had  for  its  subject  the  last  days  of 
the  unhappy  king,  is  not  the  second  part  of  a  trilogy  which  is  con- 
cluded by  the  Antigone.  Sophocles  did  not  present  a  coherent  se- 
quence of  plays  in  that  form,  but  rather  a  series  of  wholly  discon- 
nected tragedies.  Moreover,  there  are  discrepancies  in  the  treatment 
of  the  legend,  and  varieties  in  the  drawing  of  the  characters,  which 
would  have  been  impossible  had  the  interdependence  of  the  separate 
members  been  designed.  Thus,  at  the  end  of  King  CEdipus,  that 
monarch  moves  away  into  exile  from  all  human  society,  but  in  the 
play  that  is  now  before  us  we  learn  that  he  has  dwelt  for  some  time  in 
Thebes,  and  is  indignant  with  Creon  and  his  own  sons  when  he  is  sent 
into  banishment.  In  the  Antigone,  again,  we  are  told  that  CEdipus 
died  immediately  after  blinding  himself,  and  in  all  these  plays  there 
are  great  differences  in  the  character  of  Creon,  all  of  which  diver- 
gences from  a  single  design  go  to  prove  the  separate  intention  of 
each  of  the  three  plays.  Yet  the  CEdipus  at  Colonus  Avas  doubtless 
written  with  the  intention  of  furnishing  some  pacifying  solution  to 
the  stormy  career  of  that  unhappy  hero  who  held  so  important  a 
place  in  the  imaginations  of  the  Greeks  ;  and  in  the  plot  of  this  play 
we  find  Sophocles  making  use  of  his  own  invention  rather  than  of  the 
current  form  of  the  legend.  Yet  he  had  authority  for  the  turn  that  he 
gave  the  story  in  a  local  tradition,  according  to  which  the  last  days  of 
CEdipus  were  spent  within  the  boundaries  of  Attica.  There  he  was  , 
said  to  have  found  a  refuge,  and  to  lie  buried,  in  return  for  which  kind-  \ 


332  SOPHOCLES. 

ness  he  became  a  protecting  deity  of  that  country.     Action  is  lent  to 

this  meager  outline  by  representing  the  king  as  sought  for  in  Thebes 

by  Creon  and  also  by  Polyneices,  his  son.     Creon   makes   use  first  of 

craft  and  then  of  force  ;  Polyneices  is  a  humble  suppliant  for  the  favors 

which  the  oracles  have  promised  shall  attend  his  father's  presence. 

/  Creon,  indeed,  goes  so  far  as  to  have  Antigone  and  Ismene  seized  to  be 

I  carried  away  from  the  helpless  old  man,  but  Theseus  of  Athens  is  at 

'  hand  and  puts  a  stop  to  such  frowardness.     The  play  gives  even  in 

this  form  but  a  small  chance  for  dramatic  action,  which,  moreover,  is 

rendered  inappropriate  by  the  hero's  age  and  condition,  so  that  the 

whole  interest  centers  in  the  art  with  which  the  comparatively  placid 

story  unfolds  itself. 

The  play  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  the  last  that  Sophocles  wrote, 
and  the  general  impression  that  the  reader  receives  from  it  corrobo- 
rates this  view ;  the  languor  that  pervades  it,  the  general  compre- 
hension of  old  age,  distinguish  it  from  the  more  vivid  and  glowing 
pictures  of  life  with  which  his  other  work  is  filled.  Tradition  says, 
too'  as  has  been  remarked  above,  that  the  author  recited  one  of  the 
choruses  in  disproof  of  the  charge  of  senility,  but,  like  all  traditions, 
this  one  has  suffered  from  the  onslaughts  of  critics  who  have  torn  it 
to  tatters,  but  its  picturesqueness  survives  its  certainty. 

The  play  presents  another  interesting  side  in  the  comparison  that 
it  suggests  with  the  Eumenides  of  ^schylus,  and  in  the  contrast  that 
it  presents  to  the  austerer  treatment  of  the  earlier  poet.  The  play  of 
Sophocles  knows  nothing  of  the  terrible  side  of  the  furies  ;  their  shrine 
is  a  holy  place  which  CEdipus  unconsciously  enters  without  intention 
of  desecration,  and  they  are  at  once  reconciled  by  his  offerings.  The 
divine  favor  immediately  follows  these  religious  rites,  and  he  is  con- 
soled by  recalling  the  oracle  that  in  this  place  he  should  die.  There 
is  no  moment  of  doubt,  no  prolonged  conflict,  as  in  the  trial  scene  of 
the  Eumenides ;  every  thing  moves  uninterruptedly  to  the  solemn 
death  of  CEdipus,  at  last  pardoned  and  at  peace.  Even  the  tears  of 
his  two  daughters  are  checked  by  Theseus,  who  says  : 

"  Over  those 
For  whom  the  night  of  death  as  blessing  comes, 
We  may  not  mourn.     Such  grief  the  gods  chastise." 

It  is,  too,  in  the  infinite  grace  of  Sophocles  when  he  celebrates  the 
culture,  justice,  and  moderation  of  Athens  that  we  notice  the  differ- 
ence between  him  and  ^schylus,  who  made  full  use  of  his  oppor- 
tunity to  terrify  the  spectators  with  ghastly  scenes.  Sophocles,  on 
the  other  hand,  lets  solemn  pathos  and  religious  awe  take  the  place  of 
complete  terror.     We  see  another  change  in  the  dawnings  of  the  mel- 


/ 


334  SOPHOCLES. 

ancholy  that  accompanies  every  period  of  ripe  culture,  as  in  these 
Hnes : 

"  O  son  of  yEgeus,  unto  gods  alone 
Nor  age  can  come,  nor  destined  hour  of  death. 
All  else  the  almighty  Ruler,  Time,  sweeps  on. 
Earth's  strength  shall  wither,  wither  strength  of  limb, 
And  trust  decays,  and  mistrust  grows  apace  ; 
And  the  same  spirit  lasts  not  among  them 
That  once  were  friends,  nor  joineth  state  with  state. 
To  these  at  once,  to  those  in  after  years. 
Sweet  things  grow  bitter,  then  turn  sweet  again. 
And  what  if  now  at  Thebes  all  things  run  smooth 
And  well  toward  thee.  Time,  in  myriad  change, 
A  myriad  nights  and  days  brings  forth ;  and  thus 
In  these,  for  some  slight  cause,  they  yet  may  spurn 
In  battle,  all  their  pledge  of  faithfulness." 

This  passage,  by  the  way,  it  is  plausibly  supposed,  contains  a  refer- 
ence to  the  political  relations  between  Athens  and  Thebes  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Peloponnesian  war.  But  besides  this  possible  historical 
value,  it  contains  very  distinctly  the  mark  of  the  period  as  an  indi- 
cation of  the  breaking  away  of  the  confidence  and  buoyancy  that 
found  expression  in  ^Eschylus.  The  Peloponnesian  war  itself  is  but 
the  outward  sign  of  the  same  change. 

The  allusions  to  Athens  and  Colonus,  the  poet's  birthplace,  have 
a  wonderful  charm,  as  these  lines,  which  Sophocles  is  said  to  have 
recited  in  disproof  of  the  charge  of  mental  decay,  will  show  : 

•    STROPH.   I. 

Chor.  Of  all  the  land  far  famed  for  goodly  steeds. 
Thou  com'st,  O  stranger,  to  the  noblest  spot, 
Colonos,  glistening  bright. 
Where  evermore,  in  thickets  freshly  green, 
The  clear-voiced  nightingale 
Still  haunts,  and  pours  her  song. 
By  purpling  ivy  hid, 

And  the  thick  leafage  sacred  to  the  God, 
With  all  its  myriad  fruits, 
By  mortal's  foot  untouched. 
By  sun's  hot  ray  unscathed. 
Sheltered  from  every  blast ; 
There  wanders  Dionysos  evermore, 
In  full,  wild  revelry, 
And  waits  upon  the  nymphs  who  nursed  his  youth. 

ANTISTROPH.   I. 

And  there,  beneath  the  gentle  dews  of  heaven, 

The  fair  narcissus  with  its  clustered  bells 

Blooms  ever,  day  by  day. 

Of  old  the  wreath  of  mightiest  Goddesses; 

And  crocus  golden-eyed  ; 

And  still  unslumbering  flow 


SOPHOCLES'   PRAISE    OF  COLONUS.  335 

Kephisos'  wandering  streams  ; 

They  fail  not  from  their  spring,  but  evermore. 

Swift-rushing  into  birth, 

Over  the  plain  they  sweep. 

The  land  of  broad,  full  breast. 

With  clear  and  stainless  wave  ; 

Nor  do  the  Muses  in  their  minstrel  choirs, 

Hold  it  in  slight  esteem, 

Nor  Aphrodite  with  her  golden  reins. 

STROPH.  II. 

And  in  it  grows  a  marvel  such  as  ne'er 

On  Asia's  soil  I  heard. 

Nor  the  great  Dorian  isle  from  Pelops  named, 

A  plant  self-sown,  that  knows 

No  touch  of  withering  age. 

Terror  of  hostile  swords. 

Which  here  on  this  our  ground 

Its  high  perfection  gains. 

The  gray-green  foliage  of  the  olive-tree, 

Rearing  a  goodly  race: 

And  nevermore  shall  man. 

Or  young,  or  bowed  with  years, 

Give  forth  the  fierce  command, 

And  lay  it  low  in  dust. 

For  lo  !     The  eye  of  Zeus, 

Zeus  of  our  olive  groves. 

That  sees  eternally, 

Casteth  its  glance  thereon. 

And  she,  Athena,  with  the  clear,  gray  eyes. 

ANTISTROPH.  II. 

And  yet  another  praise  is  mine  to  sing. 
Gift  of  the  mighty  God 
To  this  our  city,  mother  of  us  all. 
Her  greatest,  noblest  boast, 
Famed  for  her  goodly  steeds. 
Famed  for  her  bounding  colts. 
Famed  for  her  sparkling  sea. 
Poseidon,  son  of  Kronos,  Lord  and  King, 
To  thee  this  boast  we  owe. 
For  first  in  these  our  streets 
Thou  to  the  untamed  horse 
Did'st  use  the  conquering  bit : 
And  here  the  well-shaped  oar. 
By  skilled  hands  deftly  plied, 
Still  leapeth  through  the  sea. 
Following  in  wondrous  guise. 
The  fair  Nereids  with  their  hundred  feet. 
Antig.  O  land,  thus  blessed  with  praises  that  excel, 
'Tis  now  thy  task  to  prove  these  glories  true. 

Elsewhere  we  find  a  chorus  of  marked  beauty: 

He  who  seeks  length  of  life. 
Slighting  the  middle  path. 
Shall  seem,  to  me  at  least, 


336  SOPHOCLES. 

As  brooding  o'er  vain  dreams. 

Still  the  long  days  have  brought 

Griefs  near,  and  nearer  yet. 

And  joys  —  thou  canst  not  see 

One  trace  of  what  they  were  ; 

When  a  man  passeth  on 
To  length  of  days  beyond  the  rightful  bourne  ; 
But  lo,  the  helper  that  comes  to  all, 
When  doom  of  Hades  looms  upon  his  sight, 

The  bridegroom's  joy  all  gone, 

The  lyre  all  silent  now. 

The  choral  music  hushed, 

Death  comes  at  last. 

Happiest  beyond  compare 

Never  to  taste  of  life  ; 

Happiest  in  order  next, 

Being  born,  with  quickest  speed 

Thither  again  to  turn 

From  whence  we  came. 

When  youth  hath  passed  away. 

With  all  its  follies  light. 

What  sorrow  is  not  there .'' 
What  trouble  then  is  absent  from  our  lot  ? 
Murders,  strifes,  wars,  and  wrath,  and  jealousy, 
And,  closing  life's  long  course,  the  last  and  worst, 

An  age  of  weak  caprice, 

Friendless,  and  hard  of  speech. 

When,  met  in  union  strange, 

Dwell  ills  on  ills. 

And  here  this  woe-worn  one 
(Not  I  alone)  is  found  ; 
As  some  far  northern  shore, 
Smitten  by  ceaseless  waves. 
Is  lashed  by  every  wind  ; 
So  ever-haunting  woes. 
Surging  in  billows  fierce. 
Lash  him  from  crown  to  base ; 
Some  from  the  westering  sun. 
Some  from  the  eastern  dawn, 
These  from  the  noontide  south, 
Those  from  the  midnight  of  Rhiparaean  hills. 


VI. 

In  the  Ajax  of  Sophocles  we  have  what  appears  to  be  an  early  work  of 
that  writer,  and  one  taken  from  the  legendary  history  of  the  Trojan  war. 
Already  yEschylus  had  drawn  from  Homer  and  the  other  later  cyclic 
poets  ;and  Sophocles  also,  in  plays  that  have  been  lost,  showed  a  distinct 
preference  for  these  authorities ;  nearly  a  quarter  of  his  whole  work 
was  taken  from  the  Trojan  myths,  Odysseus  being  the  personage  who 
most  frequently  figured  either  as  a  hero  or  in  a  secondary  part.  This 
is  only  natural  when  we  consider  the  distinct  complexity  of  the  char- 


CONTENTION  FOR  ACHILLES'  ARMOR. 


337 


acter  of  Odysseus,  which  would  especially  attract  the  student  of  psy- 
chology. That  hero  has  what  may  be  called  modern  traits,  especially 
in  contrast  with  the  simpler  incarnations  of  a  single  quality  that  made 
up  the  personages  most  commonly  found  in  the  epics.  Odysseus 
appears,  as  will  be  seen,  in  this  play.      It   opens  with    the   goddess 


CONTENTION   OF  AJAX  AND   ODYSSEUS    BEFORE    AGAMEMNON    FOR   THE   ARMS  OF   ACHILLES. 
(Sarcophagus   relief  from   Ostia.) 

Athene  addressing  him  about  the  madness  of  Ajax.  Ajax  was  a 
mighty  warrior  among  the  Greeks  fighting  against  Troy,  and  in  his 
pride  he  had  offended  Pallas  Athene,  so  that  when  Achilles  died  and 
it  was  announced  that  his  armor  should  be  given  to  the  best  and 
bravest  of  the  army,  Ajax  claimed  it,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  res- 
cued from  wrong  the  corpse  of  Achilles ;  but  Athene  willed  that  it 
should  be  given  not  to  him  but  to  her  favorite  Odysseus.  Aias  in 
his  wrath  sought  to  slay  the  Atreidae,  and  would  have  succeeded  had 
not  Athene  deceived  him  and  let  him  wreak  his  anger  against  the 
flocks  and  herds. 

The  play  begins  with  Athene  telling  Odysseus  of  the  way  in  which 
Ajax  was  deceived,  and  this  she  does,  as  a  critic  has  observed,  with  a 
coldness  and  scorn  that  resembles  the  hard  smile  with  which  that 
deity  was  represented  in  Achaian  art.  She  wishes  Odysseus  to  see 
the  hero  in  his  madness,  but  his  prudence   makes  him  oppose    this 


33^  SOPHOCLES. 

plan.  Yet  Ajax  comes  forth  from  his  tent  and  foretells  the  punish- 
ment he  shall  inflict  on  the  beasts  that  he  mistakes  for  the  hated 
commanders.  Athene  points  the  moral,  namely,  the  danger  of  disre- 
spect to  the  gods. 

"  Do  thou,  then,  seeing  this,  refrain  thy  tongue 
From  any  lofty  speech  against  the  gods, 
Nor  boast  thyself,  though  thou  excel  in  strength 
Or  weight  of  stored-up  wealth.     All  human  things 
A  day  lays  low,  a  day  lifts  up  again  ; 
But  still  the  gods  love  those  of  ordered  soul. 
And  hate  the  evil." 

These  are  her  last  words,  and  then  the  stage  is  left  to  human  beings, 
who  were  the  more  especial  objects  of  dramatic  interest  in  the  works 
of  the  later  writers.  The  action  of  the  play  is  swift :  Ajax,  on  discov- 
ering all  that  he  had  been  led  to,  partly  by  self-will,  partly  by  the  lures 
of  the  goddess,  is  overcome  with  remorse  and  determines  to  kill  him- 
self. This  he  accomplishes  in  spite  of  the  pathetic  entreaties  of  his 
wife,  and  his  love  for  his  infant  son.  After  his  death,  Agamemnon 
and  Menelaus,  still  angry,  denounce  the  dead  hero  and  advise  that  the 
body  be  allowed  no  funeral  rites.  Odysseus  intervenes  and  opposes 
successfully  this  harshness. 

This  prolongation  of  the  interest  after  the  death  of  the  hero,  which 
in  modern  literature  is  a  conclusion  as  absolute  as  it  is  in  law,  or  as  a 
wedding  in  a  novel,  was  something  more  readily  understood  by  the 
ancients  than  it  is  by  us.  The  Athenians,  who  had  recently  condemned 
ten  generals  to  death  for  neglecting  to  perform  funeral  rites  over  the 
bodies  of  slain  soldiers,  could  easily  comprehend,  what  indeed  the 
Antigone  closely  shows,  the  importance  of  these  ceremonies.  Yet 
even  with  all  possible  allowance  made  for  divergence  of  religious  feel- 
ing, there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  in  the  scenes  between  Ajax  and 
Tecmessa  his  wife,  and  when  Ajax  bids  farewell  to  his  son,  and  again 
to  the  world,  that  the  highest  interest  of  the  play  is  to  be  found.  By 
the  side  of  the  dignity  and  emotion  that  prevail  here,  the  noisy  in- 
sults that  the  Greek  leaders  utter  over  a  corpse  are  trivial  and  painful. 
It  is  indeed  the  part  that  is  really  fine  that  carries  the  rest. 

In  other  words,  what  characterizes  the  play  as  an  expression  of  the 
difference  between  Sophocles  and  -^schylus  is  the  growth  of  indivi- 
duality in  the  persons  represented,  and,  in  addition  to  this,  the  frequent 
reference  to  the  altered  conditions  of  Athenian  life,  which  is  beginning 
to  fall  under  the  judgment  and  condemnation  of  the  calm-eyed  poet. 
"  The  tragic  spirit,"  it  has  been  said,  "  is  the  offspring  of  the  conscience 
of  a  people,"  *  and  here  we  find  the  conscience   of  the  people,  facing 

*  Vernon  Lee's  "  Euphorion,"  i.,  io6. 


ATHENIAN  LIFE  IN   THE    TRAGEDIES.  339 

the  current  political  problems  of  the  day,  vividly  foreseeing  its  perils, 
while  the  attempt  is  made  to  overcome  them  by  preaching  and  exam- 
ple. Throughout  its  brief  but  glorious  existence,  Greek  tragedy  was 
full  of  the  reflections  that  contemporary  events  cast  upon  it.  What 
in  vEschylus  was  solemn  joy,  awe,  and  serious  exaltation,  became  a 
calm  vision  of  high  wisdom  in  Sophocles,  who  holds  the  mean  between 
his  illustrious  predecessor  and  Euripides,  who,  as  we  shall  see,  was  torn 
by  a  host  of  distracting  emotions. 

Here  are  some  extracts  to  illustrate  the  noteworthy  sanity  of 
Sophocles ;  some  emphasizing  his  keen  eye  for  character,  and  the  later 
ones  his  political  wisdom : 

For  very  shame 

Leave  not  thy  father  in  his  sad  old  age ; 

For  shame  leave  not  thy  mother,  feeble  grown 

With  many  years,  who  ofttimes  prays  the  Gods 

That  thou  may'st  live  and  to  thy  home  return  ; 

Pity,  O  king,  thy  boy,  and  think  if  he. 

Deprived  of  childhood's  nurture,  live  bereaved, 

Beneath  unfriendly  guardians,  what  sore  grief 

Thou,  in  thy  death,  dost  give  to  him  and  me  ; 

For  I  have  nothing  now  on  earth  save  thee 

To  which  to  look  ;  for  thou  hast  swept  away 

My  country  with  thy  spear,  and  other  fate 

Has  taken  both  my  mother  and  my  sire 

To  dw^ell,  as  dead,  in  Hades.     What  to  me 

Were  country  in  thy  stead,  or  what  were  wealth  } 

For  I  in  thee  find  all  deliverance. 

Yea,  think  of  me  too.     Still  the  good  man  feels, 

Or  ought  to  feel,  the  memory  of  delight ; 

For  gracious  favors  still  do  favor  win  ; 

But  if  a  man  forget  the  good  received, 

His  soul  no  more  wears  stamp  of  gentle  birth. 

AlAS.   Lift  him,  then,  lift  him  here.     He  will  not  shrink, 
Beholding  all  this  slaughter  newly  wrought, 
If  he  be  rightly  named  his  father's  son  : 
But  we  to  these  his  father's  savage  ways 
Must  break  him  in,  and  make  him  like  in  soul. 
O  boy,  may'st  thou  be  happier  than  thy  sire, 
In  all  things  else  be  like  him.     And  not  bad 
Would'st  thou  be  then.     And  yet  thy  lot  e'en  now 
Doth  move  my  envy,  that  thou  feelest  nought 
Of  all  these  evils.     Sweetest  life  is  found 
In  those  unconscious  years  ere  yet  thou  know     • 
Or  joy  or  sorrow.     When  thou  com'st  to  this. 
Then  thou  must  show  thy  breeding  to  thy  foes. 
What  son  of  what  a  father  ;  but  till  then, 
In  gentle  breezes  grow,  and  rear  thy  life 
A  joy  to  this  thy  mother.     And  I  know 
That  none  of  all  the  Achaean  host  will  dare 
Insult  thee  with  foul  scorn,  though  I  be  gone  ; 
Such  a  stout  guardian  will  I  leave  for  thee 
In  Teucros,  still  unsparing  for  thy  need. 
Though  now  far  off  he  hunts  our  enemies. 


340  SOPHOCLES.  . 

And  ye,  who  bear  the  shield,  my  sailor  band. 

On  you  in  common  this  request  1  lay  ; 

Give  him  this  message  from  me,  home  to  take 

This  boy,  and  show  him  there  to  Telamon, 

And  to  my  mother,  Eriboea  named, 

That  he  may  feed  their  age  for  evermore, 

[Till  they  too  enter  the  abode  of  Death  ;] 

And  these  my  arms  no  umpires — no,  nor  yet 

That  plague  of  mine — shall  to  Achasans  give  ; 

But  thou,  my  son,  Eurysakes,  be  true 

To  that  thy  name,  and  holding  by  the  belt 

Well  wrought,  bear  thou  the  sevenfold  shield  unhurt ; 

But  all  my  other  arms  with  me  shall  lie 

Entombed.     And  now,  take  thou  this  boy  indoors 

And  close  the  tent,  and  shed  no  wailing  tears 

Here  in  the  front.     A  woman  still  must  weep. 

Close  up  the  opening  quickly  ;  skillful  leech 

Mutters  no  spell  o'er  sore  that  needs  the  knife. 

***** 

So  for  the  future  we  shall  know  to  yield 

Our  will  to  God's,  shall  learn  to  reverence 

The  Atreidas  even.     They  our  rulers  are, 

And  we  must  yield.     Why  not .?     The  strongest  things 

That  fright  the  soul  still  yield  to  sovereignty. 

Winters  with  all  their  snow-drifts  still  withdraw 

For  summer  with  its  fruits ;  and  night's  dark  orb 

Moves  on, that  day  may  kindle  up  its  fires. 

Day  with  its  chariot  drawn  by  whitest  steeds ; 

And  blast  of  dreadest  winds  will  lull  to  rest 

Thy  groaning  ocean  ;  and  all-conquering  sleep 

Now  binds,  now  frees,  and  does  not  hold  for  aye 

Whom  once  it  seized.     And  shall  not  we  too  learn 

Our  lesson  of  true  wisdom  }     I,  indeed, 

Have  learnt  but  now  that  we  should  hate  a  foe 

Only  so  far  as  one  that  yet  may  love. 

And  to  a  friend  just  so  mucji  help  I'll  give 

As  unto  one  that  will  not  always  stay ; 

For  with  most  men  is  friendship's  haven  found 

Most  treacherous  refuge. 


Never  in  a  state 
Can  laws  be  well  administered  when  dread 
Has  ceased  to  act,  nor  can  an  arm^d  host 
Be  rightly  ruled,  if  no  defence  of  fear 
And  awe  be  present.     But  a  man  should  think, 
Though  sturdy  in  his  frame,  he  yet  may  fall 
By  some  small  chance  of  ill.     And  know  this  well, 
That  he  who  has  both  fear  and  reverence 
Has  also  safety.     But  where  men  are  free 
To  riot  proudly,  and  do  all  their  will, 
That  state,  be  sure,  with  steady-blowing  gale. 
Is  driving  to  destruction,  and  will  fall. 


With  such  a  mood  as  this 
There  can  be  no  establishment  of  law, 
If  we  shall  cast  off  those  whose  right  prevails. 
And  lead  the  hindmost  to  the  foremost  rank. 


THE  PLAY  OF  PHILOCTETES— ODYSSEUS. 


341 


Nay,  we  must  check  these  things.     The  safest  men 
Are  not  the  stout,  broad-shouldered,  brawny  ones, 
But  still  wise  thinkers  everywhere  prevail ; 
And  oxen,  broad  of  back,  by  smallest  scourge 
Are,  spite  of  all,  driven  forward  in  the  way ; 
And  that  sure  spell,  I  see,  will  come  ere  long 
On  thee,  unless  thou  somehow  wisdom  gain. 
Who,  when  thy  lord  is  gone,  a  powerless  shade. 
Art  bold,  with  wanton  insolence  of  speech. 


VII. 

In  the  Philoctetes  we  find  Odysseus  again,  for,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, the  mythological  history  was  of  but  moderate  compass,  so  that 
poets  and  artists  were  continually  representing  according  to  their  re- 
spective arts  the  same  heroes  and  the  same  stories,  .^schylus  and 
Euripides  treated  the  subject  of  this  play ;  their  rendering  has  not 
come  down   to   us,  but  such  scanty   accounts  of  their  work  as  have 


PHILOCTETES    IN    LEMNOS. 


reached  us  indicate  with  some  distinctness  the  characteristic  differences 
of  the  three  men.  Let  us  first  examine  the  play  of  Sophocles.  Accord- 
ing to  the  myth,  Philoctetes  was  one  of  the  wooers  of  Helen,  who 
being  bound  by  an  oath  to  defend  her  in  case  of  any  harm,  joined  the 
army  that  went  out  against  Troy.     On  landing  at  Chryse,  he  rashly 


342 


SOPHOCLES. 


trod  on  sacred  ground  and  was  bitten  on  the  foot  by  a  snake  ;  this 
wound  became  so  noisome  and  the  outcries  of  Philoctetes  so  distracting, 
that  he  was  sent  under  care  of  Odysseus  to  Lemnos,  and  there  he  was 
left,  alone  and  untended.  Meanwhile  the  siege  of  Troy  dragged  on  for 
ten  years.  Hector,  Achilles,  and  Ajax  all  died,  but  the  city  was  not 
taken.  Helenus,  a  son  of  Priam,  was  captured  ;  he  had  the  gift  of 
prophecy  and  declared  that  Troy  would  fall  only  before  a  son  of  Achil- 
les, with  the  bow  of  Heracles.     This  bow' had  been  given  by  Heracles 


HERACLES. 


to  Philoctetes,  consequently  the  Greeks  sent  to  Skyros  for  Neoptole- 
mus,  the  son  of  Achilles,  and  arranged  that  he  and  Odysseus  should 
secure  the  bow  from  Philoctetes.  The  play  opens  with  their  landing 
at  Lemnos.  Odysseus  reminds  Neoptolemus  of  the  object  of  their 
voyage  and  of  the  extreme  need  of  securing  the  bow  and  arrows, 
urging  the  employment  of  deceit,  if  necessary,  for  the  attainment  of 
their  object.  He  can  not  himself  encounter  Philoctetes  because  of 
what  he  had  done  in  banishing  that  hero,  but  his  guileful  spirit 
directs  the  plot.     At  once  Neoptolemus   comes    upon    traces  of  the 


NEOPTOLEMUS  AND  PHILOCTETES.  343 

wretched,  lonely  man,  and  the  action  begins  without  delay.  Neop- 
tolemus  objects  to  the  use  of  guile, 

"  Dost  thou  not  count  it  base  to  utter  lies  ?  " 
he  asks — 

"  Not  so,  when  falsehood  brings  deliverance," 

answers  Odysseus,  and  the  discussion  goes  on  between  the  well-mean, 
ing  boy  and  the  wily  master  of  guile,  until  Neoptolemus  is  wholly  con- 
vinced by  the  ingenuity  of  his  older  companion.  Already  the  art  of 
Sophocles  has  brought  the  scene  down  to  the  conditions  of  human 
life.  Neoptolemus  has  found  in  the  cave  no  other  comforts  than  "  some 
leaves  pressed  down  as  for  some  dweller's  use,"  and  "  a  simple  cup  of 
wood,  the  common  work  of  some  poor  craftsman,  and  this  tinder 
stuff,"  together  with  some  cast-off  bandages  for  his  foot.  When  Phil- 
octetes  appears,  as  he  does  presently,  his  coming  is  heralded  by  his 
groans,  but  his  first  words  are  the  bubbling  forth  of  eager  curiosity  : 

"  Who  are  ye  that  have  come  to  this  our  shore, 
And  by  what  chance  ?  for  neither  is  it  safe 
To  anchor  in,  nor  yet  inhabited. 
What  may  I  guess  your  country  and  your  race  ? 
Your  outward  guise  and  dress  of  Hellas  speak, 
To  me  most  dear,  and  yet  I  fain  would  hear 
Your  speech  ;  and  draw  not  back  from  me  in  dread. 
As  fearing  this  my  wild  and  savage  look, 
But  pity  one  unhappy,  left  alone. 
Thus  helpless,  friendless,  worn  with  many  ills. 
Speak,  if  it  be  ye  come  to  me  as  friends." 

And   when   Neoptolemus   answers  that   they  are  from  Hellas,    he 

goes  on  : 

"  O  dear-loved  sound  !     Ah  me  !  what  joy  it  is 
After  long  years  to  hear  a  voice  like  thine  !  " 

Obviously  Philoctetes  is  not  in  a  suspicious  mood,  and  when  he  de- 
scribes his  sufferings  at  the  hands  of  the  Greeks  and  since,  and  his 
grounds  for  wrath  with  Odysseus,  he  is  ready  to  believe  the  smooth 
invention  of  Neoptolemus,  who  represents  himself  as  returning  home- 
ward after  being  deceived  by  the  same  dishonest  man.  This  similarity 
in  their  condition  arouses  the  sympathy  of  the  credulous  Philoctetes, 
who  asks  Neoptolemus  not  to  abandon  him,  but  to  carry  him  away 
from  the  island: 

"  Abandoned  to  these  evils  which  thou  see'st, 
***** 
But  think  of  me  as  thrown  on  you  by  chance. 
Right  well  I  know  how  noisome  such  a  freight ; 
Yet  still  do  thou  endure  it.     Noble  souls 
Still  find  the  base  is  hateful,  and  the  good 
Is  full  of  glory." 


344  SOPHOCLES. 

And  he  goes  on  to  entreat  the  kind  services  of  Neoptolemus  with 
the  most  complete  pathos  and  passion.  The  picture  that  he  draws 
of  his  loneliness  and  total  abandonment  is  to  the  last  degree 
touching : 

Phil.  By  thy  dear  sire  and  mother,  I,  my  son, 
Implore  thee  as  a  suppliant,  by  all  else 
To  me  most  dear,  thus  lonely  leave  me  not, 
Abandoned  to  these  evils  which  thou  see'st. 
With  which  thou  hearest  that  I  still  abide ; 
But  think  of  me  as  thrown  on  you  by  chance. 
Right  well  I  know  how  noisome  such  a  freight ; 
Yet  still  do  thou  endure  it.     Noble  souls 
Still  find  the  base  is  hateful,  and  the  good 
Is  full  of  glory.     And  for  thee,  my  son. 
Leaving  me  here  comes  shame  that  is  not  good  ; 
But  doing  what  I  ask  thee  thou  shalt  have 
Thy  meed  of  greatest  honor,  should  I  reach 
Alive  and  well  the  shore  of  CEta's  land. 
Come,  come  !     The  trouble  lasts  not  one  whole  day  : 
Take  heart ;  receive  me ;  put  me  where  thou  wilt, 
In  hold,  or  stern,  or  stem,  where  least  of  all 
I  should  molest  my  fellow-passengers. 
Ah,  by  great  Zeus,  the  suppliant's  God,  consent ; 
I  pray  thee,  hearken.     On  my  knees  I  beg. 
Lame  though  I  be  and  powerless  in  my  limbs. 
Nay,  leave  me  not  thus  desolate,  away 
From  every  human  footstep.     Bring  me  safe, 
Or  to  my  home,  or  where  Chalkodon  holds 
His  seat  in  fair  Euboea  :  thence  the  sail 
To  CEta  and  the  ridge  of  Trachis  steep. 
And  fair  Spercheios  is  not  far  for  me, 
That  thou  may'st  show  me  to  my  father  dear. 
Of  whom  long  since  I've  feared  that  he  perchance 
Has  passed  away.     For  many  messages 
I  sent  to  him  by  those  who  hither  came, 
Yea,  suppliant  prayers  that  he  would  hither  send, 
Himself,  to  fetch  me  home.     But  either  he 
Is  dead,  or  else,  as  happens  oft  with  men 
Who  errands  take,  they  holding  me,  'twould  seem. 
In  slight  account,  pushed  on  their  homeward  voyage. 
But  now,  for  here  I  come  to  thee  as  one 
At  once  my  escort  and  my  messenger, 
Be  thou  my  helper,  my  deliverer  thou. 
Seeing  all  things  full  of  fear  and  perilous  chance. 
Or  to  fare  well,  or  fall  in  evil  case  ; 
And  one  that's  free  from  sorrow  should  look  out 
For  coming  dangers,  and,  when  most  at  ease. 
Should  then  keep  wariest  watch  upon  his  life. 
Lest  unawares  he  perish  utterly. 

The  chorus,  too,  add  their  supplications,  and  Neoptolemus  appears 
to  accede,  really  meaning,  however,  to  carry  Philoctetes  to  Troy.  The 
deceived  hero  turns  to  bid  farewell  to  the  place  where  he  lived  so 
long,  when  an  attendant,  disguised  as  a  trader,  makes  his  appearance, 
and  carries'the  deception  still  further  by  pretending  that  Odysseus  is 


THE  BOW  OF  PHILOCTETES.  345 

coming  to  seize  him  and  to  carry  him  by  force,  if  necessary,  to  fulfill 
the  oracle.  Philoctetes  falls  into  the  trap  and  prepares  to  get  the 
herb  with  which  he  allays  the  pain  in  his  foot,  and  he  promises  to 
Neoptolemus  the  bow  and  arrows  which  were  so  much  desired.  When 
the  two  are  ready  to  leave,  Philoctetes  is  seized  with  an  attack  of  pain 
in  his  wounded  foot  and  places  his  weapons  in  the  hands  of  his  young 
companion.  His  agony  is  great  until  he  throws  himself  on  the  ground 
and  falls  asleep,  while  is  chanted  a  beautiful  song  of  the  chorus  : 

"  Come,  blowing  softly,  Sleep,  that  know'st  not  pain, 
Sleep,  ignorant  of  grief, 
Come  softly,  surely,  kingly  Sleep,  and  bless ; 

Keep  still  before  his  eyes 
The  band  of  light  which  lies  upon  them  now. 
Come,  come,  thou  healing  one. 

Speak  gently,  O  my  son,  speak  gently  now 

With  'bated  breath,  speak  low. 
To  all  whom  pain  and  sickness  make  their  own. 

Sleep  is  but  sleepless  still." 

But  when  he  awakens  from  his  swoon  it  is  to  new  terrors.  Neop- 
tolemus, after  brief  indecision,  yields  to  his  better  nature,  and,  con- 
fessing his  inability  to  carry  the  deceit  further,  exposes  the  plot  to 
Philoctetes  : 

"  Thou  must  to  Troia  sail. 
To  those  Atreidas  and  the  Argive  host." 

Philoctetes  demands  his  bow,  which  Neoptolemus  refuses  to  sur- 
render ;  this  calls  forth  a  tremendous  outburst  of  denunciation  and 
entreaty : 

"  By  all  the  Gods 

Thy  fathers  worshipped,  rob  me  not  of  life. 

Ah,  wretched  me  !     He  does  not  answer  me, 

But  looks  away  as  one  who  will  not  yield. 

O  creeks  !    O  cliffs  out-jutting  in  the  deep  ! 

O  all  ye  haunts  of  beasts  that  roam  the  hills, 

O  rocks  that  go  sheer  down,  to  you  I  wail, 

(None  other  do  I  know  to  whom  to  speak)." 

Neoptolemus  wavers ;  but  while  he  is  still  undecided  Odysseus  ap- 
pears and  orders  Philoctetes  to  depart ;  he,  however,  rushes  to  the  cliff 
to  fling  himself  off  it,  but  the  sailors  seize  him  and  bind  his  hands ;  in 
despair  he  bewails  his  misfortunes,  praying  that  enemies  may  suffer 
like  ills.  After  he  has  withdrawn  to  his  cavern,  Neoptolemus,  who  has 
reflected  and  repented,  then  hastens  back  to  return  the  bow  to  its 
owner,  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  and  threats  of  Odysseus.  Philoc- 
tetes, when  the  bow  is  in  his  hands,  raises  it  to  shoot  Odysseus,  who 
steals  away.  Neoptolemus  once  more  beseeches  the  old  hero  to  consent 


346  SOPHOCLES. 

to  go  to  Troy,  where  he  promises  him  his  foot  shall  be  healed.  Philoc- 
tetes,  however,  insists  on  being  taken  home,  and  Neoptolemus  consents, 
but  the  final  solution  is  brought  about  by  the  appearance  of  Heracles, 
whose  orders  to  go  to  Troy  convince  the  stubborn  Philoctetes. 

In  this  play  more  than  in  any  we  have  yet  examined  we  find  the 
personal  elements  most  strongly  brought  out  ;  the  three  heroes  are 
three  different  men,  and  the  conflict  that  takes  place  between  them  is 
brought  down  from  that  lofty  ether,  where,  if  one  could  say  it  respect- 
fully, commonplaces  exercise  an  undue  influence,  to  this  world,  where 
the  contradictions  of  human  characters  appear  in  all  their  complexity 
and  vigor.  The  stubbornness  of  Philoctetes  is  satisfactorily  explained 
by  the  bitterness  of  his  experience,  and  the  very  simplicity  of  his 
character  intensifies  the  keenness  of  his  emotions  and  the  openness  of 
their  expression.  Not  until  Shakspere  do  we  find  in  the  drama  equal 
fervor  and  earnestness.  Neoptolemus,  again,  is  at  first  imposed  upon 
by  the  superior  intelligence  of  the  older  and  astuter  Odysseus,  but  his 
baleful  decision  to  lend  himself  to  a  gross  wrong  melts  with  shame 
for  the  injustice  of  his  conduct.  It  does  not  break  away  suddenly 
from  a  notion  that  in  a  hero's  mind  right  prevails  with  instantaneous 
force  ;  the  change  is  gradual  and  hence  natural.  Odysseus,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  legendary  man  of  craft,  about  whom  gathered  a 
number  of  stories  that  celebrated  the  employment  of  wiles.  It  is  im- 
possible to  believe  that  these  devices  of  his  were  regarded  as  anything 
but  amusing;  that  Sophocles  could  state  the  right  as  it  is  uttered 
by  Neoptolemus  without  knowing,  as  a  mere  matter  of  intellectual  per- 
ception, the  unsoundness'of  the  contrary  fault  is  inconceivable.  But 
that  Odysseus  was  a  privileged  deviser  of  ingenious  schemes  who  was 
not  to  be  too  severely  judged  may  be  readily  believed.  Even  here  he 
is  not  brought  into  great  prominence ;  the  interest  that  one  feels  lies 
between  Neoptolemus  and  Philoctetes.  It  is  the  tragic  contrast  of 
their  characters  that  makes  this  marvellous  play  full  of  interest  and 
beauty,  and  full  of  that  quality  of  human  interest  which  had  in  time 
taken  possession  of  the  Greek  drama.  The  appearance  of  the  god 
Heracles  merely  terminates  the  play  according  to  the  legend  ;  in  fact, 
honor  was  victorious  in  the  willingness  of  Neoptolemus  to  take  Philoc- 
tetes to  his  home. 

This  must  have  been  very  nearly  the  last  work  of  Sophocles,  for  it  was 
brought  out  in  409,  and  it  was  in  405  that  the  poet  died.  One  mark  of 
its  lateness  is  its  modernness  of  feeling  and  plot,  and  the  way  in  which 
the  real  tragic  conflict  is  placed  within  the  breast  of  Neoptolemus. 
These  qualities  mark  the  extreme  limit  to  which  Sophocles  brought 
the  development  of  Greek  tragedy. 


THE  MAIDENS  OF   TEA  CHI S.  347 


VIII. 


In  the  only  one  remaining  of  his  plays,  the  Maidens  of  Trachis,  we 
have  a  less  valuable  specimen  of  his  work.  The  uncertainty  of  the 
date  at  which  it  was  brought  out,  and  its  comparative  inferiority  have 
become  the  pretext  for  discussions  as  violent  as  various.  Some  have 
held  that  it  is  so  poor  that  Sophocles  could  not  have  written  it,  but 
that  it  was  composed  by  lophon,  the  poet's  son,  or  some  such  inferior 
author.  This  assertion,  which  rests  on  no  solid  foundation,  is  denied 
by  others,  who  maintain  that  it  is  undeniably  the  work  of  Sophocles ; 
but  a  difference  of  opinion  again  arises  as  to  whether  its  faults  are  those 
of  early  or  of  late  years.  It  certainly  lacks  the  qualities  that  are  dis- 
cernible in  the  plays  that  are  known  to  have  been  written  towards  the 
end  of  the  poet's  life,  and  the  languor  and  timidity  of  its  construction 
bear  a  strong  likeness  to  the  fumbling  of  a  beginner.  A  certain  ease 
of  workmanship  is  tolerably  sure  to  survive  in  old  age,  even  when  other 
qualities  have  faded  away,  as  we  see  in  the  later  works  of  Goethe  and 
Corneille.  /This  play  opens  with  Deianeira  lamenting  the  absence  of 
her  husband,  Heracles,  who  is  atoning  for  a  homicide,  by  command  of 
Zeus,  through  a  year's  service  in  the  employment  of  Omphale  in 
Lydia.  At  the  suggestion  of  a  nurse,  Deianeira  sends  out  Hyllos,  her 
son,  to  get  news  of  his  father.  Then  the  chorus  appear  praying  for 
tidings  of  the  absent  Heracles.  Deianeira's  grief  and  loneliness  are 
clearly  marked  in  her  address  to  the  chorus,  wherein  she  envies 
their  immunity  from  the  cares  of  married  life.  A  messenger  enters, 
in  advance  of  Lichas  the  herald,  with  the  joyful  tidings  that  Heracles 
is  victorious,  for  which  his  wife  is  duly  grateful,  and  soon  the  herald 
appears  with  lole  and  a  group  of  captive  women  whom  Heracles 
had  sent  to  her.  She  is  filled  with  pity  for  their  sad  lot,  and  is  espe- 
cially interested  in  lole,  whose  beauty  attracts  her,  and  she  questions 
her  about  her  family.  lole,  however,  makes  no  answer,  and  this  de- 
vice of  eloquent  silence  is  one  that  ^Eschylus  often  used,  as  in  the 
beginning  of  the  Prometheus,  and  in  the  protracted  speechlessness  of 
Atossa  in  the  Persians.  Meanwhile  Deianeira  expresses  the  most 
tender  sympathy  for  the  poor  captive.  When  they  are  gone  in,  the 
messenger  stops  Deianeira  and  tells  her  that  lole  is  loved  by  Heracles, 
and  that  it  was  in  order  to  gain  her  that  he  captured  her  city.  When 
Lichas  returns,  she  questions  him  closely  and  finds  this  evil  news  con- 
firmed. Her  grief  at  these  disclosures  is  most  delicately  represented. 
It  is  not  the  modern  romantic  mixture  of  insulted  dignity  and  con- 
temptuous scorn,  but  rather  a  passive  regret  for  an  acknowledged 
weakness  that  inspires  her.     To   bring  back  her  husband's  love,  she 


HERACLES     AND     OMPHALE. 
{^Pompeiian   Wall-painting.') 


DEIANEIRA    AND  HERACLES.  349 

determines  to  apply  the  blood  of  a  Centaur  to  a  robe  to  be  sent  to  her 
husband,  which  she  had  been  told  would  work  as  a  love-charm,  and 
the  chorus  approve  of  her  plan.  In  accordance  therewith  she  entrusts 
the  garment  to  tI^ssus  to  carry  to  Heracles,  but  no  sooner  is  he  gone 
out  of  reach  than  she  discovers  the  baleful  effect  the  blood  had  had 
on  some  wool,  which  it  wholly  destroyed,  and  the  whole  horror  of  her 
plan  becomes  clear  to"  her.  Hyllos  returns  with  the  news  that  she  has 
in  fact  slain  Heracles  in  just  that  way,  and  he  prays  that  she  may  re- 
ceive justice  for  her  evil  deeds.  In  her  remorse  she  runs  from  the 
stage,  and  the  sad  scene  of  her  death  at  her  own  hands  is  described 
by  an  attendant.  The  conclusion  of  the  play  is  of  a  mythological 
sort,  and  lies  outside  of  the  modern  view  of  the  drama.  Heracles  is 
brought  in  on  a  couch,  suffering  fearful  torments  and  lamenting  his 
sudden  fate : 

"  Leave  me  to  sleep,  yes,  leave  me,  wretched  one  -, 

Leave  me  to  sleep  my  sleep. 

Where  dost  thou  touch  me  ?     Where  move  ? 

Death  thou  wilt  bring  ;  yea,  bring  death. 

What  awhile  knew  repose 

Now  thou  dost  stir  again  ; 

It  grasps  me,  creeping  still. 
Where  are  ye,  of  all  men  that  live  on  the  earth  most  ungrateful } 
For  whom  I  of  old,  in  all  forests  and  seas,  slaying  monsters. 
Wore  out  my  life  ;  and  now,  when  I  lie  sore  smitten  before  you, 
Not  one  of  you  all  will  bring  the  fire  or  the  sword  that  will  help  me." 

When  he  asks  to  see  Deianeira,  the  whole  story  is  recounted  to  him, 
and  he  turns  from  that  to  utter  new  prophecies.  He  orders  his  funeral 
in  CEta,  where  his  body  is  to  be  burned,  and  Hyllos  reluctantly  promises 
to  carry  out  his  father's  wishes,  to  burn  him  there,  and  then  to  marry 
lole.     Heracles  then  leaves  the  stage  to  meet  his  speedy  end. 

Even  this  arid  description  will  make  it  clear  that  the  play  lacks  the 
unity  of  most  of  the  Greek  plays ;  not  only  is  the  interest  divided  be- 
tween Deianeira  and  Heracles,  but,  more  than  this,  the  final  scenes 
have  to  us  moderns  the  air  of  incoherent  addition.  The  domestic 
tragedy  is  terminated  with  a  legendary  ending.  If  this  was  an  early 
play,  it  may  be  that  Sophocles  felt  that  in  following  his  bent  towards 
developing  the  human  interest  in  his  plays,  he  had  not  learned  the  diffi- 
cult art  of  blending  it  with  the  imperative  mythological  setting,  and 
even  in  the  first  part  the  attempt  to  combine  the  interests  of  Heracles 
and  his  wife  causes  rather  division  than  union.  Although  the  play 
contains  many  passages  of  great  beauty,  it  is  at  times,  especially  at 
the  beginning,  not  free  from  an  unaccustomed  heaviness  and  slowness 
of  movement.  The  art  of  narration  which  fills  so  important  a  part 
in  the  play  is  not  yet  brought  into  proper  relation  with   the  necessity 


^« 


3» 


*— ^ 


<i-  -^^ 


HERACLES     AND      NESSUS. 
(_PomJ>eiian   Wall-painting:) 


HUMAN  LIFE  IN  SOPHOCLES  AND    SHAKSPERE.  35  ^ 

of  dramatic  movement.  The  complexity  of  Sophocles  is  not  yet  the 
perfect  master  of  its  instrument  ;  that  quality,  if  this  was  in  fact  an 
early  work,  was  only  acquired  later. 

In  reviewing  the  total  impression  of  what  has  come  down  to  us  from 
the  hands  of  Sophocles,  what  strikes  us  is  the  calmness  and  self-posses- 
sion of  his  art,  a  quality  that  is  more  readily  perceived  than  described, 
for  the  nearer  an  object  comes  to  perfect  beauty  the  more  difficult  it 
is  to  define  it  except  with  that  one  word.  When  it  has  marked  qual- 
ities that  give  one  side  more  prominence  than  another,  we  are  no  longer 
dumb.  In  English  literature,  for  example,  Milton  has  been  described 
with  exactness,  whereas  countless  volumes  have  struggled  with  Shak- 
spere,  and  his  work,  at  its  best,  yet  defies  the  most  industrious  com- 
mentators to  say  just  wherein  its  merit  lies.  In  the  same  way  the 
rounded  perfection  of  Sophocles  baffles  any  one  who  tries  his  hand 
at  conveying  a  full  impression  of  his  many  attractive  qualities.  Yet 
the  field  in  which  he  worked  may  be  stated,  even  if  the  degree  of  his 
merit  can  only  be  admired  and  not  conveyed  by  analysis.  What  he 
did  was  to  bring  into  the  vast  machinery  of  the  drama  the  human 
being.  How  well  he  did  this  only  his  plays  can  show,  but  even  in 
the  pallor  of  translation  his  truthfulness  and  earnestness  appear,  and, 
above  all,  the  dignity  and  seriousness  of  his  work.  This  dignity  is 
not  an  artificial  quality  built  up  on  conventionality  and  morbidly  fear- 
ful of  indecorum,  which  partly  defines  the  French  tragedy  as  it  appears 
to  foreigners.  There  is  none  of  the  modern  dread  of  simplicity,  the 
literary  gentility,  as  we  may  call  it,  which  is  afraid  of  simple  phrases 
and  compels  ordinar)'  words  and  phrases  to  be  made  over  into  fine  lang- 
uage, so  that  birds  shall  be  "  the  feathered  songsters,"  and  the  sky  "  th' 
ethereal  vault."  Nor  does  an  artificial  decorum  chill  the  action  ;  the 
most  unreal  of  the  Greek  heroes  is  ready  to  break  forth  into  violence. 
In  the  King  QEdipus — as  those  who  have  seen  it  acted  will  remem- 
ber— the  hero  moves  and  acts  as  well  as  suffers,  with  all  the  vivacity 
of  a  Shaksperian  character.  The  resemblance  to  Shakspere  lies  deep. 
The  English  poet,  living  when  he  did,  was  the  mouthpiece  of  two  con- 
tradictory movements,  that  of  the  Renaissance  and  that  of  mediaeval- 
ism,  and  these  two  currents  are  as  clearly  visible  in  his  plays  as  are 
two  mingling  rivers  at  their  point  of  junction.  Yet  in  Sophocles  we  see 
the  same  qualities,  less  vividly  contrasted,  though  potentially  existing 
in  the  absence  of  conventionality  and  the  readiness  with  which  attend- 
ants and  such  minor  characters  as  the  guard  in  Antigone  are  repre- 
sented. The  more  important  resemblance  between  them  lies  in  that 
they  both  felt  the  greatness  of  human  life,  and  both  sympathized  as 
well  as  perceived  and  described.  The  greater  wealth  of  modern  times 
is  reflected  in  the  later  poet,  but  the  seriousness  is  common  to  both. 


CHAPTER    IV.— EURIPIDES. 

I. — The  Changes  in  Greek  Literature  and  in  the  Body  PoHtic. — An  Illustrative  Quota- 
tion from  Mr.  J.  A.  Symonds.  II. — The  Life  of  Euripides,  and  an  Attempt  to 
Explain  His  Relation  to  His  Predecessors — His  Movement  toward  Individu- 
ality not  a  Personal  Trait,  but  Part  of  a  General  Change.  The  Religious  De- 
cadence ;  Political  Enfeeblement.  III. — The  Work  of  Euripides  ;  its  Abun- 
dance— The  Hecuba— The  Prologue  as  Employed  by  this  Writer.  IV. — The 
Orestes  and  its  Treatment. — The  New  Treatment  of  the  Heroes  as  Human" 
Beings. — The  Phenician  Virgins. — The  Medea  ;  its  Intensity — Extracts.  V. — 
The  Crowned  Hippolytus. — Realism  in  the  Treatment  of  the  Characters. — The 
Further  Change  in  the  Importance  of  the  Chorus. 

I. 

IN  Euripides  we  notice  that  another  step  is  taken.  An  excellent 
description  of  the  change  is  given  by  Mr.  J.  A.  Symonds  in  his 
"  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets  "  (Amer.  ed.,  ii.  34) :  "  The  law  of  im- 
evitable  progression  in  art  from  the  severe  and  animated  embodiment 
of  an  idea  to  the  conscious  elaboration  of  the  merely  aesthetic  motives 
and  brilliant  episodes,  has  hitherto  been  neglected  by  the  critics  and 
historians  of  poetry.  They  do  not  observe  that  the  first  impulse  in  a 
people  toward  creativeness  is  some  deep  and  serious  emotion,  some 
fixed  point  of  religious  enthusiasm  or  national  pride.  To  give  ade- 
quate form  to  this  taxes  the  energies  of  the  first  generation  of  artists, 
and  raises  their  poetic  faculty,  by  the  admixture  of  prophetic  inspira- 
tion, to  the  highest  pitch.  After  the  original  passion  for  the  ideas  to 
be  embodied  in  art  has  somewhat  subsided,  but  before  the  glow  and 
fire  of  enthusiasm  has  faded  out,  there  comes  a  second  period,  when 
art  is  studied  more  for  art's  sake,  but  when  the  generative  potency 
of  the  earlier  poets  is  by  no  means  exhausted.  For  a  moment  the 
artist  at  this  juncture  is  priest,  prophet,  hierophant,  and  charmer,  all 
in  one.  More  conscious  of  the  laws  of  beauty  than  his  predecessors, 
he  makes  some  sacrifice  of  the  idea  to  meet  the  requirements  of  pure 
art  ;  but  he  never  forgets  that  beauty  by  itself  is  insufficient  to  a  great 
and  perfect  work,  nor  has  he  lost  his  interest  in  the  cardinal  concep- 
tions which  vitalize  the  most  majestic  poetry.  During  the  first  and 
second  phases  which  I  have  indicated  the  genius  of  a  nation  throws  out 
a  number  of  masterpieces — some  of  them  rough-hewn  and  Cyclopean, 
others  perfect  in  their  combination  of  the  strength  of  thought  with 


THE  LAW  OF  LITERARY  DEVELOPMENT.  353 

grace  and  elevated  beauty."  In  fact,  the  perfected  work  succeeds 
the  earlier  crudities,  as  would  be  expected  and  is  proved  by  compar- 
ing Sophocles  with  yEschylus.  To  go  on,  however:  "But  the  mine 
of  ideas  is  exhausted.  The  national  taste  has  been  educated.  Con- 
ceptions which  were  novel  to  the  grandparents  have  become  the  in- 
tellectual atmosphere  of  the  grandchildren.  It  is  now  impossible  to 
return  upon  the  past — to  gild  the  refined  gold  or  to  paint  the  lily  of 
the  supreme  poets.  Their  vigor  may  survive  in  their  successors;  but 
their  inspiration  has  taken  form  forever  in  their  poems.  What,  then, 
remains  for  the  third  generation  of  artists  ?  They  have  either  to 
reproduce  their  models — and  this  is  stifling  to  true  genius — or  they 
have  to  seek  novelty  at  the  risk  of  impairing  the  strength  or  the 
beauty  which  has  become  stereotyped.  Less  deeply  interested  in  the 
great  ideas  by  which  they  have  been  educated,  and  of  which  they  are 
in  no  sense  the  creators,  incapable  of  competing  on  the  old  ground 
with  their  elders,  they  are  obliged  to  go  afield  for  striking  situations, 
to  force  sentiment  and  pathos,  to  subordinate  the  harmony  of  the 
whole  to  the  melody  of  the  parts,  to  sink  the  prophet  in  the  poet,  the 
hierophant  in  the  charmer." 

This  interesting  hypothesis  is  further  corroborated  by  the  instances 
which  Mr.  Symonds  brings  forward  from  the  history  of  the  fine  arts, 
as,  for  example,  the  growth  of  Greek  sculpture,  from  its  crude  begin- 
ning, through  perfect  beauty  in  the  hands  of  Pheidiasto  the  somewhat 
cloying  luxuriance  of  Praxiteles.  "  In  architecture,"  he  says  truly, 
"  the  genealogy  of  Doric,  Ionic,  and  Corinthian  orders  points  to  the 
same  law,"  which  he  further  illustrates  from  modern  painting  by  point- 
ing to  the  relative  position  of  Giotto,  Raphael,  and  Correggio.  In 
fact,  as  Mr.  Symonds  remarks,  "  this  law  of  sequence  is  widely  applic- 
able. It  will  be  seen  to  control  the  history  of  all  uninterrupted 
artistic  dynasties,"  and  we  may  go  further  and  affirm  that  no  law  con- 
trols the  action  of  the  mind  with  regard  to  a  certain  class  of  objects 
without  being  one  of  universal  application.  In  government,  for 
instance,  which  certainly  bears  but  slight  resemblance  to  the  fine  arts, 
we  may  observe  how  inevitably  the  application  of  such  a  principle  as 
that  of  civil-service  reform  produces  first  enthusiasm,  then  discreet 
application,  which  is  followed  by  the  development  of  the  same  prin- 
ciple in  minute  details.  In  physics  we  see  the  same  uniform  sequence, 
whereby  the  glow  of  discovery  is  in  time  succeeded  by  the  ingenious 
utilization  of  the  principle  in  common  life. 

Still  it  is  true  that  seldom  do  we  have  left  us  such  marked  instances 
of  the  law  of  literary  development  as  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and 
Euripides,  and  just  as  it  is  hard  to  describe  a  straight  line,  or  time,  or  life, 
or  any  of  the  things  that  we  understand  instinctively,  while  deviations 


354  EURIPIDES . 

from  intelligible  things  can  be  readily  defined,  so  it  is  easy  to  persuade 
one's  self  that  writers  who  differ  from  a  recognized  standard  are  thereby 
detestable.  -^schylus  for  centuries  suffered  by  comparison  with 
Sophocles,  and  now,  or  until  very  recently,  it  is  the  turn  of  Euripides 
to  be  treated  with  contempt  instead  of  judicious  admiration.  For- 
tunately the  duty  of  a  historian  is  to  describe,  and  not  to  lead  the 
applause  or  the  hisses.  For  him  to  do  nothing  but  praise  the  great 
poets  would  be  like  a  botanist  cheering  Bartlett  pears,  or,  if  it  be 
objected  that  even  these  pears  are  too  common,  then  cheering  the 
century  plant.  In  the  same  way,  the  student  is  more  profitably 
employed  in  observing  the  respects  in  which  Euripides  resembles  or 
differs  from  his  predecessors  than  in  deriding  or  simply  praising  his 
various  qualities. 

II. 

While  Euripides  thus  appears  to  belong  to  a  much  later  and  very 
different  generation,  he  was  a  contemporary  of  Sophocles  and  often  his 
competitor  in  theatrical  contests.  He  was  born  in  480  B.  C,  the  year 
of  the  battle  of  Salamis,  and,  we  are  told,  on  that  island.  Indeed,  a 
later  legend  declared  that  he  was  born  on  the  very  day  of  that  battle, 
although  this  statement  may  be  an  inaccuracy  that  arose  from  the 
pardonable  desire  of  bringing  the  three  greatest  tragedians  into  close 
connection  with  the  most  glorious  events  of  Athenian  history.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  statement,  though  practically  immaterial  to  us,  may  be 
true, and  only  to  be  denied  as  probably  will  be  denied,  in  the  remote 
future,  the  undoubted  fact  that  John  Adams  and  Jefferson  died  on  the 
same  day,  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  signing  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  Sophocles,  who  was  about  fifteen  years  the  elder,  sur- 
vived Euripides  a  few  months,  dying  in  406.  In  correlating  the  plays 
of  the  three  great  tragedians,  we  must  remember  that  they  were  sepa- 
rated by  no  great  distance  of  time,  the  respective  dates  of  their  births 
being  about  525  B.C.,  495  B.C.  and  480  B.C.;  that  ^schylus  fought  at 
Marathon,  Sophocles  took  part  in  the  paean  for  the  battle  of  Salamis, 
and  that  on  the  day  of  the  battle,  or  thereabouts,  Euripides  was  born. 

The  accounts  of  the  early  life  of  Euripides  are  few  and  various.  He 
appears  to  have  been  a  man  of  considerable  culture ;  he  had  a  large 
library ;  mention  is  made  of  pictures  that  he  painted ;  he  is  said  to 
have  busied  himself  with  metaphysical  studies  and  to  have  been  a 
friend  of  Socrates  and  of  Anaxagoras.  Indeed  this  fuller,  more  com- 
plex culture  penetrates  the  whole  work  of  Euripides  ;  this  is  penetrated 
by  all  the  fervor  and  stress  of  the  swiftly  developing  artistic  and 
literary  life  of  Athens.  The  spirit  which  animated  yEschylus  was 
something  like  that  flowering  of   the  Renaissance  which  we  see  in 


RIPENING  PERIOD  OF  CULTURE  REPRESENTED  IN  EURIPIDES.       355 

Milton  ;  he  rested  on  the  long  and  complicated  growth  of  the  lyric 
poets  as  Milton  rested  on  the  revival  of  learning.  Sophocles  perfected 
this  quality  and  brought  it  to  its  full  fruition.  When  the  rising  tide  of 
intellectual  excitement  had  made  its  way  into  all  the  nooks  and  corners 
of  men's  interests,  this  new  spirit,  or,  rather,  this  modification  of  the 
old  spirit,  inevitably  found  expression  in  literature,  just  as  Pope's  com- 


EURIPIDES. 


pacter  treatment  of  the  couplet  with  its  narrower  but  subtler  thought 
succeeded  Dryden's  vigor,  and  as  Tennyson's  mosaic  work  is  built  up 
on  Keats's  broader  handling  of  romantic  verse.  There  is  a  similar 
difference  between  Corneille  and  Racine.  The  mere  mechanical  con- 
struction of  the  verse  is  a  symbol  as  well  as  an  expression  of  the  deeper 
underlying  change,  and  the  plays  of  Euripides,  especially  the  later 
ones,  abound  with  examples  of  the  influence  of  contemporary  study 
and  speculation.  There  is  nothing  from  which  it  is  so  impossible  for 
a  man's  mind,  as  well  as  his  body,  to  escape  as  from  the  day  of  his 
birth,    and    in    these    plays  we  shall   see  his   treatment    of   religious 


356  EURIPIDES. 

myths,  his  scepticism,  his  dialectic  skill,  reflecting  the  current  life 
of  his  day. 

It  is  said  that  Euripides  was  trained  for  athletic  sports,  but  in  such 
a  way  that  he  conceived  a  great  dislike  for  them  and  for  those  who 
practiced  them.  His  married  life  appears  to  have  been  quite  as 
unhappy  as  that  of  a  poet  should  be.  His  second  wife  led  him  an 
unpleasant  life,  and  one  of  the  charges  brought  against  him  by  Aris- 
tophanes was  that  of  being  a  woman-hater.  He  certainly  had  a  keen  eye 
for  the  foibles  of  women,  and  doubtless  his  own  unfortunate  experience 
embittered  his  representation  of  the  sex  in  his  plays,  but  the  charge  is 
a  singular  one  to  come  from  the  lips  of  Aristophanes,  who  denounced 
women  with  far  more  severity  than  did  his  tragic  contemporary.  More- 
over, it  is  a  familiar  fact  that  the  reasons  assigned  by  men  for  their 
dislike  of  their  neighbors  are  often  nothing  but  plausible  pretexts  to 
secure  the  sympathy  of  others,  and  to  not  properly  define  the  real 
cause  of  hatred.  The  motives  of  Aristophanes  are  to  be  discussed 
later ;  of  Euripides  it  may  be  said  that  he  certainly  showed  a  fondness 
for  choosing  heroines  who  were  led  by  passion  to  great  excesses,  but  he 
is  not  accurately  defined  by  being  called  a  woman-hater. 

Like  .^schylus,  Euripides  died  away  from  Athens.  He  was  not, 
however,  like  his  great  predecessor,  driven  avvay  by  unkind  treatment. 
He  left  his  home  on  the  invitation  of  King  Archelaus,  of  Macedonia, 
who  was  doing  his  best  to  raise  that  country  to  the  level  of  the  higher 
civilization  of  Athens,  and  for  that  purpose  was  summoning  to  his 
capital  distinguished  men,  as  Frederick  of  Prussia  and  Catherine  of 
Russia  in  the  last  century,  and  as  Hiero  of  Syracuse  earlier,  gathered 
in  poets  and  philosophers  for  delight  and  improvement.  In  his  stay 
at  this  court  Euripides  repaid  his  poet's  hospitality  by  writing,  at  the 
king's  request,  a  tragedy,  Archelaus,  wherein  he  celebrated  the  founder 
of  the  dynasty.  This  is,  unfortunately,  lost,  but  the  fact  that  it  was 
written  is  interesting,  as  showing,  what  scarcely  needed  proof,  that  a 
Greek  tragedian  could  write  a  play  that  bore  a  close  relation  to 
existing  circumstances.  It  was  here  that  he  died  about  406  B.C.,  at 
Arethusa,  the  tradition  telling  us  that  he  was  attacked  by  dogs  at 
night  and  that  he  did  not  recover  from  their  wounds. 

His  stay  in  Macedonia  illustrates  the  widespread  interest  in  Athenian 
work,  and  just  as  the  artists  of  that  city  were  summoned  to  other  cities 
their  statues  were  purchased  by  rulers  who  were  anxious  to  decorate 
their  lands.  In  the  same  way  there  arose  a  demand  among  foreigners 
for  the  writings  of  the  most  eminent  tragedians.  Greek  players 
traveled  abroad,  as  English  players  did  at  the  time  of  Shakspere,  and 
as  actors  of  all  nations  do  now.  Euripides  was  called  on  for  plays  to 
be  brought  out  in  other  places.     His  Andromache,  for  example,  was 


POLITICAL  CHANGES  IN  A  THENS— DEMOCRACY  OF  EURIPIDES.      357 

written  for  the  stage  at  Argos,  and  this  is  not  the  only  proof  of  the 
way  in  which  Athenian  culture  was  spreading  over  civilization.  Yet  it 
frequently  happens  that  what  attracts  the  mentally  alert  foreigners  is 
something  that  but  slowly  makes  its  way  in  the  greater  social  com- 
plexity of  the  land  that  produces  it.  Of  late  years  the  last  results  of 
science  in  the  hands  of  Darwin,  Spencer,  and  Huxley  have  found  more 
unreserved  following  among  young  men  in  Russia — to  say  nothing  of 
America — than  in  England,  and  while  to  the  foreigner  Euripides  was 
probably  the  most  brilliant  writer  in  Athens,  in  that  city  he  was  much 
disliked.  He  won  the  first  prize  but  five  times,  and  in  general  there  is 
but  little  doubt  that  the  attacks  of  Aristophanes  found  as  much 
approval  in  the  hearts  of  the  Athenians  as  did  those  against  Socrates. 
This  is  the  price  that  he  paid  for  representing  in  literature  the  disin- 
tegration that  was  befalling  life  and  thought  in  that  city. 

It  would  be  an  unsatisfactory  explanation  of  the  differences  between 
Euripides  and  his  great  predecessors  that  should  ascribe  these  solely 
to  the  fact  that  the  last  of  the  three  poets  was  born  with  an  accidental 
tendency  towards  irreverence,  which  inspired  his  novel  treatment  of 
the  drama.  It  would  be  equally  exact  to  say  that  the  inventor  of  the 
telephone  was  born  with  an  inherent  tendency  towards  the  study  of 
electricity,  without  taking  into  account  the  conditions  and  direction  of 
science  at  his  time.  Even  those  who  go  further  and  call  Euripides  the 
poet  of  the  ochlocracy  or  mob  rule,  as  the  later  democracy  is  called, 
utter -only  part  of  the  truth,  for  the  decay  of  democracy  was  in  fact 
but  one  expression  of  the  general  development  of  the  Athenian  culture 
which  also  manifested  itself  in  the  plays  of  Euripides,  as  in  the  heresies 
of  Socrates  and  the  scientific  spirit  of  Anaxagoras.  In  the  political 
changes  of  Athens  one  can  trace  only  the  normal  result  of  the  corrup- 
tion and  aggressiveness  of  the  citizens  working  the  ruin  of  the  state, 
and  in  these  tragedies  we  see  the  poet  trying  to  reconcile  the  tangled 
web  of  human  life  with  some  satisfactory  substitute  for  the  vanishing 
religious  beliefs.  The  change  was  not  in  the  mind  of  Euripides  alone  ; 
it  was  one  that  extended  throughout  society,  that  manifested  itself  in 
political  experiments,  distrust  in  the  old  religion,  and  the  enfeeblement 
of  the  grand  impulse  that  had  animated  the  fine  arts.  Naturally  his 
position  won  him  enemies  ;  there  are  always  men  who  believe  that  evil 
can  be  averted  by  doing  over  by  rote  what  has  once  been  done  with 
real  enthusiasm,  and  those  who  held  this  belief  attacked  him  with 
severity;  but  he  had  the  younger  generation  on  his  side  and  he  became 
the  favorite  tragedian  of  later  times,  the  one  who  had  most  authority 
among  the  Romans  and  so  for  a  long  time  among  the  moderns.  After 
all, Greece  is  not  so  remote  as  it  sometimes  appears;  there  are  many 
men  now  living,  generally,  it  will  be  noticed,  holding  places  of  authority, 


GROWTH  OF  SCEPTICISM— DISTRUST  OF   THE   GREEK  GODS.        359 

who  regret  that  literature  is  following  its  own  course,  and  earnestly 
commend,  for  instance,  that  novelists  imitate  Walter  Scott.  This  is 
precisely  the  form  of  advice  that  was  given  to  Euripides  with  the  same 
success. 

We  have  seen  how  Sophocles  was  also  carried  in  this  direction, 
though  to  a  far  less  extent.  He  still  retained  confidence  in  the  gods 
or  in  something  behind  the  gods,  but  this  Euripides  has  lost.  When 
the  mind  of  the  older  poet  was  forming,  Athens  was  enjoying  its  brief 
hour  of  triumph;  Euripides  was  born  to  later  and  sadder  days, when 
misfortune  brought  doubt  and  despair.  Scarcely  any  thing  is  more 
noteworthy  in  the  intellectual  history  of  Greece  than  the  way  in  which 
that  country  outgrew  the  religion  it  had  inherited  from  a  remote  past. 
That  polytheism  was  already  old  and  could  not  stand  the  examination 
which  it  was  sure  to  receive  from  a  most  intelligent  race  that  applied 
its  reason  to  every  question  ;  it  was  equally  incompetent  to  endure 
scientific  analysis  ;  nor  could  it  atone  for  its  pitifulness  in  these  respects 
by  inculcating  a  lofty  and  sensitive  morality.  The  Greek  gods  appeared 
disreputable,  while  a  taint  began  to  affect  their  legitimacy.  The  ruin 
of  Athens,  which  arose  very  naturally  from  the  love  of  dominion  that 
follows,  as  well  as  in  good  measure  constitutes,  success,  further  dis- 
turbed men's  minds.  The  higher  powers  could  be  acknowledged  so 
long  as  things  went  well.  In  the  hour  of  defeat  their  impotence 
proved  their  untrustworthiness.  There  was  nothing  on  which  the 
Athenian  mind  could  rest ;  morality  had  no  anchorage,  science  did 
not  exist.  It  is  this  pathetic  confusion  that  we  see  reflected  in  the 
plays  of  Euripides. 

III. 

Euripides  rivalled  his  predecessors  in  fertility  at  least.  He  is  said 
to  have  written  ninety-two  plays,  of  which  nineteen  have  come  down 
to  us ;  of  these  one,  the  Rhesus,  is  manifestly  the  work  of  some  later 
and  far  inferior  writer.  We  have,  then,  more  of  his  work  than  of  the 
two  others  together,  but,  unfortunately,  it  is  not  always  the  best  pieces 
that  have  been  preserved.  Seven  of  them,  however,  survived  on  their 
merits  as  the  most  important  and  characteristic  ones  for  school  use. 
These  are  the  Hecuba,  Orestes,  PhcEnissae,  Medea,  Hippolytus, 
Alcestis,  and  Andromache.  The  original  collection  contained  more, 
but  these  seven  were  finally  determined  to  be  enough,  just  as  the  first 
six  books  of  the  ^neid  and  eight  orations  of  Cicefo  were  not  long 
ago  adjudged  sufficient  for  boys'  schools.  The  remaining  eleven  plays 
have  depended  on  chance  for  their  preservation  ;  what  survived  mice 
and  mould  and  fire  was  copied  and  so  handed  down  to  us. 


360  EURIPIDES.      • 

The  Hecuba  still  retains  its  position  as  a  text-book  and  is  one  of  the 
best  known  of  the  author's  plays.  It  was  brought  out  apparently  about 
425  B.  C,  and  represents  the  misfortunes  of  the  Trojan  queen.  After 
the  fall  of  Troy  a  harsh  fate  robs  her  of  her  daughter  Polyxena,  who 
is  sacrificed  at  the  grave  of  Achilles,  and  her  son  Polydorus  is  murdered 
by  his  Thracian  host,  Polymestor;  she  revenges  herself,  however,  by 
slaying  the  children  of  the  Thracian  king  and  putting  out  his  eyes. 
Certainly  the  tragic  element  is  not  wanting.  It  is  not,  however, 
brought  out  with  the  usual  Greek  art  which  let  the  development  be 
an  inherent  part  of  the  plot :  for  it  is  only  by  the  accident  that  a  slave 
goes  to  the  shore  to  fetch  water  for  the  funeral  rites  to  Polyxena  that 
the  body  of  Polydorus  is  found  cast  upon  the  beach  by  the  waves. 
Yet  this  coincidence  is  not  of  a  sort  to  offend  us  moderns,  and  the 
intensification  of  the  Queen's  sufferings  by  this  new  horror  is  made  to 
develop  all  the  fury  of  vengeance  which  stands  in  marked  contrast 
with  the  earlier  pathos.  This  pathos  is  prominent  in  delineations  of 
Polyxena,  whose  first  sorrow  on  hearing  of  the  fate  that  awaits  her  is 
for  her  mother's  bereavement.  She  thinks  nothing  of  herself,  and 
afterwards  she  preserves  a  lofty  resignation  and  pride,  especially  when 
she  asks  the  Greeks  that  she  may  not  be  bound,  and  compelled,  after 
living  a  princess,  to  submit  to  the  indignity  of  dying  like  a  slave. 
Euripides  knew  full  well  the  path  to  the  hearts  of  his  audience,  as  this 
extract  will  show : 


POLYX.  lo,  mother,  my  mother,  what  means  thy  cry  ? 

What  message  strange  for  me  bade  thee  stir  me  from  my  dwelling 
To  startle  me  forth  with  amaze,  like  a  fluttering  bird  ? 
Hecuba.  My  child,  my  child  ! 

POLYX.  Why  address  me  in  despair  ?  thy  first  words  bode  me  ill. 
Hecuba.  Alas  for  the  loss  of  thy  life. 
POLYX.   Speak  forth,  no  longer  hide  it. 

I  tremble,  my  mother,  I  tremble. 
Why  art  thou  moaning.? 
Hecuba.  Child,  O  child  of  an  ill-starred  mother. 

PoLYX.  What  message  is  this  thou  announcest  ? 
Hecuba.  The  Argives  in  conclave  decreed  thy  slaughter 
By  common  consent,  at  the  tomb 
Of  the  son  of  Peleus. 
POLYX.  Alas,  my  mother,  how  void  of  gladness 

Are  these  ills  thou  speakest  I     Make  it  plain, 

0  mother,  explain. 

Hecuba.  My  speech  is  a  speech  of  evil,  my  child. 
And  I  tell  thee  the  Argives  decreed 
By  their  vote  to  dispose  of  thy  life,  woe  is  me  ! 
PoLYX.  Oh,  thy  dread  sufferings  !     O  my  mother  all  wretched, 
Ill-starred  in  thy  life. 
Dread,  oh  dread  is  the  bane. 
Most  hateful,  most  unspeakable. 
Which  a  god  stirred  against  thee. 

1  thy  daughter  live  now  no  longer,  no  more 


EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  HECUBA. 


361 


Chorus. 
Odysseus. 


Hecuba. 


Odysseus. 
Hecuba. 


Odysseus. 

Hecuba. 
Odysseus. 

Hecuba, 
Odysseus 

Hecuba, 
Odysseus. 

Hecuba, 
Odysseus. 

Hecuba. 


Wretched  with  thy  wretchedness  shall  I  share 

The  lot  of  slavery 

For  me  like  some  youngling  in  the  upland  reared 

By  the  kine,  from  thy  wretched  arms  in  misery  snatched 

Thou  shalt  be  borne  away. 

From  thy  side,  by  death  and  slaughter 

Convoyed  to  the  dark  underearth,  where  with  the  dead 

In  misery  I  shall  abide. 

Thee  now,  wretched  mother  of  my  life, 

I  mourn  for  with  sobs  and  lamentations. 

My  own  life,  the  bane  and  the  outrage  of  it, 

I  mourn  not  for  that,  a  better  fortune  befalls  me 

In  this  that  I  must  die. 

Hither  Odysseus'  steps  are  hastening 

With  words  of  new  import  for  Hecuba. 

Woman,  thou  knowest,  I  think,  the  host's  decree 

And  fixed  enactment,  yet  I  will  inform  thee: 

The  Greeks  require  thy  child  Polyxena 

For  slaughter  on  Achilles'  heaped-up  tomb, 

And  they  dispatched  me  to  convoy  the  maid  ; 

Her  escort  I,  the  offering's  high-priest 

And  overseer  will  be  Achilles'  son. 

Hear  now,  what  thou  must  do  !  wait  not  for  force 

Choose  not  the  ways  of  utter  strife  with  me. 

But  heed  resistless  might  and  the  calamity 

At  hand  !     By  wisdom  schooled  e'en  woe  learns  prudence. 

Behold  !     My  supreme  trial  here  impends 

With  meanings  brimmed,  and  not  unfraught  with  tears, 

Methinks  I  should  have  died  when  I  was  spared, 

Whom  Zeus  slays  not  but  saves,  that  I, undone. 

The  utterness  of  woes  on  woes  may  see. 

If  though,  when  with  their  masters  bond-slaves  speak, 

It  breeds  no  rank  offence  and  hath  no  sting 

For  them  to  crave  full  answer,  then  speak  thou 

And  to  my  questions  let  me  hear  response. 

'Tis  granted,  ask.     I  grudge  thee  not  my  leisure. 

Knowest  thou  what  time  thou  cam'st  to  Ilium, 

A  spy  in  loathsome  garb,  when  from  thine  eyes 

Coursed  drops  of  death  and  bathed  thy  very  chin  } 

I  know.     More  than  my  outmost  soul  these  stirred. 

When  Helen  knew,  when  only  I  was  told  .'' 

Well  I  remember  what  great  risk  I  ran. 

When  thou  in  prayer  most  humbly  soughtst  my  knees  } 

Yea,  when  my  hand  died  in  thy  raiment  folds. 

Then  thou  w^ert  my  slave.     Speak  what  saidst  thou  then  } 

Long  was  my  plea  and  subtle  for  my  life. 

Was't  I  who  spared  thee,  I  who  helped  thee  home  ? 

Else  how  should  I  the  sun's  light  see  to-day  ? 

Shows  not  thy  wicked  heart  in  these  thy  courses, 

Since  all  my  kindness  done  thee,  though  confessed 

Brings  me  no  help  but  wins  thy  utmost  harm  } 

O  ingrate  brood  of  men,  who  babbling  strive 

For  worldly  honor,  I'll  not  know  you  even, 

You  ruin  those  you  love,  yourselves  unmoved. 

If  aught  you  speak  can  please  the  common  rout. 

What  wit,  I  ask, what  wisdom  found  therein 

Won  men  to  vote  the  slaughter  of  my  child  } 

Did  honor  prompt  this  human  sacrifice 

Over  a  grave,  where  slaughtered  kine  are  seemlier  } 

Or.rightfully  resolved  to  slay  his  slayers. 


362  EURIPIDES. 

Mayhap  Achilles  presses  for  her  death  ! 
But  surely  she  has  done  no  wrong  to  him. 
Let  him  crave  Helen's  slaughter  on  his  tomb  : 
She  wrought  his  ruin.     She  brought  him  to  Troy. 
Say  you  a  captive  maid  must  die,  most  choice 
And  excellent  in  beauty — 't  is  not  me. 
Still  stands  the  beauteous  child  of  Lyndarus 
Matchless,  nor  have  we  matched  the  harm  she  did  you. 
So  much  in  justice's  name  and  rights  I  plead. 
Hear  now  what  debt  of  gratitude  thou  owest 
And  pay  my  due.     Thou  sayest  thy  hand  seized  mine 
And  thou  didst  fawn  once  on  this  withered  cheek. 
Even  so  I  seize  thy  hand  and  touch  thy  cheek. 
That  kindness  I  require,  I  cry  thee  mercy. 
Tear  not  my  darling  from  these  arms  away, 
Slay  not  my  child.     Enough  have  died  ere  now. 
She  is  my  joy,  makes  me  forget  my  ^Ils. 
My  consolation,  she,  for  much  I  lost. 
My  home,  my  staff,  my  helpmeet,  and  my  guide. 
Let  not  the  strong  use  strength  for  wrong. 
Nor  say  in  joy  they  shall  not  some  day  weep. 
For  I  once  flourished,  now  my  life  is  death, 
My  stores  of  happiness  one  day  engulphed. 
I  charge  thee  by  thy  beard  hear  thou  my  prayer, 
Have  pity  ;  seek  the  Achaean  host  and  speak 
Persuasive  words,  'tis  malice  bids  you  slay 
The  women  whom  at  first  you  did  not  kill, 
But  from  the  altars  seized,  and  spared  them  then. 
The  law  you  live  by  shields  alike  the  slave 
And  freeborn  man  from  death  by  violence. 
Thy  influence,  though  even  men  shall  revile  thee. 
Must  win.     The  self-same  plea,  by  noted  lips 
And  lips  unnoted  framed,  is  not  the  same. 
Chorus.  There  lives  no  man  whose  heart  is  hardened  so 
That  by  thy  cries  and  lingering  lament 
Of  woe  unstirred,  he  should  not  weep  for  thee. 
Odysseus.  Learn  wisdom,  Hecuba  ;  let  not  thy  anger 

Make  him  who  speaks  thee  fair  thy  seeming  foe. 
Thy  life,  through  which  my  fortunes  came  to  mend, 
I  bind  myself  to  save,  I  say  nought  else. 
But  what  to  all  I  spake  I'll  not  gainsay  : 
Troy  taken,  now  he  who  was  our  foremost  warrior 
Asks  his  tomb  and  must  have  thy  slaughtered  child. 
It  breeds  infection  in  our  commonwealths 
Whene'er  a  righteous  and  a  loyal  man 
Wins  not  some  higher  meed  than  those  less  worthy. 
Achilles  earned  vv^hat  honors  we  can  give. 
Woman,  his  glorious  death  defended  Greece. 
Wer  't  not  a  shame  if,  while  he  saw  the  light. 
We  used  the  friend  whom  we  abuse  when  dead  ? 
So  be  it  :  then  what  must  men  say  when  next 
Our  marshalled  host  sees  strenuous  war  draw  nigh  } 
"  Are  we  to  fight  or  to  consult  our  ease , 
Seeing  that  he  who  falls  no  honor  gets  ?  " 
In  truth  while  life  still  lasts,  from  day  to  day 
A  scant  supply  were  quite  enough  for  me. 
My  grave,  though,  I  would  fain  see  reverenced, 
For  gratitude  must  always  be  long-lived. 
Thou  pleadest  thy  despair,  my  answer  hear  : 
With  us  are  those  who  claim  no  less  our  pity. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  HECUBA. 


363 


And  some  are  old,  yea,  older  even  than  thou. 
Some  are  young  wives  whose  valiant  husbands  fell 
Where  now  the  dust  of  Ida  hides  their  bones. 
Bow  to  thy  fate  ;  while  we  if  we  do  err 
In  honoring  the  brave  must  stand  for  fools. 
Thou  and  thy  barbarous  kindred  all  have  friends 
But  love  them  not,  when  brave  men  die  for  you 
You  marvel  not,  and  this  helps  Greece  to  triumph. 
And  makes  your  fortunes  match  your  foolishness. 
Chorus.   Alas  !  what  ills  outrageous  bondage  has 
For  slaves,  unbearable  and  yet  endured. 
Hecuba.  My  daughter,  vanished  are  my  words,  my  plea 
Assailed  the  air  in  vain  to  save  thy  life. 
With  greater  than  thy  mother's  skill,  plead  thou. 
Use  thou  all  Philomela's  tearful  notes 
And  importune  him  for  escape  from  death. 
A  tearful  suppliant,  grasp  Odysseus'  senses ; 
Win  him  with  words ;   thou  hast  good  arguments ; 
Since  he  has  children  thou  shalt  move  his  heart. 
POLYX.  I  see  thee  thrust,  Odysseus,  thy  right  hand 
Beneath  thy  cloak,  and  with  averted  face 
Turn  from  me,  lest  with  suppliant  hand  I  reach 
Thy  beard.     Take  heart,  my  prayers  shall  not  molest  thee 
Lead,  for  I  follow  where  strong  fate  requires. 
Fate  and  my  love  of  death.     Should  I  refuse 
It  would  betray  a  base  and  craven  heart. 
Why  must  I  live  ?     My  father  once  was  king 
Of  Phrygia,  thus  life  first  was  known  to  me. 
And  then  by  bright  hopes  nurtured  I  grew  up 
A  bride  for  kings.     And  men  grew  jealous,  too. 
Of  him  whose  home  and  hearth  might  some  day  claim  me. 
Once  mistress  of  Ida's  women,  all 
Among  all  maids  once  singled  out,  all  me ! 
The  equal  then  of  gods,  wer't  not  for  death. 
And  now  a  slave !     The  very  name  of  slave 
Makes  me  in  love  with  death  —  it  sounds  so  strange. 
Nay  more,  some  master  fierce  at  heart  mayhap 
I  yet  shall  find,  bought  with  a  price,  even  I, 
Sister  of  Hector  erst  and  many  brothers. 
Forced  in  his  house  to  grind  his  corn  and  cake. 
To  sweep  his  house  and  ply  the  loom  for  him  ; 
My  life  through  him  shall  be  long  agony. 
Yea,  and  my  bed  a  slave  from  somewhere  bought 
Shall  soil,  though  once  men  deemed  me  fit  for  kings. 
No  !  No  !  my  eyes  renounce  this  light  of  day  ; 
Still  free,  my  body  I  consign  to  Hades. 
Odysseus,  take  me  hence,  guide  and  despatch  me ; 
I  see  no  hope,  no  expectation,  naught 
That  gives  me  heart  or  shows  me  joys  to  come. 
My  mother,  stand  not  thou  against  my  will 
With  word  or  deed.     Give  me  thy  counsels,  help 
To  die,  ere  by  dishonor  I  am  shamed. 
Who  has  not  known  the  bitterness  of  woe 
Must  wince  when  he  must  bear  its  galling  yoke. 
More  blessed  far  were  he  in  death  than  thus 
Alive.     For  life  dishonored  means  great  woe. 
Chorus.  Dread  is  the  mark  and  plain  for  men  to  see 

Which  stamps  the  nobly  born,  their  high  repute 
Proves  nobler  than  their  birth  when  they  are  worthy. 
Hecuba.  Honor  inspires  thy  words,  my  child,  but  honor 


3^4 


EURIPIDES. 


Has  with  it  pain.     If  Peleus'  son  must  needs 
His  pleasure  have,  and  you  must  shun  his  blame, 
O  then,  Odysseus,  leave  her  still  not  slain, 
Lead  me  away  even  to  Achilles'  tomb, 
Unsparing  pierce  me.     I  brought  Paris  forth 
Who  aimed  the  shaft  that  ruined  Thetis'  son. 


PARIS  AIMING  AT  ACHILLES. 


Odysseus.  Good  woman,  not  thy  death  but  hers  required 

Achilles'  ghost,  and  hers  the  Greeks  must  grant. 
Hecuba.  Oh  then,  —  but  will  you  kill  me  with  my  child? 
So  shall  the  draught  of  blood  be  twice  as  much 
Which  earth  and  he  who  asks  for  hers  shall  have. 
Odysseus.  This  girl's  one  death  suffices,  we'll  not  add 
One  more,  I  would  we  owed  not  even  one. 
Hecuba.  No  power  must  part  us,  with  my  child  I  die. 
Odysseus.  Is't  truth.?  have  I  who  know  it  not  some  master.? 

Hecuba.  As  to  an  oak  I  cling  to  her  like  ivy. 
Odysseus.  Not  if  thou  heedest  wiser  thoughts  than  thine. 

Hecuba.  I'll  not  submit  and  let  my  daughter  go. 
Odysseus.  No  more  will  I  depart  and  leave  her  here. 
POLYX.  Hear  reason,  mother,  thou,  Laertes'  son, 

Deal  gently  with  a  parent's  wounded  heart, 
Thou  must  not  strive  against  the  strong,  poor  mother, 
Wouldst  fall  to  earth  and  tear  thy  aged  flesh. 
When  force  had  sundered  us  and  flung  thee  back 
Shall  younger  strength  deface  thy  seemliness .' 
All  this  awaits  thee— nay,  not  so  —  'twere  shameful, 
And  now,  my  mother  dear,  thy  darling  hand 
Stretch  out  and  let  my  cheek  press  close  to  thine. 
Never  again,  once  now  and  never  more, 
Light  from  the  orb^d  sun  I  am  to  see. 
Hear  thou  the  last  of  all  my  greetings  given. 
Oh  mother  mine,  I  leave  thee  now  to  die. 
Hecuba.  And  I,  my  daughter,  still  must  live  a  slave. 

POLYX.  Unwed,  defrauded  of  my  marriage  song. 
Hecuba.  My  child, thou  art  undone  and  I  despair. 

POLYX.  O  I  shall  lie  apart  from  thee  in  death. 
Hecuba.  What  shall  I  do  ?     Where  go  to  end  this  life  ? 

POLYX.  My  sire  was  free.yet  I  must  die  a  slave. 
Hecuba.  The  childless  mother  I  of  many  children. 
POLYX.  To  Hector,  to  thy  aged  spouse,  what  word  ? 


EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  HECUBA. 


365 


Hecuba. 

POLYX. 

Hecuba. 

POLYX. 

Hecuba. 

POLYX, 

Hecuba. 

POLYX. 

Hecuba. 

POLYX. 


Hecuba. 


Say  that  none  lives  on  earth  with  woes  Hke  mine. 

O  bosom,  breasts  which  some  time  nursed  my  Hfe. 

O  doom  untimely  of  my  wretched  child. 

My  mother,  fare  thee  well,  farewell  Cassandra. 

Others  may  fare  thee  well,  thy  mother  shall  not. 

My  Polydorus,  fare  thee  well  in  Thrace. 

He  may  have  died  to  round  my  tale  of  woe. 

He  lives  and  he  shall  close  thine  eyes  in  death. 

My  anguish  is  my  death  before  I  die. 

Away !     Odysseus,  veil  me  in  these  folds  ; 

Before  you  slay  me  I  am  dead  at  heart. 

Slain  by  her  cries  whom  I  with  waihng  slay — 

My  mother.     O  light,  I  still  may  use  thy  name. 

Not  thee,  save  while  the  journey  lasts  that  parts 

The  sword  and  Achilles'  funeral  pyre  from  me. 

Ah  me  !  I  faint.     My  limbs  give  way  and  fail, 

O  daughter,  take  thy  mother,  give  thy  hand — 

Give,  leave  me  not  childless.     My  friends,  I  die. 

Oh  but  to  see  the  Dioscuri's  sister — 

Laconian  Helen,  whose  most  beauteous  eyes 

Made  hideous  hell  in  blessed  Troy  that  was. 

Breeze,  breeze  from  the  ocean  deep 

That  conveyest  sea-faring  craft 

Swift  barks  o'er  the  high-swelling  floods. 

Whither  vvilt  thou  convoy  me  in  my  woe. 

By  whom  enslaved,  a  chattel  in  whose  house 

Am  I  to  sojourn  on  arriving.-* 

Dost  thou  bear  me  off  to  a  roadstead  in  Dorian  lands  ? 

Or  in  Phthia  where 

The  father  of  goodliest  water  streams, 

(Men  say)  Apidanus  fattens  the  furrowed  fields. 

Or  to  what  one  among  islands  convoyed 

By  the  sea-smiting  oar  —  wilt  thou  bring  me 

To  drag  on  a  pitiful  life  indoors  — 

Is  it  the  isle  where  the  palm  first  grew. 

Where  the  laurel  its  first  hallowed  shoots  raised  upward 

For  Leto — well  beloved, 

To  comfort  her  awful  travail  ? 

And  there  with  Delian  maids 

Shall  I  praise  goddess  Artemis'  bow  and  her  fillet  of  gold  ? 

Is  it  the  city  of  Pallas, 

Throned  in  a  beauteous  chariot,  I  am  to  visit. 

And  there  yoke  young  steeds  on  her  saffron  robe, 

On  the  richly  fashioned  flower-spangled  web 

Broidering  them,  or  even  the  Titan  race, 

With  Zeus,  son  of  Cronos,  lulling  them  to  rest 

With  the  flash  of  his  flames  ? 

Woe  is  me  for  my  offspring. 

For  my  fathers,  for  my  fatherland. 

Which,  washed  by  smoke,  lies  ravaged 

And  taken  by  the  spear  of  the  Argives, 

And  I  in  a  land  of  strangers 

And  called  by  the  name  of  slave — 

I  have  left  the  land  of  Asia 

And  exchanged  it  for  Europe, 

Where  I  find  the  bridal  chamber  of  Hades. 


It  is  in  passages  like  this  that  we  may  notice  the  resemblance  between 
the  plays  of  Euripides  and  those  of  the  followers  of  Shakspere.     The 


366  EURIPIDES. 

grand  ethical  simplicity  of  the  great  masters  is  lost,  but  the  pathos  of 
separate  scenes  is  even  keener  and  intenser  in  the  later  poets. 

This  change,  which  is  one  of  those  most  characteristic  of  Euripides, 
is  accompanied  by  another,  the  use  of  the  prologue  to  state  very  clearly 
what  is  going  to  happen  in  the  play  ;  and  the  design  of  this  contrivance 
has  called  forth  much  discussion.  Since,  however,  the  main  effort  of 
Euripides  was  to  excel  in  the  pathetic  treatment  of  his  incidents,  and 
he  often,  for  this  purpose,  modified  the  usual  construction  of  the  myths, 
he  may  have  employed  the  prologue  in  this  manner  in  order  to  fix  the 
attention  of  his  spectators  on  his  own  art.  Nowhere  could  the  mod- 
ern attraction  of  surprise  have  found  itself  a  place  in  Greek  tragedy. 
Throughout,  familiar  legends  were  told  and  retold  as  symbols  of  great 
truths ;  and  for  them  a  prologue  was  not  needed.  When  a  man  is  in- 
terested in  the  pathology  of  the  emotions,  in  their  keen  analysis,  the 
importance  of  the  plot  as  in  itself  an  object  of  interest  is  sure  to  dwin- 
dle, as  we  see  in  the  very  modern  novel,  in  which  the  story  sinks  into 
insignificance  by  the  side  of  the  accurate  portrayal  of  thoughts  and 
feelings.  In  Euripides  probably  similar  causes  brought  forth  similar 
results. 

Undoubtedly,  too,  the  prologue  was  of  great  service  in  diminishing 
the  necessity  which  lies  heavy  upon  every  dramatic  writer,  of  making 
clear  who  are  his  characters  and  what  are  the  conditions  in  which  he 
proposes  to  exhibit  them.  Generally  this  exposition  requires  the  whole 
of  the  first  act,  and  we  all  know  its  tendency  to  make  this  part  of  the 
play  a  piece  of  conventionality,  almost  as  artificial  as  a  prologue  thinly 
disguised  by  a  dialogue  in  which  old  servants  recount  as  much  previous 
history  as  is  necessary  for  the  information  of  spectators.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  may  see  in  the  first  act  of  Macbeth  how  skilfully  the  state 
of  affairs  could  be  exhibited,  and  its  perfection  may  be  profitably  com- 
pared with  the  cruder  methods  in  As  You  Like  It.  Occasionally, 
as  in  the  Hippolytus,  the  prologue  of  Euripides  goes  further  and  an- 
nounces what  shall  be  the  conclusion  of  the  dramatic  action.  By  so 
doing  no  play  was  set  at  any  disadvantage  in  comparison  with  the 
others,  because  the  myths  on  which  all  rested  were  matters  of  common 
knowledge,  and  the  exact  form  of  treatment — which  was  the  main  ob- 
ject of  interest — yet  remained  to  be  developed.  In  general,  however, 
the  spectator  was  brought  only  to  the  point  where  the  action  began, 
and  was  free  to  observe  the  treatment  with  very  good  knowledge  of  the 
point  to  be  reached.  Some  of  the  prologues  have  not  reached  us  ; 
others  are  supposed  to  have  been  composed  by  the  actors.  But,  who- 
ever composed  them,  the  prologues  are  there,  and  have  been  a  contin- 
ual object  of  abuse  for  those  who  are  too  glad  to  seize  any  opportunity 
to  blame  Euripides. 


IN  TROD  UCTION  OF  THE  PERSONAL  ELEMENT  INTO  TRA  GED  V.     367 

The  prologue  of  the  Hecuba,  spoken  by  the  shade  of  her  murdered 
son,  informs  the  audience  of  his  bloody  end,  and  leaves  the  black  cloud 
overhanging  his  distressed  mother  through  the  early  part  of  the  play, 
while  she  is  still  ignorant  of  his  fate,  and  so  intensifies  rather  than  re- 
lieves the  gloom  of  the  tragedy.  The  spectator  knew,  though  Hecuba 
herself  did  not,  the  additional  blow  that  was  awaiting  her,  and  his  sym- 
pathy was  doubled.  A  more  pathetic  play  than  this  can  hardly  be 
imagined,  or  one  better  fitted  to  serve  as  an  example  of  the  great 
pathos  and  intense  personal  interest  that  Euripides  introduced  into 
the  solemn  tragedy.  Its  severity  was  tempered  by  the  human  sympa- 
thy that  he  aroused,  and  he  moved  in  the  direction  in  which  the  people 
were  moving. 

IV. 

In  the  Orestes  we  find  the  confusion  that  distinguishes  Euripides 
most  clearly  marked,  and  we  are  as  far  as  possible  removed  from  the 
directness  and  simplicity  of  what  we  have  previously  seen  in  Greek 
tragedy.  The  story,  which  was  perfectly  familiar  to  all  his  fellow-citi- 
zens, and  had  been  treated  by  yEschylus  and  Sophocles,  receives  here 
a  novel  turn.  Orestes  is  represented  as  punished  with  madness  for 
murdering  his  mother.  When  the  populace  decide  that  he  shall  die 
for  this  ill  deed,  Pylades  urges  him  to  revenge  himself  on  Menelaus  by 
killing  Helen.  But  the  gods  take  up  Helen  from  them,  and  Electra 
delivers  Hermione  to  them,  and  they  were  about  to  kill  her,  when 
Menelaus  came  in  and  endeavored  to  take  the  palace  by  storm.  They 
anticipated  his  purpose  and  threatened  to  set  it  on  fire.  But  Apollo 
appeared,  saying  that  he  had  carried  Helen  to  the  gods,  and  bade 
Orestes  marry  Hermione,  and  Electra  to  live  with  Pylades,  then  Ores- 
tes, being  freed  from  the  taint  of  the  murder  of  his  mother,  was  to  reign 
over  Argos.  Yet  this  incomplete  outline  does  not  in  the  least  touch 
the  tone  in  which  the  play  is  written.  Instead  of  heroes,  to  whom 
there  attaches  a  notion  of  grandeur  and  solemnity,  we  have  citizens 
bearing  the  heroic  names,  who  discuss  their  actions  in  the  most  every- 
day fashion.  The  wildness  of  the  plot  is  evident,  and  easily  explica- 
ble, for,  since  there  was  no  single  animating  idea  to  be  conveyed  by 
the  poet,  the  interest  could  be  maintained  only  by  the  accentuation  of 
the  new  personal  element.  The  best  way  to  accomplish  this  was  by 
employing  a  variety  of  incidents  and  emotions.  In  our  own  time, 
when  certainly  the  stage  is  not  put  to  any  great  use  as  a  moral  instruc- 
tor, the  interest  of  the  spectator  is  kept  alive  by  unexpected  incidents. 
The  tragedy  of  Euripides  was  debarred  from  this  method  by  its  em- 
ployment of  the  prologue,  wherein  the  whole  story  was  told,  so  that 


368 


EURIPIDES. 


the  audience,  knowing  what  they  had  to  expect,  were  free  to  see  how 
it  was  represented.  The  poet's  skill  was  devoted 
to  the  analysis  of  character,  and  here  was  his 
greatest  success,  in  showing  the  play  of  passions 
and  emotions.  This  made  more  prominent  the 
fragmentary  character  of  his  plays  ;  literary  art 
was  in  a  state,  not  unfamiliar  to  men  of  this  gen- 
eration, in  which  the  parts  were  far  better  than 
the  whole,  and  lines  and  passages  were  effective, 
while  the  play  as  a  whole  left  a  vague  or  unsatis- 
factory impression.  It  was  not  the  whole  charac- 
ter that  he  brought  out,  but  flashes  of  ingenious 
and  unexpected  feeling. 

The  Philoctetes  of  Sophocles  is  still  heroic, 
although  we  may  trace  the  effect  of  the  work 
of  Euripides,  and  of  the  changing  times,  in  the 
humanity  of  that  stubborn  character.  But 
Euripides  is  far  more  of  a  realist ;  he  lets  the 
ludicrousness  and  vividness  of  life  appear  in  a 
way  that  very  naturally  shocked  his  enemies, 
who  held  that  tragedy  had  nothing  to  do  with 

actual  life.  In  the  Hecuba  one  of  the  Trojan  women 
who  composed  the  chorus  tells  how  she  was  binding 
her  braided  hair  with  fillets  fastened  on  the  top  of 
her  head,  and  was  looking  into  the  golden  mirror, 
getting  ready  to  go  to  bed,  when  suddenly  a  tumult 
filled  the  streets,  and  it  was  known  that  the  Greeks 
had  made  an  entrance  into  the  city.  In  the  Orestes 
there  is  a  scene  between  the  hero  and  a  Phrygian 
slave  that  is  comical  in  its  nature,  so  much  so  that  it 
has  been  suggested  that  this  and  other  parts  of  the 
play  were  meant  for  parodies  of  other  tragedies. 
This  may  be  true,  but  it  is  a  harsh  view  to  take  of  any  man,  even  a  tra- 
gedian, that  his  jokes  can  be  understood  only 
after  an  interval  of  two  thousand  years.  At  any 
rate,  is  is  clear  that  Euripides  was  willing  to  em- 
ploy even  ridicule  to  make  his  plays  vivid  and  life- 
like. The  external  form  of  the  older  work  sur- 
vived, just  as  an  echo  of  the  full-mouthed  Eliza- 
bethan tragedy  was  whispered  softly  in  Dean  Mil- 
man's  plays,  even  so  late  as  the  first  quarter  of 
this  century.  This  comparison  must  not  lead  us 
too  far,  however,  for  while  Dean  Milman  was  making  a  plaster-cast  of 


INCREASE  OF  COMPLEXITY  IN  THE  DRAMA. 


369 


an  old  play,  Euripides 
was  trying  to  breathe 
new  life  into  the  old 
models.  This  play 
shows  how  many  were 
the  incidents  that  were 
meant  to  take  the  place 
of  the  earlier  simplic- 
ity. It  was  brought 
out  in  408  B.C.,  and  was 
the  last  of  the  plays  that 
he  wrote  in  Athens. 

The  Phoenician  Vir- 
gins, which  stands  next 
in  the  collection,  was 
composed  at  an  uncer- 
tain date.  Again  we 
have  the  crowded  stage, 
for  nearly  all  the  woes 
of  the  Theban  royal 
house  are  presented  in 
a  long  procession  in 
this  tragedy,  which 
makes  up  for  the  ab- 
sence of  a  single  over- 
whelming passion  by 
the  abundance  of  sepa- 
rate pathetic  scenes. 
No  greater  contrast  can 
be  imagined  than  that 
which  this  busy  play 
presents  to  the  sim- 
plicity and  bare  narra- 
tion of  The  Seven 
against  Thebes,  and  no 
other  tragedy  more 
thoroughly  represents 
the  inevitable  tendency 
of  literature  to  proceed 
from  large  outlines  to 
the  rendering  of  slight 
details,  the  same  differ- 
ence  that    we    see    in 


37°  EURIPIDES. 

the  novel  of  the  present  day,  when  we  compare  it  with  the  generous 
treatment  of  the  Waverley  novels,  and  that  is  further  illustrated  in  an- 
other branch  of  work  by  the  division  of  scientific  study  among  specialists. 
The  Medea,  which  was  produced  in  43 1  B.C.,  is  one  of  the  masterpieces 
of  Euripides.  The  play  was  brought  out  in  competition  with  Euphorion, 
the  son  of  ^schylus,  who  probably  gave  some  of  his  father's  plays, 
and  Sophocles,  who  received  the  first  and  second  prizes  respectively, 
while  the  third  was  given  to  Euripides.  This  is  far  from  being  the 
only  instance  in  the  brief  history  of  Greek  tragedy  of  the  failure  of  a 
great  play,  although  in  this  case  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Medea 
is  the  only  surviving  member  of  the  tetralogy.  It  remains  a  model  of 
the  peculiar  merit  of  its  author  before  his  later  manner.  The  story  of 
the  Medea  is  simple  and  is  told  with  great  directness.  She  is  the  wife 
of  Jason,  who  had  profited  by  her  aid  in  getting  the  Golden  Fleece  and 
had  married  her.  Later  he  fell  in  love  with  Glauke,  the  daughter  of 
Creon,  and  married  her.  The  subject  of  the  play  is  the  wild  wrath  and 
jealous  fury  of  Medea  at  his  desertion.  She  is  sentenced  to  exile  by 
Creon,  who  fears  her  anger,  but  she  succeeds  in  getting  twenty-four 
hours'  delay,  in  which  time  she  sends  to  the  new  bride  of  Jason  deadly 
gifts  by  which  she  perishes,  and,  moreover,  she  slays  her  own  and 
Jason's  children.  She  is  carried  away,  with  the  bodies  of  her  children, 
by  ^geus,  in  a  chariot,  and  betakes  herself  to  Athens.  This  whole 
bloody  history  was  treated  by  Euripides  with  masterly  skill.  His 
ingenious  drawing  of  the  infuriated  wife  showed  how  close  was  his 
observation,  how  delicate  his  sympathy.  Gods  and  goddesses  are  in 
distant  Olympus,  but  two  of  the  eternal  elements  of  human  nature, 
maternal  love  and  the  fierceness  of  jealousy,  are  caught  and  set  down 
for  the  delight  of  centuries.  The  play  advances  in  excitement  from 
the  moment  it  begins,  and  the  old  nurse  utters  her  forebodings  of 
trouble  as  Medea  lies  without  tasting  food,  her  body  sunk  in  grief, 
dissolving  all  her  tedious  time  in  tears,  since  she  knew  that  her  husband 
had  wronged  her. 

"  And  will  not  raise  her  eyes,  nor  from  the  ground 
Lift  up  her  face.     As  a  rock  might  or  sea-wave, 
Does  she  hear  those  who  love  her  counselling  her." 

It  is  with  impressive  art  that  Medea's  wails  are  heard  behind  the 
scenes,  utterly  distraught  as  she  is  and  yearning  for  death.  When  she 
appears,  it  is  with  an  expression  of  regret  for  the  miserable  condition 
of  women,  and  of  her  determination  to  find  revenge  in  some  way,  and 
the  chorus  of  Corinthian  women  freely  express  their  sympathy.  When 
Creon  enters  and  orders  her  into  banishment,  she  argues  most  ably : 
"  Never,"  she  says, 


MEDEA     CONTEMPLATING     THE     SLAUGHTER     OF     HER    CHILDREN. 
(Pompeiian   Wall-painting.') 


372  EURIPIDES. 

"  Never  fits  it  one  born  prudent-souled 
To  have  his  children  reared  surpassing  wise ; 
For,  added  to  their  blame  of  lavished  time, 
They  win  cross  envy  from  their  citizens. 
For,  offering  a  new  wisdom  unto  fools, 
Thou  shalt  be  held  a  dullard, not  a  sage  : 
And,  if  deemed  more  than  those  who  make  a  show 
Of  varied  subtleties,  then  shalt  thou  seem 
A  mischief  in  the  city.     Yea,  myself 
I  share  this  fortune ;  for,  being  wise,  I  am 
To  some  a  mark  for  envy,  and  to  some 
Abhorrent.     Yet  I  am  not  very  wise." 

There  is  but  little  doubt  that  Euripides  knew  very  well  the  world  he 
lived  in,  and  this  is  further  to  be  seen  in  the  skill  with  which  this 
passionate  woman  is  driven  to  decide  by  just  what  measures  she  shall 
wreak  her  vengeance ;  her  only  thought  is  of  the  means,  whether  to 
burn  them,  to  cut  their  throats,  or  to  take  the  straight  and  familiar 
path  and  give  them  poison.  While  she  tries  to  persuade  Creon,  and 
commands  herself  for  her  own  purposes,  she  does  not  spare  Jason, 
who,  naturally  enough,  does  not  hold  an  advantageous  position,  and 
he  does  not  protect  himself  by  assuring  Medea  that  although  she  hates 
him,  he  could  never  wish  her  evil.  This  cold  civility  has  its  natural 
effect ;  and  Medea's  lashing  tongue,  as  it  were,  flays  the  wretched 
Jason,  who  feebly  tries  to  show  what  advantages  have  come  to  her  in 
her  new  home.  The  great  scene,  however,  is  when  Medea  is  debating 
with  herself  the  murder  of  her  children.  This  has  been  thus  translated 
by  Mr.  Symonds : 

"  O,  children,  children  !  you  have  still  a  city — 
A  home,  where,  lost  to  me  and  all  my  woe. 
You  will  live  out  your  lives  without  a  mother  ! 
But  I — lo  !  I  am  for  another  land. 
Leaving  the  joy  of  you  :  to  see  you  happy. 
To  deck  your  marriage  bed,  to  greet  your  bride, 
To  light  your  wedding  torch  shall  not  be  mine  ! 

0  me,  thrice  wretched  in  my  own  self-will ! 

In  vain,  then,  dear  my  children  !  did  I  rear  you  ; 

In  vain  I  travailed,  and  with  wearing  sorrow 

Bore  bitter  anguish  in  the  hour  of  childbirth  ! 

Yea,  of  a  sooth,  I  had  great  hope  of  you, 

That  you  should  cherish  my  old  age,  and  deck 

My  corpse  with  loving  hands,  and  make  me  blessed 

'Mid  women  in  my  death.     But  now,  ah.  me  ! 

Hath  perished  that  sweet  dream.     For  long  without  you 

1  shall  drag  out  a  weary  doleful  age. 
And  you  shall  never  see  your  mother  more 
With  your  dear  eyes,  for  all  your  life  is  changed. 
Woe,  woe ! 

Why  gaze  you  at  me  with  your  eyes,  my  children .'' 
Why  smile  your  last  sweet  smile  ?     Ah,  me  !  ah,  me  ! 
What  shall  I  do  ?     My  heart  dissolves  within  me. 
Friends,  when  I  see  the  glad  eyes  of  my  sons ! 


MEDEA'S  SOLILOQUY— EMOTIONAL   QUALITY.  373 

I  can  not.     No !  my  will  that  was  so  steady, 

Farewell  to  it.     They,  too,  shall  go  with  me. 

Why  should  I  wound  their  sin  with  what  wounds  them, 

Heaping  tenfold  his  woes  on  my  own  head  } 

No,  no  ;  I  shall  not.     Perish  my  proud  will. 

Yet,  whence  this  weakness  ?     Do  I  wish  to  reap 

The  scorn  that  springs  from  enemies  unpunished  .' 

Dare  it  I  must.     What  craven  fool  am  I 

To  let  soft  thoughts  flow  trickling  from  my  soul  ! 

Go,  boys,  into  the  house ;  and  he  who  may  not 

Be  present  at  my  solemn  sacrifice — 

Let  him  see  to  it.     My  hand  shall  not  falter. 

Ah !  ah ! 

Nay,  do  not,  O  my  heart !  do  not  this  thing  ! 

Suffer  them,  O  poor  fool — yea,  spare  thy  children  ! 

There  in  thy  exile  they  will  gladden  thee.  ^ 

Not  so  :  by  all  the  plagues  of  nethermost  hell 

It  shall  not  be  that  I,  that  I  should  suffer 

My  foes  to  triumph  and  insult  my  sons  ! 

Die  must  they  :  this  must  be,  and  since  it  must, 

I,  I  myself  will  slay  them,  I  who  bore  them. 

So  it  is  fixed,  and  there  is  no  escape. 

Even  as  I  speak,  the  crown  is  on  her  head ; 

The  bride  is  dying  in  her  robes — I  know  it. 

But  since  this  path  most  piteous  I  tread. 

Sending  them  forth  on  paths  more  piteous  far, 

I  will  embrace  my  children.     Oh,  my  sons. 

Give,  give  your  mother  your  dear  hands  to  kiss ! 

Oh,  dearest  hands,  and  mouths  most  dear  to  me, 

And  forms  and  noble  faces  of  my  sons  ! 

Be  happy  even  then:  what  here  was  yours. 

Your  father  robs  you  of.     Oh,  loved  embrace  ! 

Oh,  tender  touch  and  sweet  breath  of  my  boys  ! 

Go  !  go  !  go  !  leave  me  !     Lo,  I  cannot  bear 

To  look  on  you :  my  woes  have  overwhelmed  me  ! 

Now  know  I  all  the  ill  I  have  to  do :  , 

But  rage  is  stronger  than  my  better  mind. 

Rage,  cause  of  greatest  crimes  and  griefs  to  mortals." 

In  the  whole  Greek  drama  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  speech  more 
compact  of  personal  emotion  than  this  vivid  representation  of  the  con- 
flict in  a  woman's  heart  between  fury  and  maternal  love.  Often  in  the 
Greek  plays  we  find  argumentative  speeches  defending  one  course  of 
action,  or  describing  some  incident ;  here  we  have  a  soliloquy  unfold- 
ing the  internal  strife,  and  thus  being  an  almost  transparent  medium 
between  Medea's  anguished  heart  and  the  spectator.  The  epical  ele- 
ment of  narration  has  vanished,  we  have  here  the  direct  delineation  of 
passion.  Thanks  to  this  quality,  the  play  has  lived  triumphant  in 
modern  literature,  for  it  appeals  directly  to  a  universal  human  sym- 
pathy. 

An  interesting  fact  about  this  play  is  that  it  was  preceded  by  one 
from  the  hands  of  Neophron,  of  which  there  is  left  a  fragment  of  the 
speech  in  which  his  Medea  determines  to  kill  her  children.  It  has 
been  thus  translated  by  Mr.  Symonds : 


374  EURIPIDES. 

"  Well,  well ;  what  wilt  thou  do,  my  soul  ?     Think  much 
Before  this  sin  be  sinned,  before  thy  dearest 
Thou  turn  to  deadliest  foes.     Whither  art  bounding  ? 
Restrain  thy  force,  thy  god-detested  fury. 
And  yet  why  grieve  I  thus,  seeing  my  life 
Laid  desolate,  despitefully  abandoned 
By  those  who  least  should  leave  me  ?     Soft,  forsooth, 
Shall  I  be  in  the  midst  of  wrongs  like  these  ? 
Nay,  heart  of  mine,  be  not  thy  own  betrayer  ! 
Ah  me  !     'Tis  settled.     Children,  from  my  sight 
Get  you  away  !  for  now  blood-thirsty  madness 
Sinks  in  my  soul  and  swells  it.     Oh,  hands,  hands. 
Unto  what  deed  are  we  accoutred  !     Woe  ! 
Undone  by  my  own  daring  !     In  one  minute 
I  go  to  blast  the  fruit  of  my  long  toil." 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  reads  like  a  first  draft  of  the 
more  complicated  speech  that  we  find  in  Euripides.  If  we  had  been 
more  fortunate  in  recovering  the  lost  work  of  the  second-rate  drama- 
tists we  should  then  see  more  clearly  than  we  now  do  the  gradual  un- 
folding of  th6  various  tendencies  of  Greek  tragedy.  The  fragments 
left  to  us  are  too  scanty  to  serve  as  anything  but  faint  indications  of 
the  abundance  of  plays  : 

Chorus. 

Strophe  I. 
No  hope  left  us  now  for  the  children's  life  ; 
No  hope  ;  they  are  passing  on  to  death  ; 
And  the  gift  that  comes  to  the  new-made  wife 
Is  the  gift  of  a  curse  in  her  golden  wreath. 

Alas  for  her  doom  ! 
Round  about  her  yellow  hair 
Her  owrif  hand  will  set  it  there. 
Signet  jewel  of  the  tomb. 

Antistrophe  I. 
By  the  grace  and  the  perfect  gleaming  won 
She  will  place  the  gold-wrought  crown  on  her  head, 
She  will  robe  herself  in  the  robe  ;  and  anon 
She  will  deck  her  a  bride  among  the  dead. 

Alas  for  her  doom  ! 
Fallen  in  such  snare,  too  late 
Would  she  struggle  from  her  fate, 
Hers  the  death-lot  of  the  tomb. 

Strophe  II. 
But  thou,  oh  wretched  man,  oh  woeful-wed. 
Yet  marriage-linked  to  kings ;  thou,  all  unseeing, 
Who  nearest  fast 

A  swift  destruction  to  thy  children's  being, 
A  hateful  death  to  her  who  shares  thy  bed. 
Oh  hapless  man,  how  fallen  from  thy  past  ! 

Antistrophe  II. 
And  miserable  mother  of  fair  boys, 
We  mourn  too,  thy  despair  with  outburst  weeping. 
Thine  who  wouldst  kill 

Thy  sons  for  the  wife's  couch  where  lonely  sleeping 
Thy  husband  leaves  thee  for  new  lawless  joys 


EXTRACT    FROM  THE  MEDEA.  375 

With  a  new  home-mate  who  thy  place  shall  fill. 

Attendant. 
Mistress,  thy  children  are  forgiven  from  exile  : 
And  in  her  hands  the  queenly  bride,  well  pleased. 
Received  the  gifts.     Thence  good-will  to  thy  sons. 

Medea. 
Alas! 

Attendant. 
Why  dost  thou  stand  aghast  when  thou  hast  prospered  ? 

Medea. 
Woe 's  me  ! 

Attendant. 
This  chimes  not  with  the  tidings  I  declare. 

Medea. 
Woe's  me  again  I 

Attendant. 
I  have  not  heralded  mischance  I  know  not, 
And  missed  my  joy  of  bringing  happy  news. 

Medea. 
Thou  hast  brought  what  thou  hast  brought :  I  blame  thee  not. 

Attendant. 
Why  then  dost  droop  thine  eyes  and  dost  weep  tears  ? 

Medea. 
There  is  much  cause,  old  man.     For  this  the  gods 
And  I  by  my  own  wild  resolves  have  wrought. 

Attendant. 
Take  heart.     For  through  thy  sons  thou'lt  yet  return. 

Medea. 
Alas !  I  shall  send  others  home  ere  that. 

Attendant. 
Thou  'rt  not  the  only  one  torn  from  her  sons. 
And  being  mortal  lightly  shouldst  bear  griefs. 

Medea. 
And  so  I  will.     But  go  thou  in  the  house, 
Prepare  my  children  what  the  day  requires. 
Oh  sons,  my  sons,  for  you  there  is  a  home 
And  city  where,  forsaking  wretched  me. 
Ye  shall  still  dwell  and  have  no  mother  more  ; 
But  I,  an  exile,  seek  another  land, 
Ere  I  have  joyed  in  you  and  seen  you  glad, 
Ere  I  have  decked  for  you  the  nuptial  pomp. 
The  bride,  the  bed,  and  held  the  torch  aloft. 
Oh  me  !  forlorn  by  my  untempered  moods  ! 
In  vain  then  have  I  nurtured  ye,  my  sons. 
In  vain  have  toiled  and  been  worn  down  by  cares. 
And  felt  the  hard,  child-bearing  agonies. 
There  was  a  time  when  I,  unhappy  one. 
Had  many  hopes  in  you,  that  both  of  you 
Would  cherish  me  in  age,  and  that  your  hands. 
When  I  am  dead,  would  fitly  lay  me  out — 
That  wish  of  all  men  :  but  now  lost  indeed 
Is  that  sweet  thought,  for  I  must,  reft  of  you. 
Live  on  a  piteous  life  and  full  of  pain  ; 
And  ye,  your  dear  eyes  will  no  more  behold 
Your  mother,  gone  into  your  new  strange  life. 


376  EURIPIDES. 

Alas  !     Why  do  ye  fix  your  eyes  on  me, 

My  sons?     Why  smile  ye  on  me  that  last  smile  ? 

Alas  !     What  must  I  do  ?     For  my  heart  faints, 

Thus  looking  on  my  children's  happy  eyes. 

Women,  I  cannot.     Farewell  my  past  resolves, 

My  boys,  go  forth  with  me.     What  boots  it  me 

To  wring  their  father  with  their  cruel  fates, 

And  earn  myself  a  doubled  misery  } 

It  shall  not  be,  shall  not.     Farewell  resolves. 

And  yet  what  mood  is  this  .-*     Am  I  content 

To  spare  my  foes  and  be  a  laughing-stock  } 

It  must  be  dared.     Why,  out  upon  my  weakness 

To  let  such  coward  thoughts  steal  from  my  heart ! 

Go,  children,  to  the  house.     And  he  who  lacks 

Right  now  to  stand  by  sacrifice  of  mine. 

Let  him  look  to  it.     I'll  not  stay  my  hand. 

Alas !     Alas  ! 
No,  surely.    O  my  heart, thou  canst  not  do  it ; 
Racked  heart,  let  them  go  safely,  spare  the  boys : 
Living  far  hence  with  me  they'll  make  thee  joy. 
No  ;  by  the  avenging  demon-gods  in  hell. 
Never  shall  be  that  I  should  yield  my  boys 
To  the  despitings  of  mine  enemies. 
For  all  ways  they  must  die,  and,  since  'tis  so, 
Better  I  slay  them,  I  who  gave  them  birth. 
All  ways  'tis  fated :  there  is  no  escape. 
For  now,  in  the  robes,  the  wealth  upon  her  head, 
The  royal  bride  is  perishing ;  I  know  it. 
But,  since  I  go  on  so  forlorn  a  journey. 
And  them  too  send  on  one  yet  more  forlorn, 
I'd  fain  speak  with  my  sons.     Give  me,  my  children, 
Give  your  mother  your  right  hands  to  clasp  to  her. 
Oh  darling  hands,  oh,  dearest  lips  to  me; 
Oh  forms  and  noble  faces  of  my  boys ! 
Be  happy  :  but  there.     For  of  all  part  here 
Your  father  has  bereft  you.     Oh  sweet  kiss, 
Oh  grateful  breath  and  soft  skin  of  my  boys ! 
Go,  go.     I  can  no  longer  look  on  you. 
But  by  my  sufferings  am  overborne. 
Oh  I  do  know  what  sorrows  I  shall  make. 
But  anger  keeps  the  mastery  of  my  thoughts, 
Which  is  the  chiefest  cause  of  human  woes. 

Chorus. 

Oftentimes  now  have  I  ere  to-day 

Reached  subtler  reasons,  joined  higher  debates. 

Than  womanhood  has  the  right  to  scan. 

But  'tis  that  with  us  too  there  walks  a  muse 

Discoursing  high  things  —  yet  not  to  us  all. 

Since  few  of  the  race  of  women  there  be, 

(Thou  wert  like  to  find  among  many  but  one), 

Not  friendless  of  any  muse. 

And  now  I  aver  that  of  mortals  those 

Who  have  never  wed,  or  known  children  theirs. 

Than  parents  are  happier  far. 

For  the  childless  at  least,  through  not  making  essay, 

If  sons  be  born  for  a  joy  or  a  curse. 

Having  none,  are  safe  from  such  miseries. 

But  such  as  have  springing  up  in  their  homes 

Sweet  blossom  and  growth  of  children,  them 


EXTRACT  FROM  THE  MEDEA.  Z11 

I  see  worn  with  cares  through  the  weary  while  : 

First  how  to  rear  them  in  seemly  wise 

And  how  to  leave  the  children  estate  ; 

Then  next,  whether  they  are  spending  themselves 

For  ignoble  beings  or  for  good, 

That  is  left  dark  from  their  ken. 

But  one  last  ill  of  all,  to  ail  men 

Now  will  I  speak.     For  if  they  have  found 

Sufficing  estate,  and  their  children  have  waxed 

To  the  glory  of  youth,  and  moreover  are  good. 

If  their  lot  have  chanced  to  them  thus,  lo  Death, 

Vanished  back  to  his  Hades  again. 

Has  snatched  the  forms  of  the  children  away. 

And  what  avails  it  for  children's  sake 

To  have  the  gods  heap  on  mortals'  heads 

This  bitterest,  deadly  despair  ? 

Medea. 
Friends,  now  for  long  abiding  the  event, 
Eager  I  gaze  for  what  shall  come  of  it ; 
And  now  discern  a  servitor  of  Jason's 
Advancing  hither.     And  his  gasping  breath 
Declares  him  messenger  of  some  dire  news. 

Messenger. 
Oh  thou  who  hast  wrought  a  horrible  wild  deed, 
Medea,  fly,  fly,  sparing  not  car  of  the  waves. 
Nor  chariot  hurrying  thee  across  the  plains. 

Medea. 
But  what  hath  chanced  to  me  worth  such  a  flight } 

Messenger. 
The  royal  maiden  is  this  moment  dead, 
With  Creon  her  father,  by  thy  magic  drugs. 

Medea. 

Thou  hast  told  sweetest  news.     From  henceforth  rank 
Among  my  benefactors  and  my  friends. 

Messenger. 
What  sayest  thou  ?     Lady,  hast  thou  thy  right  wits, 
Nor  rav'st,  who,  having  outraged  the  king's  hearth, 
Joy'st  at  the  hearing  and  dost  nothing  fear  } 

Medea. 
Somewhat  in  sooth  I  have  to  answer  back 
To  these  thy  words.     But  be  not  hasty,  friend. 
Come,  tell  me  how  they  died.     For  twice  so  much 
Wilt  thou  delight  me  if  they  died  in  torments. 

Messenger. 
When  then  the  boys,  thy  two  sons,  had  arrived. 
And  with  their  father  entered  the  bride's  house. 
We  servants,  who  were  troubled  for  thy  griefs. 
Rejoiced  :  and  much  talk  shortly  filled  our  ears. 
Thou  and  thy  husband  had  made  up  past  strife. 
One  kissed  the  hand  and  one  the  golden  head 
Of  thy  young  sons,  and  I  myself,  for  joy. 
Followed  the  boys  into  the  women's  halls. 
But  our  mistress,  whom  we  serve  now  in  thy  place. 
Before  she  saw  thy  sons  come  side  by  side. 
Kept  her  glad  gaze  on  Jason  :  then  ere  long 


378 


EURIPIDES. 


She  hid  her  eyes  and  turned  away  from  him 

Her  whitened  face,  loathing  the  boys'  approach. 

But  thy  husband  checked  his  young  bride's  heat  and  rage, 

Thus  speaking  :  "  Be  not  rancorous  to  thy  friends, 

But  cease  thy  wrath  and  turn  again  thy  head, 

Counting  those  dear  who  're  to  thy  husband  dear. 

Take  then  their  gifts,  and 'of  thy  father  pray 

He  spare  for  my  sake  my  boys'  banishment." 

And  when  she  saw  the  gauds  she  said  no  nay. 

But  spoke  her  husband  sooth  in  all.     And  ere 

The  father  and  the  boys  had  gone  far  forth 

She  took  the  shimmering  robes  and  put  them  on, 

And,  setting  round  her  curls  the  golden  crown. 


SCENES    FROM    THE    MEDEA. 
(^Drawing  from   A  m/>hora.) 

At  the  bright  mirror  stroked  her  tresses  right, 

And  smiled  on  the  mute  likeness  of  herself. 

Next,  risen  from  her  couch,  flits  through  the  room, 

Daintily  tripping  on  her  milk-white  feet, 

With  the  gifts  overjoyed,  often  and  long 

O'er  her  slant  shoulder  gazing  on  herself ; 

But  then  a  sight  came  dread  to  look  upon, 

For  a  change  comes  on  her  hue;  she  staggers  back. 

Shuddering  in  every  limb,  and  scarce  wins  time 

To  fall  upon  her  couch,  not  to  the  ground. 


EXTRACT  FROM  THE  MEDEA.  379 

Then  an  old  waiting-dame,  who  deemed  the  wrath 

Of  Pan  or  other  god  had  come  on  her. 

Shrilled  the  prayer-chaunt ;  I  trow  before  she  saw 

The  white  foam  oozing  through  the  mouth,  the  eyes 

Start  from  their  sockets  strained,  the  bloodless  flesh. 

For  then,  far  other  wailing  than  her  chaunt, 

Came  her  great  shriek.     Straight  to  the  father's  house 

Rushed  one,  another  to  the  new-wed  husband, 

To  tell  of  the  bride's  fate  ;  and  all  the  house 

Was  ringing  with  incessant  hurrying  steps. 

By  this  might  a  swift  walker  stretching  limb 

Have  touched  the  goal  of  the  six  plethra  course. 

And  she,  who  had  been  speechless,  with  shut  ejes. 

Fearfully  moaned,  poor  wretch,  and  started  up  : 

For  twofold  anguish  did  make  war  on  her. 

For  both  the  golden  crown  set  round  her  head 

Was  sending  marvelous  streams  of  eating  fire. 

And  the  fine-webbed  robe,  the  offering  of  thy  sons, 

Was  gnawing  at  the  hapless  one's  white  flesh. 

But  she,  sprung  from  her  couch,  now  flies,  ablaze. 

Tossing  her  head  and  curls  this  way  and  that, 

Fain  to  dash  off  the  crown.     But  all  too  firm 

The  golden  headband  clave  ;  and  still  the  fire 

Flamed  doubly  fiercer  when  she  tossed  her  locks. 

And,  conquered  by  her  fate,  she  drops  to  the  floor. 

Scarce,  but  by  her  own  father  to  be  known  : 

For  neither  the  grave  sweetness  of  her  eyes. 

Nor  her  fair  face  was  visible  ;  but  blood 

Mingled  with  flame  was  welling  from  her  head. 

And,  by  the  secret  poison  gnawed,  her  flesh 

Dropped  from  the  bones,  as  resin-gouts  from  the  fir, — 

Dreadful  to  see.     And  none  dared  touch  the  dead, 

For  her  fate  had  we  to  our  monitor  ; 

But  the  hapless  father,  through  his  ignorance 

Of  how  she  perished,  having  ere  we  knew 

Entered  the  chamber,  falls  upon  the  corse. 

Breaks  instant  into  wailing,  and,  her  body 

Enfolded  in  his  clasp,  he  kisses  her, 

Thus  calling  on  her,  "  Oh,  unhappy  child. 

What  god  hath  foully  done  thee  thus  to  death  } 

Who  makes  this  charnel  heap  of  moldering  age 

Thy  childless  mourner  }     Oh,  woe  worth  the  while ! 

Would  now  that  I  might  die  with  thee,  my  child." 

But,  when  he  stayed  his  sobbings  and  laments 

And  would  have  raised  his  aged  body  up. 

He,  as  the  ivy  by  the  laurel's  boughs, 

By  the  fine-webbed  robes  was  caught ;  and  fearful  grew 

The  struggle.     He  sought  on  his  knees  to  rise  ; 

She  held  him  back.     And  if  by  force  he  rose 

He  tore  the  aged  flesh  from  off  his  bones. 

And  then  at  length  the  evil-fated  man 

Ceased  and  gave  up  the  ghost,  able  no  more 

To  cope  with  that  great  anguish.     And  they  lie. 

Father  and  daughter,  corpses  side  by  side  : 

A  sight  of  sorrow  that  appeals  for  tears. 

And  truly  let  thy  fortunes  be  apart 

From  reasonings  of  mine  :  for  thou  thyself 

Wilt  know  a  shelter  from  the  retribution. 

But  not  now  first  I  count  the  lot  of  man 

A  passing  shadow  :  and  I  might  say  those 


380  EURIPIDES. 

Of  mortals  who  are  very  seeming  wise 

And  fret  themselves  with  learnings,  those  are  they 

Who  make  them  guilty  of  the  chiefest  folly  ; 

But  no  one  mortal  is  a  happy  man, 

Though,  riches  flooding  in,  more  prosperous 

One  than  another  grow  ;  yet  none  is  happy. 

Chorus. 

Fortune,  it  seems,  on  Jason  will  to-day 
Justly  heap  many  woes.     Oh  hapless  one. 
Daughter  of  Creon,  how  we  mourn  thy  fate, 
Who  to  the  halls  of  Hades  art  gone  forth 
Because  of  Jason's  marrying  with  thee. 

Medea. 
My  friends,  this  purpose  stand  approved  to  me, 
Slaying  my  boys  to  hurry  from  this  realm  ; 
Not,  making  weak  delays,  to  give  my  sons 
By  other  and  more  cruel  hands  to  die. 
Nay,  steel  thyself,  my  heart.     Why  linger  we 
As  not  to  do  that  horror  which  yet  must  be  ? 
Come,  oh,  my  woeful  hand,  take, take  the  sword 
On  to  my  new  life's  mournful  starting  point, 
And  be  no  coward,  nor  think  on  thy  boys. 
How  dear,  how  thou  didst  give  them  birth.     Nay,  rather 
For  this  short  day  forget  they  are  thy  sons  : 
Then  weep  them  afterwards.     For  though  thou  slay'st  them. 
Oh,  but  they're  dear,  and  I  a  desolate  woman. 

Chorus. 
Strophe. 

Earth,  and  all-lighting  glow  of  sun, 
Behold !  behold ! 
See  this  sad  woman  and  undone. 
Ere  yet  her  murderous  hand,  made  bold 
Against  her  own,  her  children  slay. 
For  they  sprang  of  the  golden  stem 
Of  thy  descent  ;  and  great  to-day 
Our  dread  the  blood  of  gods  in  them 
Shall  by  a  mortal's  wrath  be  spilt. 
But  now  do  thou,  Oh,  Zeus-born  light, 
Stay  her — prevent ;  put  thou  to  flight 
That  fell  Erinnys  to  this  home 
From  God's  avenging  past  crimes,  come 
To  whelm  her  in  despair  and  guilt. 
Antistrophe. 

Upon  thy  children  has  thy  care 

Been  spent  in  vain  ; 

In  vain  thy  loved  babes  didst  thou  bear ; 

Thou  who  the  inhospitable  lane 

Of  the  dark  rocks  Sympleglades 

Didst  leave  behind  thee  in  thy  wake. 

Forlorn  one,  why  do  pangs  like  these 

Of  passion  thy  torn  spirit  shake  } 

Why  shall  stern  murder  of  them  grow  } 

For  scarce  is  any  cleansing  found 

Of  kindred  blood  that  from  the  ground 

For  vengeance  cries  :  but  like  for  like 

The  gods  send  curses  down  and  strike 

The  slayers  and  their  houses  low. 


EXTRACT  FROM  THE  MEDEA.  Z^\ 

First  Son. 

Alas! 

What  shall  I  do  ?     Whither  run  from  our  mother  ? 

Second  Son. 

I  know  not,  dearest  brother,  for  we  perish. 

Chorus. 

Dost  hear  thy  children,  hear  their  cry  of  pain  ? 
Oh  luckless  woman,  desperate  ! 
Shall  I  within  the  house  then  ?     I  were  fain 
To  shield  the  children  from  such  fate. 

First  Son. 
Ho  !  in  the  gods'  name,  rescue  !     There  is  need. 

Second  Son. 
For  we  are  in  the  toils,  beneath  the  knife. 
Chorus. 

Oh  cruel,  what,  of  stone  or  steel,  art  thou. 

Thou  who  that  bloom. 

Of  sons  thyself  didst  bear  wouldst  see  die  now 

By  thine  hands'  doom  ? 

One  woman  have  I  heard  of,  one  alone, 

And  of  the  far-off  days,  whose  deathful  hand 

Was  laid  upon  the  babes  that  were  her  own, 

Ino  by  gods  distraught,  when  from  her  land 

She  by  the  queenly  spouse  of  Zeus  was  banned. 

Sent  to  roam  to  and  fro  ; 

And,  seeking  her  sons'  death,  she,  wild  with  woe, 

Stretched  forth  her  foot  from  off  the  sea's  rough  strand. 

Whelmed  her  with  them  into  the  waves  below. 

And,  they  so  dying  with  her,  died. 

Henceforth  can  aught  called  strange  or  dread  betide  ? 

Oh  bed  of  woman,  with  all  mischief  fraught. 

What  ills  hast  thou  ere  now  to  mortals  brought ! 

Jason, 

Women,  ye  who  thus  stand  about  the  house, 

Is  she  within  her  home  who  wrought  these  crimes, 

Medea,  or  hath  she  gone  away  in  flight  } 

For  now  must  she  or  hide  beneath  the  earth 

Or  lift  herself  with  wings  into  wide  air 

Not  to  pay  forfeit  to  the  royal  house. 

Thinks  she,  having  slain  the  rulers  of  this  land, 

Herself  uninjured  from  this  home  to  fly .'' 

But  not  of  her  I  reck  as  of  my  sons  : 

Her  those  she  wronged  will  evilly  requite, 

But  to  preserve  my  children's  life  I  came. 

Lest  to  my  hurt  the  avenging  kin  on  them 

Wreak  somewhat  for  their  mother's  bloody  crime. 

Chorus. 
Oh,  wretched  man  !     What  woes  thou  com'st  to,  Jason, 
Thou  know'st  not,  else  hadst  thou  not  said  these  words. 

Jason. 
What  is  it  ?     Seeks  she  then  to  kill  me  too  ? 

Chorus. 
The  boys  have  perished  by  their  mother's  hand. 


3^2  EURIPIDES. 

Jason, 
Woe  !    What  sayst  thou  ?     Woman,  how  thou  destroy 'st  me ! 

Chorus. 
And  now  no  more  in  being  count  thy  sons. 

Jason. 
Where  killed  she  them,  in  the  house  or  without } 

Chorus. 
Open  these  gates,  thou'lt  see  thy  murdered  sons. 

Jason. 
Undo  the  bolt  on  the  instant,  servants  there, 
Loose  the  clamps,  that  I  may  see  my  grief  and  bane, 
May  see  them  dead  and  guerdon  her  with  death. 

Medea  {from  overhead^. 
Why  dost  thou  batter  at  these  gates,  and  force  them. 
Seeking  the  dead  and  me  who  wrought  their  deaths  .-* 
Cease  from  this  toil.     If  thou  hast  need  of  me 
Speak  then,  if  thou  wouldst  aught.     But  never  more 
Thy  hand  shall  touch  me ;  such  a  chariot 
The  Sun,  my  father's  father,  gives  to  me, 
A  stronghold  from  the  hand  of  enemies. 

Jason. 

Oh,  loathsome  thing,  oh  woman  most  abhorred 

Of  gods  and  me  and  all  the  race  of  men. 

Thou  who  hast  dared  to  thrust  the  sword  in  thy  sons 

Thyself  didst  bear,  and  hast  destroyed  me  out. 

Childless.     And  thou  beholdest  sun  and  earth. 

Who  didst  this,  daredst  this  most  accursed  deed ! 

Perish.     Oh,  I  am  wise  now,  then  unwise. 

When  from  thy  home  in  thy  barbarian  land 

I  brought  thee  with  me  to  a  Hellene  house, 

A  monstrous  bane  to  the  land  that  nurtured  thee ; 

And  to  thy  father  traitress.     Now  at  me 

Have  the  gods  launched  thy  retributory  fiends, 

Who,  slaying  first  thy  brother  at  the  hearth, 

Hiedst  thee  unto  the  stately-prowed  ship  Argo. 

Such  thy  first  deeds  :  then,  married  to  myself. 

And  having  borne  me  children,  for  a  spite 

Of  beddings  and  weddings  thou  hast  slaughtered  them. 

There's  not  a  Hellene  woman  had  so  dared  ; 

Above  whom  I,  forsooth,  choose  thee  to  wife  — 

A  now  loathed  tie  and  ruinous  to  me  — 

Thee  lioness,  not  woman,  of  a  mood 

Than  the  Tursenian  Scylla  more  untamed. 

Enough  ;  for  not  with  thousands  of  rebukes 

Could  I  wring  thee,  such  is  thine  hardihood. 

Avaunt,  thou  guilty  shame  !  child-murderess  ! 

But  mine  it  is  to  wail  my  present  fate; 

Who  nor  of  my  new  spousals  shall  have  gain, 

Nor  shall  have  sons  whom  I  begot  and  bred. 

To  call  my  living  own  :  for  I  have  lost  them. 

Medea. 
I  would  have  largely  answered  back  thy  words 
If  Zeus  the  father  knew  not  what  from  me 
Thou  didst  receive  and  in  what  kind  hast  done. 


EXTRACT  FROM  THE  MEDEA.  383 

And  'twas  not  for  thee,  having  spurned  my  love. 
To  lead  a  merry  life,  flouting  at  me. 
Nor  for  the  princess  ;  neither  was  it  his 
Who  gave  her  thee  to  wed,  Creon,  unscathed. 
To  cast  me  out  of  this  his  realm.     And  now. 
If  it  is  so  like  thee,  call  me  lioness 
And  Scylla,  dweller  on  Tursenian  plains. 
For  as  right  bade  me,  I  have  clutched  thy  heart. 

Jason. 
And  thou  too  sufferest,  partner  in  the  pangs. 

Medea. 
True,  but  the  pain  profits  if  thou  shalt  not  flout. 

Jason. 
Oh  sons,  how  foul  a  mother  have  ye  had  ! 

Medea. 
Oh  boys,  how  died  ye  by  your  father's  guilt ! 

Jason, 
Not  this  right  hand  of  mine  slew  them,  indeed. 

Medea. 
No,  but  thine  outrage  and  new  wedding  ties. 

Jason. 
So  for  a  bed  lost  thou  thoughtsl  fit  to  slay  them  } 

Medea. 
Dost  thou  count  that  a  light  wrong  to  a  woman  ? 

Jason. 
Aye,  to  a  chaste  one :  but  thou  'rt  wholly  base. 

Medea. 
They  are  no  more.     For  this  will  torture  thee. 

Jason. 
They  are,  I  say —  a  haunting  curse  for  thee. 

Medea. 
Who  first  begun  the  wrong  the  gods  do  know. 

Jason. 
Thy  loathly  mind  they  verily  do  know. 

Medea. 
Thou'rt  hateful  :  and  I'm  sick  of  thy  cross  talk. 

Jason. 
And  I  of  thine  :  but  the  farewell  is  easy. 

Medea. 
Well,  how  }    What  shall  I  do .?     I  too  long  for  it. 

Jason. 
Let  me  then  bury  and  bemoan  these  dead. 

Medea. 
Never.     Since  I  will  bury  them  with  this  hand, 
Bearing  them  to  the  sacred  grove  of  Hera, 
God  of  the  heights,  that  no  one  of  my  foes 
Shall  do  despite  to  them,  breaking  their  graves. 
And  I'll  appoint  this  land  of  Sisyphus 


3^4  EURIPIDES. 

A  solemn  high  day  and  a  sacrifice 

For  aye,  because  of  their  unhallowed  deaths. 

For  I  go  to  the  city  of  Erechtheus, 

To  dwell  with  ^geus  there,  Pandion's  son, 

For  thee,  as  is  most  fit,  thou,  an  ill  man, 

Shalt  die  an  ill  death,  thy  head  battered  in 

By  the  ruins  of  thine  Argo  :  that,  to  thee, 

The  sharp  last  sequel  of  our  wedding  tie. 

Jason. 
But  thee  may  thy  children's  Erinnys  slay 
And  Vengeance  for  blood. 

Medea. 
And  who  among  gods  and  friends  will  hear  thee 
Betrayer  of  strangers  and  breaker  of  oaths  } 

Jason. 
Out,  out,  stained  wretch  and  child  murderess. 

Medea. 
Go  now  to  thy  home  and  bury  thy  bride. 

Jason. 
I  go.     Yea,  of  both  my  children  bereft. 

Medea. 
Thy  wail  is  yet  nothing.     Wait  and  grow  old. 

Jason. 
Oh,  sons,  much  loved  ! 

Medea. 
Of  their  mother,  not  thee. 

Jason. 
And  yet  thou  didst  slay  them. 

Medea. 
Making  thee  woe. 

Jason. 
Alas  !  alas  !  I,  a  woeful  man, 
Desire  to  kiss  the  dear  lips  of  my  boys. 

Medea. 
Thou  callst  on  them  now,  hast  welcomes  now  ; 
Then  didst  reject  them. 

Jason. 
In  the  gods'  name. 
Give  me  to  touch  my  children's  soft  flesh. 

Medea. 
It  may  not  be  :  thy  words  are  vain  waste. 

Jason. 
Oh  Zeus,  dost  thou  hear  how  I'm  kept  at  bay. 
And  this  that  is  done  unto  me  of  her. 
This  foul  and  child-slaying  lioness  } 
But  still  to  my  utmost  as  best  I  may 
I  make  these  death-wails  and  invokings  for  them  ; 
Thus  to  my  witness  calling  the  gods, 
How  thou,  having  slain  my  sons,  dost  prevent 
That  I  touch  with  my  hand  and  bury  the  dead  — 
Whom  would  I  had  never  begotten,  so 
By  thee  to  behold  them  destroyed. 


THE    CROWNED  HIPPOLYTUS.  385 

Chorus. 
Zeus  in  Olympus  parts  out  many  lots, 
And  the  gods  work  to  many  undreamed  of  ends, 
And  that  we  looked  for  is  never  fulfilled, 
And  to  things  not  looked  for  the  gods  make  a  way  : 
Even  so  hath  this  issue  been. 

V. 

The  Crowned  Hippolytus,  like  the  Medea,  has  served  as  an  inspira- 
tion to  the  modern  stage,  although  it  can  scarcely  be  denied  that  they 
both  owe  part  of  this  long  life  to  the  fact  that  Seneca  used  them  in 
the  preparation  of  two  of  his  famous  plays.  That  his  treatment  of  the 
old  subjects  abounded  with  gross  faults  will  be  seen  later;  yet  their 
very  extravagances,  by  suiting  the  raw  taste  of  an  unpolished  age,  led 
the  modern  public  back  to  the  study  of  antiquity.  His  Phaedra  was 
probably  taken  from  some  other  original  than  this  Crowned  Hip- 
polytus, for  Phaedra  was  the  heroine  of  other  plays  than  this.  One  of 
them,  the  work  of  Euripides,  was  known  as  the  Veiled  Hippolytus, 
from  the  fact  that  the  hero  hid  his  head  in  shame  when  his  stepmother 
confessed  her  love  for  him.  The  Crowned  Hippolytus  was  so  called 
from  the  fact  that  the  hero  appeared,  bearing  a  crown  to  offer  to 
Artemis.  While  the  earlier  play  was  a  failure,  this  revision  was 
a  great  success.  It  was  brought  out  in  428  B.C.,  winning  for  its 
author  the  first  prize.  The  scene  of  the  play  is  Trazene,  where  Hip- 
polytus, the  son  of  Theseus,  had  been  brought  up.  The  prologue, 
after  the  awkward  fashion  which  was  not  employed  in  the  Medea, 
announces  with  the  dryness  of  a  playbill  the  action  of  the  play: 
Phaedra,  the  stepmother  of  Hippolytus,  is  cursed  by  Aphrodite  with 
love  of  that  young  hero.  He  is  represented  a  charming  youth,  fond 
of  hunting  and  of  the  country,  and  a  devoted  worshipper  of  Artemis. 
Indeed,  while  the  gods  stand  above  the  scene  and  create  confusion  for 
men  and  women,  in  this  instance  bringing  about  the  death  of  Hip- 
polytus on  account  of  Aphrodite's  jealousy  of  Artemis,  yet  even  here 
the  action  rests  on  human  deeds  and  emotions.  Thus  Hippolytus  is 
drawn  in  a  most  natural  way.  His  love  for  the  country  is  beautifully 
given,  as  these  lines  will  show : 

"  Welcome  to  me,  O  fairest 

Artemis,  loveliest  maiden 

Of  them  that  walk  on  Olympus  ! 
I  bring  for  thee  a  plaited  wreath  of  flowers 
From  meadow  lands  untrodden  and  unmown. 
There  never  shepherd  dares  to  feed  his  flocks. 
Nor  iron  comes  therein  ;  only  the  bee 
Through  that  unsullied  meadow  in  the  spring 
Flies  on  and  leaves  it  pure,  and  Reverence 
Freshens  with  rivers'  dew  the  tended  flowers. 


ARTEMIS,     THE    GODDESS    OF    THE     CHASE. 
{Statue  in  the  Louvre.) 


THE  CROWNED  HIPPOLYTUS—PH^DRA'S  LAMENT.  387 

And  only  they  whose  virtue  is  untaught, 
They  that  inherit  purity,  may  pluck 
Their  bloom  and  gather  it  —  no  baser  man. 
Yet,  O  dear  mistress,  from  this  pious  hand 
Take  thou  a  garland  for  thy  golden  hair. 
For  I,  of  all  men,  only  am  thy  friend 
To  share  thy  converse  and  companionship. 
Hearing  thy  voice,  w^hose  eyes  1  never  see  — 
And  thus  may  I  live  until  I  reach  the  goal !  " 

Yet  even  here  we  may  detect  the  self-satisfaction  which  leads  Hip- 
polytus  to  his  fate.  The  last  lines  express  his  consciousness  of  his 
superiority,  and  it  is  with  great  tact  that  Euripides  lets  his  hero  dis- 
play the  fanaticism  by  which  alone  the  Greeks  could  explain  his 
detestation  of  Aphrodite.  When  Phaedra  appears,  it  is  to  find  the 
spectators  understanding  that  she  is  under  the  ban  of  some  offended 
deity.  Still  this  divine  interference  is  swiftly  reconciled  with  the  facts 
of  life.  The  nurse  who  brings  Phaedra  out  upon  the  stage  is  as  far  as 
possible  removed  from  a  solemn  agent  of  offended  deities.  She  is 
rather  a  remote  ancestress  of  Mrs.  Gamp,  with  her  selfish,  complaining, 
and  familiar  advice.     Here  are  her  first  words : 

"Alas!  the  miseries  of  mankind  and  their  odious  diseases !  What 
must  I  do  for  you,  and  what  not  do?  Here  you  have  light  and  air, 
and  the  couch  on  which  you  are  lying  sick  has  been  moved  out  of 
doors,  for  you  were  forever  talking  about  coming  out ;  but  soon  you 
will  be  in  a  hurry  to  go  back  to  your  room,  for  you  are  very  fickle  and 
nothing  contents  you.  What  is  present  gives  you  no  pleasure  ;  what 
you  lack,  you  fancy  more  agreeable.  Tending  the  sick  is  worse  than 
being  sick  —  one  is  a  simple  evil;  the  other  combines  mental  distress 
and  hard  work."  Of  course,  in  the  measures  of  the  original,  these 
words  lacked  the  flippancy  which  they  acquire  in  prose,  for  the  unity 
of  composition  in  a  tragedy  which  had  acquired  its  form  under  the 
solemn  inspiration  of  the  deepest  religious  sentiment  compelled  that 
all  such  living  flavors  should  adopt  a  majestic  expression  ;  yet,  in 
spite  of  this  cloak,  the  familiarity  of  the  nurse's  speech  must  have  been 
distinctly  perceptible  to  the  spectators.  When  Phaedra  begins  to 
utter  her  distracted  lament,  the  nurse  repeats  her  commonplace  con- 
solation, and  seeks  the  cause  of  her  misery,  and  almost  always  with 
the  same  vulgar  curiosity.  This  quality  stands  in  marked  contrast  with 
Phaedra's  despair.  When  her  secret  becomes  known,  she  beseeches 
her  unworthy  confidant  not  to  tell  it.  The  nurse,  however,  is  brutal 
in  her  frankness : 

"  Why  do  you  talk  in  this  fine  strain  !  You  need  not  choice  words, 
but  the  man."  And  out  of  her  own  head,  having  promised  to  arrange 
matters  honorably,  she  tells  Hippolytus  that  Phaedra  loves  him.  The 
Chorus  hear  his  wrathful  utterances  at  being  told  this,  and  in  a  moment 


388 


E  U RIP  IDES. 


he  bursts  in  full  of  fury  and  giving  expression  to  his  hatred  of  women. 
Phaedra,  overcome  by  remorse,  hangs  herself,  and  when  her  husband, 
Theseus,  returns  he  finds  in  her  lifeless  hand  a  letter  in  which  she  has 
accused  him  of  pursuing  her  with  unholy  love.  In  his  grief  and  anger 
Theseus  bitterly  denounces  his  son  and  orders  him  into  exile.  Hip- 
polytus  is  bound  to  secrecy  by  an  oath  to  the  nurse  and  departs  in  his 
chariot.  The  horses  carry  him  to  the  seashore,  and  there  he  is  beaten 
against   the  rocks   by  the    sea.     When    he    is   brought   back   dying, 


THE   NURSE   DISCLOSES  TO   HIPPOLYTUS  THE   LOVE  OF   HIS   STEPMOTHER   PHiCDRA. 
{Wall  Painting— Herculaneum.) 

Artemis  appears  and  explains  the  ruin  that  Aphrodite  has  wrought. 
Theseus  is  broken-hearted  ;  he  says  : 

"  Oh,  son,  forsake  me  not  for  death.     Take  heart." 
To  which  Hippolytus  makes  answer: 

"  I  have  done  with  taking  heart,  father.     I  die  ! 
Cover  my  face,  and  swiftly,  with  the  robe." 

The  position  that  the  gods  hold, of  superior  and  wilful  interrupters 
of  public  and  private  peace, is  not  an  exalted  one.     They  possess  no 


THE  INFERIOR  POSITION  OF  THE  GODS— EXTRACTS.  389 

quality  of  lofty  rule.  The  etiquette  of  Olympus  forbids  that  Artemis 
should  intervene  to  protect  this  ill-starred  family  from  the  wrath  of 
Aphrodite,  They  exist  only  as  conventional  dramatic  characters,  who 
inspire  other  feelings  than  reverence.  There  is,  indeed,  a  clashing 
between  their  interference  and  the  natural  conduct  of  the  play,  but 
they  were  as  essential  a  part  of  the  Greek  stage  as  were  the  chorus 
and  the  measures  of  the  lines. 

The  songs  of  the  chorus  are  often  beautiful,  as  in  this  passage : 

"  O  Love  !  O  Love  !  from  the  eyes  of  thee 

Droppeth  desire,  and  into  the  soul 
That  thou  conquerest  leadest  thou  sweetness  and  charm  ; 
Come  not  to  me  bringing  sorrow  or  harm, 

And  come  not  in  dole. 
Nor  with  measureless  passion  o'ermaster  thou  me  ! 

For  neither  the  lightning  fire 

Nor  the  bolts  of  the  stars  are  dire 
As  the  dart  hurled  forth  from  the  hand  of  Love, 

The  son  of  God  above. 

For  vainly,  vainly,  and  all  in  vain, 
Pile  we  to  Phoebus  the  Pythian  shrines  ; 

Vainly  by  Alpheus  heap  victims  on  high  ; 

Vain  indeed  are  the  prayers  we  cry. 
If  no  prayer  divines 
That  Love  is  the  tyrant  and  master  of  men. 

Through  every  fate  he  errs. 

The  keeper  of  bride  chambers. 
Nor  alike  unto  all,  nor  one  only  way, 

He  comes  to  spoil  and  slay." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  notice  the  tendency  of  the  lyrical  parts  of  the 
plays  to  become  graceful  ornaments  rather  than  coherent  parts  of  the 
construction.  In  modern  times  the  growth  of  the  opera  after  the 
decay  of  tragedy  is  perhaps  a  similar  change.  The  end  of  the  play  is 
given  in  these  lines  : 

HiPPOLYTUS. 
O  miserable  mother  !     Hateful  birth  ! 
May  none  I  love  spring  from  a  lawless  bond  ! 

Theseus. 
Will  ye  not  drag  him  hence,  slaves  ?     Were  ye  deaf 
When  long  ago  I  spoke  his  exile  out } 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Yet  at  his  peril  that  lays  hands  on  me. 
Thyself,  if  so  thou  wilt,  shalt  thrust  me  forth. 

Theseus. 
That  will  L  if  thou  art  fixed  to  disobey ; 
No  grief  comes  o'er  my  heart  that  thou  must  go. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

'Tis  settled,  as  it  seems.     Alas  !  alas  ! 
For  what  I  know,  I  know  not  how  to  tell. 
O  thou,  Latona's  daughter,  dear  to  me 


39°  EURIPIDES. 

Above  the  rest  of  heaven,  in  the  hunt 

Companion,  whom  I  took  sweet  counsel  with  ! 

O  Artemis  !     I  must  be  banished  now. 

From  glorious  Athens.     But  farewell,  farewell, 

O  city,  and  farewell,  Erectheus'  land. 

O  plain  of  Troezen,  what  delights  are  thine 

To  spend  a  happy  youth  in  !  but  farewell. 

For  the  last  time  behold  I  thee,  that  hearest 

For  the  last  time  my  voice.     Come,  speak  to  me, 

Youths  of  my  age  and  country  ;  send  me  hence 

With  a  kind  word  at  parting  ;  for  indeed 

You  shall  not  look  upon  a  purer  man. 

Though  thus  I  show  not  in  my  father's  thoughts. 

Chorus. 

Greatly  the  care  of  the  gods,  when  I  think  on  it,  lessens  my  grieving, 
But  hide  I  a  hope  in  the  heart's  depths  of  comprehending  it  then. 
I  am  utterly  left  at  fault,  in  beholding  the  works  and  perceiving 
The  fortunes  of  mortals  ;  for  aimlessly  change 
In  a  shifting  confusion  the  lives  of  men, 
Far-wandering  ever  to  range. 

Oh,  would  that  Fate  from  the  heavens  would  answer  my  calling  upon  her. 

Granting  me  joy  with  my  lot  and  a  spirit  unsullied  in  pain, 

A  judgment  not  strained  too  high,  neither  basely  enstamped  with  dishonor ; 

For,  easily  changing  the  want  of  my  ways 

To  the  need  of  the  morrow,  in  peace  would  I  fain 

Be  happy  the  length  of  my  days. 

But  dim  and  amazed  is  my  mind,  the  unlooked-for  I  see  come  to  pass  ; 

For,  ah  me  !  I  behold,  I  behold 

The  clearliest  burning  star 

Of  Hellas  cast  out  by  a  father,  alas  ! 

In  his  anger,  to  exile  afar  ! 

O  ye  sands  of  the  neighboring  shores,  where  the  water 

Breaks  into  foam  !     Forest  oaks  spreading  wide 

Where  with  swift-footed  hounds  he  would  rush  on  the  slaughter. 

With  Artemis  aye  at  his  side  ! 

The  yoke  of  Henetian  foals  in  the  car  o'er  the  Limnan  plain 

He  shall  urge  never  more,  never  more. 

The  steeds  held  back  by  his  foot ; 

And  the  song  that  was  sleepless  shall  silent  remain, 

In  his  home,  'neath  the  chords  of  the  lute. 

And  crownless,  Dictynna,  the  glade  is  thou  hauntest 

Deep  in  the  forest,  ungarlanded,  lone. 

Hushed  is  the  strife  for  his  hand,  and  the  contest 

Of  maidens  in  marriage,  for,  lo  !  he  is  gone. 

Epode.  But  thy  sorrows  the  soul  in  me  sadden  ; 
And  fatal  the  fate  is  I  undergo 
In  tears  for  thy  sake  and  in  pain. 
Thy  son,  O  mother,  is  born  in  vain  ! 

Woe!  Woe! 
Against  the  gods  I  madden  ! 
O  graces  !     O  goddesses  linked  in  one  ! 
Why  must  the  innocent  exile  go 

Cast  out  from  the  halls  of  his  father,  and  forth  from  his  kingdom  thrown  ? 
But  lo  !  of  this  man's  followers  I  behold 
One  reach  the  house  with  sorrow  in  his  face. 


THE  DBA  TH  OF  HIP  POL  YTUS.  39  ^ 

Second  Messenger. 

Turning  my  steps  what  way  shall  I  o'ertake 
The  King  ?     Speak,  ladies,  is  he  in  the  halls  ? 

Chorus. 
Behold,  he  comes  from  out  his  palaces. 

Messenger. 
Theseus,  I  bear  a  history  worth  a  thought 
To  thee,  to  all  Athenian  citizens. 
And  these  that  dwell  in  Troezen  it  regards. 

Theseus. 
Speak  :  is  it  any  great  calamity 
That  falls  upon  the  neighboring  twain  of  states  } 

Messenger. 
The  word  is  this  :  Hippolytus  is  no  more. 
Though  yet  for  a  scale's  turn  looks  he  on  the  light. 

Theseus. 
Killed  1     And  who  slew  him  ?     Met  him  any  man 
In  hate,  whose  wife  he,  as  his  father's,  wronged  ? 

Messenger. 
His  horses  and  his  chariot  were  his  death  ; 
These,  and  the  curses  of  thy  mouth  implored 
Of  him  that  is  thy  sire  and  rules  the  seas. 

Theseus. 
O  great  Poseidon,  how  truly  art  my  father 
That  thus  mine  imprecation  hast  fulfilled  ! 
How  did  he  perish  }     Speak  :  how  did  he  die  ? 
How  did  the  snares  of  justice  close  him  in  } 

Messenger. 
We  servants,  standing  by  the  wave-met  beach. 
Curried  the  horses  weeping,  since  there  came 
To  us  a  messenger,  who  said,  "  No  more 
Hippolytus  shall  set  returning  feet 
Upon  our  earth,  being  banished  by  the  King." 
We  wept  ;  and  then  himself  approached  and  brought 
The  same  sad  strain  of  tears.     Close  at  his  heels 
The  myriad  of  his  friends  and  fellow-youth 
Followed  in  thronging  companies.     At  last 
He  spoke,  forsaking  groaning  :  "  O  my  soul, 
Why  art  thou  thus  disquieted  in  me  ? 
My  father's  law  must  come  to  pass.     O  slaves. 
Yoke  now  the  harnessed  horses  to  the  car. 
For  me  this  city  is  no  more ! "     And  then, 
Truly,  each  man  was  eager  to  obey. 
Swifter  than  speech  we  drew  the  horses  up 
Caparisoned  to  his  side.     He  seized  the  reins 
In  both  his  hands  from  off  the  chariot-rail. 
Mounting  all  buskined  as  he  was.     But  first 
He  spoke  to  God  with  outstretched  palms  :  "  O  Zeus, 
Let  me  not  live  if  I  be  born  so  vile, 
And  show  my  father,  when  I  am  dead  least. 
If  not  while  yet  I  look  upon  the  light, 
How  much  he  hath  misused  me  !  "     With  the  word 
He  spurred  at  once  both  horses  on,  and  we 
Ran  by  the  reins,  and  followed  him  along 
The  forthright  Argive,  Epidaurian  way ; 


392  EURIPIDES. 


But  as  we  brought  into  the  desert  place 

Our  convoy  —  where  there  is  a  certain  shore 

Beyond  this  country,  sloping  to  the  sea 

Saronic  —  thence  arose  a  fearful  voice 

We  shuddered  at  to  hear,  so  loud  it  boomed 

Like  rumbling  thunders  of  the  nether  Zeus. 

The  steeds,  with  stiffened  heads  and  ears  pricked  up, 

Listened,  and  on  us  crept  a  vehement  fear 

Of  whence  the  voice  might  come  ;  but,  looking  out 

Towards  the  shore  that  roared  with  waves,  we  saw 

A  huge,  unnatural  billow,  whose  crest  was  fast 

In  heaven,  that  took  away  the  coasting  rocks 

Of  Sciron  from  our  sight,  and  Isthmus  hid, 

And  Aesculapius'  cliff.     Then  swelling  high, 

Dashing  much  foam  about  in  the  sea's  swirl. 

It  neared  the  strand  and  towards  the  chariot  moved. 

But  as  the  breaker  and  flood  of  the  huge  third  wave 

Burst  on  the  beach,  that  billow  sent  us  out 

A  portent,  ay,  a  fierce  and  monstrous  bull ; 

And  all  the  country,  filled  with  its  uproar, 

Voiced  back  the  appalling  sounds  to  us,  whose  eyes 

Refused  to  look  upon  our  visible  fear. 

Then  on  the  horses  came  a  mighty  dread  ; 

But  he  who  mastered  them,  knowing  well  the  ways 

And  nature  of  the  steed,  seized  on  the  reins, 

Pulling  them  as  a  sailor  pulls  the  oar. 

Tightening  the  trace  with  stress  of  the  backward  thrown 

Body.     But  in  their  teeth  the  horses  strained 

The  bit,  nor  heeded  urging  from  behind 

Of  steering  hand,  nor  rein,  nor  wheel.     For  when 

Our  master  drove  them  towards  the  softer  ground 

The  monster  came  in  front  to  turn  them  back, 

Maddening  the  team  with  fright ;  but  towards  the  rocks 

Bore  them  their  furious  mettle,  still  so  far 

He  silently  kept  coming  close  behind. 

Until  the  chariot  fell ;  the  horses  reared 

And  threw  their  driver  out ;  against  the  crags 

The  felloe  o'  the  wheel  was  dashed,  and  forth  there  flew 

The  linch-pins  and  the  axle-boxes  up. 

All  was  confusion  then.     But  he,  alas ! 

Hippolytus,  all  tangled  in  the  reins. 

Bound  with  indissoluble  bonds,  was  dragged 

Along,  his  dear  head  dashed  against  the  rocks, 

His  body  shattered  ;   and  he  cried  aloud 

Most  horribly,  "  Ye  whom  my  mangers  fed  ! 

O  my  own  horses  !  stop  ;  nor  blot  me  out 

Utterly  from  the  world  !     O  fatal  curse  ! 

Ah  !  who  will  save  a  man  most  innocent  ?  " 

But,  fain  at  heart  to  help,  our  laggard  feet 

Still  left  us  far  behind  ;  yet  from  the  reins 

At  last,  I  know  not  how,  he  loosed  himself 

And  fell,  nor  long  his  breath  of  life  endures. 

With  that  the  horses  vanished,  and  no  more 

We  saw  the  monster  in  that  craggy  place. 

King,  in  thy  palaces  a  slave  from  birth 

Am  I,  yet  will  I  not  be  made  to  think 

That  he,  thy  son,  is  evil.     Let  the  race 

Of  women  all  go  hang  and  fill  the  pines 

Of  Ida  with  their  writing.     He  is  pure. 


HIPPOL  YTUS  DEFENDED  B  V  ARTEMIS.  393 

Chorus. 

Now  of  new  ills  the  grief  is  consummate. 
Fate  and  necessity  may  no  man  flee. 

Theseus. 
Through  hatred  of  this  man  thy  tale  of  woe 
Rejoiced  me  at  the  first ;  but  since  the  gods 
I  fear,  and  since  he  was  my  son,  no  more 
Delight  nor  sorrow  moves  me  for  his  pain. 

Messenger. 
But  how  to  please  thee  then  ?     Must  we  convey 
His  body  here  }     How  use  this  anguished  man  } 
Consider ;  but  if  I  might  counsel  thee. 
Thou  wert  not  savage  to  a  suffering  son. 

Theseus. 
Go,  bear  him  hither.     Let  mine  eyes  behold 
Him  that  denied  his  guilt ;  for  I  with  words 
And  Heaven's  judgment  will  confute  him  now. 

Chorus. 
Thou  the  unbending  mind  of  the  gods  and  of  earthly  ones  bendest, 
Cypris,  and  where  thou  wendest 

He  whose  feathers  are  bright  with  a  myriad  changing  dyes 
On  nimblest  pinion  flies  ; 

Over  the  earth  and  above  the  brine  of  the  sounding  sea 
Hovering  flutters  he. 
For  Love  with  maddened  heart  enchants 
Whatever  meets  his  glittering  wings — 
The  wild  beast  whelps  in  mountain  haunts, 
The  creatures  in  the  waves. 
And  on  the  earth  the  growing  things 
That  burning  Helios  looks  to  see. 
And  man  ;  but  these  are  all  thy  slaves. 
And  subject,  O  Cypris,  to  thee. 

Artemis. 
Oh,  sprung  from  a  noble  father,  O  son 
Of  Aegeus,  thee  bid  I  hear. 
For  I  am  the  maid  of  Latona  that  speak ! 
Theseus,  unhappiest,  wherefore  to  thee 
Is  bloodshed  and  pain  a  delight  .-* 
For  unjustly  thy  son  is  destroyed  with  the  curse 
Of  thee,  an  unnatural  sire. 

For  thy  trust  was  put  in  the  falsehood  of  Phaedra 
Regarding  uncertain  invisible  things. 
But  sure  is  thy  ruin  and  plain. 

Oh,  how  dost  not  hide  out  of  sight  in  the  nethermost 
Chasm  of  torment  and  darkness  in  hell. 
Thy  body,  defiled  as  thou  art  ? 
Or  why  dost  not  take  to  thee  wings  and  escape 
To  a  changed  existence  above, 
Withdrawing  thy  foot  from  the  snare  of  these  ills 
That  here  hast  no  lot  with  the  good  ?  ' 

But  hearken,  Theseus,  how  thine  evils  stand. 

For,  though  it  vantage  nought,  I  will  torment  thee ; 

But  to  this  end  I  came,  to  manifest 

The  just  mind  of  thy  son,  that  he  may  die 

In  honour,  and  of  Phaedra's  agonized  love. 


394  EURIPIDES. 

That  yet  was,  in  some  sort,  a  nobleness 

To  witness.     For  that  goddess  most  abhorred 

By  us,  whose  pleasure  is  the  virgin  life, 

Goaded  her  on  to  passion  for  thy  child. 

But  while  she  strove  to  gain  the  victory 

Over  desire  by  right,  against  her  will 

The  scheming  nurse  destroyed  her,  that  betrayed 

Her  secret  to  thy  son,  binding  with  oaths. 

He,  as  was  just,  would  not  obey  nor  hear 

Her  words,  nor  yet,  for  all  thy  calumny. 

Took  aught  of  obligation  from  his  oath. 

Having  an  honourable  nature.     Then 

Thy  wife,  afraid  a  test  might  show  her  shame, 

Graved  the  false  tablet  that  destroyed  thy  son 

With  subtle  guiles,  and  yet  persuaded  thee. 

Theseus. 
Woe's  me ! 

Artemis. 
O  Theseus,  stings  the  speech  }    Be  still, 
That,  all  being  heard,  thou  then  mayest  groan  the  more. 
Dost  not  remember  how  thy  father  gave  thee 
Three  curses,  sure  to  slay  ?     O  sinful  man. 
One  sent  no  foe  destruction,  but  thy  son ! 
The  sea-god  justly  gave  thee  what  was  due 
According  to  his  vow,  but  in  my  sight 
And  his  most  base  thou  showest,  for  that  thou 
Proof  nor  the  voice  of  prophets  didst  not  wait, 
And  soughtest  not  inquiry,  and  no  time 
Didst  brood  the  thought,  but  swiftlier  than  was  well 
Vented  a  curse  against  thy  son,  and  slew  him. 

Theseus. 

0  mistress,  let  me  die ! 

Artemis. 
Mighty  and  dread 
Thy  deeds ;  and  yet  forgiveness  may  befall 
To  even  such.     For  Cypris  willed  these  things 
To  satisfy  her  heart.     So  runs  the  la,w 
For  gods  :  what  wills  desiring  deity 
No  fellow-god  would  thwart,  each  stands  aloof 
From  crossing  other's  purpose  evermore. 
Be  sure  that,  stood  I  not  in  dread  of  Zeus, 

1  never  would  have  come  to  such  dishonour 
As  leave  to  die  the  man  more  dear  to  me 
Than  all  the  world  beside.     As  for  thy  sin, 
The  guilt  is  loosed  because  thou  didst  not  know. 
Since  in  her  death  thy  wife  destroyed  the  proof 
Of  questions,  and  through  this  beguiled  thy  mind. 
Now  most  upon  thy  head  this  storm  is  burst, 
But  me,  me  too,  it  strikes.     For  at  the  death 

Of  pious  mortals  gods  do  not  rejoice, 

That  crush  the  wicked  and  destroy  their  race. 

Chorus. 
Ah  !  look  where  he  cometh,  a  dying  man, 
With  tender  body  and  auburn  head 
Mangled  and  cruelly  rent. 
Woe  to  the  palaces,  woe  !  for  a  ban 


THE   CROWNED  HIPPOLYTUS  395 

Of  double  sorrow  and  twofold  dread 
Upon  us  from  heaven  is  sent. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Ah,  ah  !  I  suffer !     I  die  ! 

Alas,  me  unhappy !     For  thus  was  I  torn 

By  the  unjust  answer  of  God 

To  the  curse  of  a  father  unjust ! 

And  spasms  of  anguish,  ah  !  beat  in  my  brain, 

Swift  agonies  shoot  through  my  head. 

Ah  !  stop,  for  I  faint ;  let  me  rest. 

O  team  of  my  chariot,  fed  at  my  hand ! 

It  is  you  that  destroyed  me,  and  you  are  my  death, 

O  hateful  and  terrible  steeds  ! 

Alas,  me !     I  pray  you  by  Heaven,  O  slaves. 

Touch  ye  the  wounds  of  my  mangled  flesh 

With  tender  and  quiet  hands. 

0  Zeus,  dost  behold  }  for  the  servant  of  God, 

1  that  am  holy  and  chaste. 

Go  down  to  a  manifest  hell  under  earth, 

Life  unto  me  being  lost ; 

And  the  work  of  goodness  I  wrought  to  mankind 

Is  fruitless  indeed,  and  as  labour  in  vain. 

Alas !  alas ! 

For  the  anguish,  the  anguish  is  come  on  me  now. 

Let  me  alone,  slaves.     Wilt  thou  not  come, 

O  healer.  Death  ? 

Destroy  me,  destroy  me !  I  long  for  the  sword 

Keen  with  a  double  edge, 

To  cleave  me  asunder,  to  cut  me  in  twain 

And  put  my  life  to  sleep. 

O  curse  !  the  sins  of  my  forefathers  now, 

The  blood-guilt  of  my  kin. 

Are  burst  from  the  bounds,  nor  delay  on  the  course, 

But  upon  me  —  O  wherefore  }  —  are  come 

That  am  nowise  the  cause  of  the  wrong. 

Ah  !  what  shall  I  say  } 

How  set  me  free 

From  living  and  suffering  pain  ? 

O  black  necessity,  gate  of  night ! 

O  Death,  wouldst  thou  hush  me  to  rest ! 

Artemis. 
O  sufferer,  truly  art  thou  yoked  with  grief, 
Yet  by  thy  nobleness  of  soul  destroyed. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Ah !  ah ! 

O  heavenly  breath  of  fragrance,  thee  I  feel 
Even  in  torment,  and  the  pain  is  passed. 
The  goddess  Artemis  is  standing  by. 

Artemis. 
She  is,  O  sufferer,  she,  thy  friend  in  heaven. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

And  dost  thou,  mistress,  look  upon  my  woes  ? 

Artemis. 
Yet  dare  not  shed  the  god-unlawful  tear. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 
Thy  huntsman  and  thy  follower  is  no  more. 


39^  EURIPIDES. 

Artemis, 
No  more,  no  more,  yet  dear  to  me  in  death. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 
Gone  is  thy  horseman,  guarder  of  thy  shrines. 

Artemis. 
Ay,  for  unscrupulous  Cypris  schemed  the  plan. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Alas  !  I  know  what  god  destroys  me  now. 

Artemis. 
Thou,  being  chaste,  wert  odious  to  her  fame. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 
One  Cypris,  as  it  seems,  destroys  us  three. 

Artemis. 
Thy  father,  thee,  and  —  for  the  third  —  his  wife. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Wherefore  I  also  mourn  my  father's  fate. 

Artemis. 
The  goddess  blinded  him  with  her  deceits, 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Father,  how  art  thou  wretched  in  this  grief ! 

Theseus. 
I  perish,  son  ;  I  have  no  joy  in  life. 

HiPPOLYTUS. 

Such  bitter  gifts  thy  sire  the  sea-god  granted  ! 

Theseus. 
Would  that  the  prayer  had  died  within  my  throat  ! 

HiPPOLYTUS. 
But  why  }     Thou  wouldst  have  slain  me  in  thy  rage. 

Theseus. 
For  Heaven  willed  my  judgment's  overthrow. 
HiPPOLYTUS. 

Ah  !  were  man's  curse  on  Heaven  but  as  strong ! 

Artemis. 
Hush  !  for  not  even  in  the  shadowy  world 
Hereunder  shall  the  shafts  of  Cypris'  rage 
Be  hurled  against  thy  body  unrevenged. 
Because  thy  holiness  was  not  in  vain, 
Nor  vain  thy  lofty  thought  ;  but  whoso  breathes 
Most  dear  to  her  shall  fall,  by  might  of  these 
Inevitable  arrows  of  my  hand. 
Slaughtered  in  vengeance  for  thy  death.     But  thou 
Shall  have  immortal  recompense  for  pain. 
Great  are  the  honours  I  will  give  thee  here 
In  this  Troezenian  city,  and  for  thee 
Unmarried  girls  before  their  wedding  day 
Shall  shear  their  yellow  tresses  ;  thou  shalt  reap 
For  many  an  age  the  harvest  of  their  tears. 
And  evermore  thy  memory  shall  remain. 
And  make  a  music  in  their  maiden  mouths 
For  ever,  nor  shall  silence  hold  unsaid 
The  love  that  Phaedra  bore  thee.     But,  O  king, 


THE    CROWNED  HIPFOLYTUS.  397 

0  son  of  Aegeus,  take  within  thine  arms 
Thy  child  and  clasp  him  to  thee,  since  I  know 
Thou  didst  not  willingly  visit  him  with  death, 
And  it  is  natural  that  men  should  err 

When  so  the  immortals  order.     And  forgive 
Thy  sire,  Hippolytus.     Thy  death  was  fate. 
And  this  thou  knowest.     But  farewell,  farewell ; 

1  may  not  look  upon  thy  life's  decay. 

The  dying  gasps  of  men  were  my  pollution  ; 
And  no  more  distant  I  behold  thine  end. 

Hippolytus. 
Farewell  even  thou,  blest  virgin,  and  depart. 
But  lightly  a  long  friendship  dost  thou  leave. 
Yet  for  thy  sake  I  loose  from  all  reproach 
My  father;  for  indeed  since  long  ago 
Thy  words  have  been  my  rule  of  life.     Ah,  me  ! 
The  air  grows  black  before  my  sight  already. 
Father,  take  me,  lift  me,  lift  me  up. 

Theseus. 
Thy  blessing,  son ;  how  dost  thou  wring  my  heart. 

Hippolytus. 
I  die ;  and  see  indeed  the  gates  of  hell. 

Theseus. 
And  wilt  thou  leave  my  soul  defiled  with  blood  } 

Hippolytus. 
No,  from  this  guilt  and  bloodshed  thou  art  freed. 

Theseus. 
How  sayest  thou,  my  soul  is  loosed  from  sin  } 

Hippolytus. 
Artemis,  witness,  wielder  of  the  bow. 

Theseus. 
O  best  beloved,  how  noble  art  thou  shown  ! 

Hippolytus. 
Farewell  thou  also ;  take  my  last  farewell, 

Theseus. 
Woe's  me,  to  lose  a  son  so  dear  and  brave  ! 

Hippolytus. 
Pray  that  thy  lawful  sons  may  prove  as  much. 
Theseus. 

0  son,  forsake  me  not  for  death.     Take  heart. 

Hippolytus. 

1  have  done  with  taking  heart,  father.     I  die ; 
Cover  my  face  and  swiftly  with  the  robe. 

Theseus. 
O  Athens'  famous  frontiers,  Pallas'  earth. 
How  shall  ye  mourn  this  man  !     Alas  !  alas  ! 
Cypris,  of  thy  revenge  how  many  things 
Shall  keep  the  memory  present  in  my  breast  ! 

Chorus. 
Common  this  sorrow  to  all  in  the  city 
Comes,  an  unlooked-for  guest. 
Of  many  the  tears  shall  gush  out  in  their  pity, 
And  many  shall  beat  the  breast. 
For  the  grief  of  the  great  there  are  many  to  wail, 
And  long  shall  the  fame  of  their  sorrow  prevail. 


CHAPTER   v.— EURIPIDES    II.— Continued. 

I. — The  Alcestis  of  Euripides — His  Humanity  Offensive  to  his  Contemporaries — The 
Andromache  ;  the  Conversational  Duels.  II. — The  Suppliants ;  The  Heracleidas; 
Their  Political  Allusions — The  Helen,  with  its  Romantic  Interest  in  Place  of  the 
Earlier  Solemnity,  and  its  Enforcement  of  Unheroic  Misfortune — Its  Lack  of  the 
Modern  Dramatic  Spirit.  III. — The  Troades,  a  Curious  Treatment  of  the  Old 
Myths — The  Mad  Heracles;  its  Representation  of  the  Gods  in  Accordance  with 
the  New  Spirit — The  Electra;  its  Importance  as  a  Bit  of  Literary  Controversy — 
Its  Inferiority  to  the  Plays  of  ^schylus  and  Sophocles  on  the  Same  Subject — The 
Ion  ;  a  Drama,  not  a  Tragedy,  and  a  Marked  Specimen  of  the  Change  in 
Thought — A  Comparison  between  its  Complexity  and  the  Earlier  Simplicity — 
Condemnation  of  the  Old  Mythology.  IV. — The  Two  Iphigeneias — The  deus  ex 
niachina.  V. — The  Bacchae,  and  its  Importance  in  the  Study  of  Greek  Re- 
ligious Thought — The  Feeling  of  Euripides  for  Natural  Scenery;  his  Modern 
Spirit — The  Satyric  Play,  the  Cyclops — The  Rhesus.  VI.  The  Successors  of 
Euripides — The  Extended  Influence  of  the  Greek  Drama,  and  Especially  of 
Euripides  as  the  Most  Modern  of  the  Ancients. 

I. 

THE  Alcestis  is  the  earliest  play  of  Euripides  that  has  come  down  to 
us,  it  having  been  brought  out  in  438  B.C.  Only  comparatively 
recently  has  it  been  discovered  that  it  was  the  fourth  play  of  a  tetralogy 
which  secured  the  second  prize,  the  first  falling  to  Sophocles;  and  the 
fact  of  its  thus  standing  at  the  end  of  a  series  of  four  explains  much 
that  would  otherwise  continue  to  embarrass  critics,  for  it  evidently  pos- 
sessed some  of  the  qualities  of  the  final  satyric  piece,  with  its  semi- 
comic  lines  and  its  happy  ending.  Possibly  this  combination  of  trag- 
edy and  comedy  was  a  novel  invention  of  this  author,  and  it  was 
certainly  one  that  has  borne  rich  fruit  in  later  times. 

The  play  represents  the  self-sacrifice  of  Alcestis,  the  wife  of  Adme- 
tus.  Admetus  had  angered  Artemis  by  his  marriage,  and  thus  been 
doomed  to  die,  but  Apollo,  who  had  served  him  and  found  him  a  kind 
master,  succeeded  in  persuading  the  goddesses  of  fate  to  accept  a  sub- 
stitute, if  any  of  his  family  could  be  induced  to  die  in  his  stead. 
Neither  his  father  nor  mother,  however,  was  willing  to  perish  for 
him,  but  Alcestis,  his  loving  wife,  consents. 

Those  who  have  seen  in  Euripides  a  mere  despiser  of  women 
have  shown  a  lofty  disregard  for  a  good  part  of  the  evidence  from 
which  to  form  a  judgment,  for  he  drew  good  as  well  as  evil 
women,    as    this    play     shows,    and    moralists    have    asserted    that 


HUMANITY  OF  EURIPIDES— OFFENDS   CONSERVATIVES.         399 

they  have  seen  both  kinds  in  life.  In  the  Hecuba  the  chorus  of 
women  asserts  that  some  women  are  envied  for  their  virtues,  while 
others  may  be  classed  among  bad  things.  Doubtless  what  most 
troubled  the  contemporaries  of  Euripides  was  simply  the  fact  that 
he  drew  women  as  they  were,  good  or  bad,  instead  of  more  or 
less  abstract  embodiments  of  heroic  passions  such  as  we  find  in  the 
work  of  his  predecessors.  It  was  the  humanity  of  Euripides  that 
offended  his  conservative  contemporaries  ;  they  felt  for  his  changes  the 
same  repugnance  that  many  people  now  feel  for  novels  about  heroes 
and  heroines  who  have  no  heroic  qualities,  who  are  like  people  across 


THE  DOOM  OF  ADMETUS.     (Wall Painting — Herculanaum.') 

the  street  and  totally  devoid  of  the  impossible  incrustation  of  fault- 
less beauty,  unfailing  enthusiasm,  and  every  human  virtue.  Such 
critics  demand  something  greater  and,  as  they  think,  finer  than  life  can 
furnish,  and  the  opposition  to  Euripides  was  due  to  a  similar  feeling. 

It  is  not  easy  to  see,  however,  what  heroism  is  greater  than  that 
which  Alcestis  here  displays  :  a  queen,  a  mother,  a  wife,  loving  and 
loved,  she  abandons  every  thing  that  makes  life  sweet  from  pure  un- 
selfishness. And  with  what  art  Euripides  portrays  the  bitterness  of 
her  sacrifice !  A  slave  comes  forth  in  tears  and  describes  her  mis- 
tress's farewell  to  the  home  where  she  and  been  so  happy. 


400 


EURIPIDES. 


"  As  soon  as  Alcestis  per- 
ceived that  the  fatal  moment 
was  drawing  nigh,  she  bathed 
her  fair  body  in  the  pure 
water  of  the  stream,  and  ar- 
rayed herself  in  the  rich 
robes  that  she  took  from  the 
cedar  chests,  and  then  turn- 
ing to  the  hearth,  she  prayed 
to  the  protecting  deity:  '  O 
sovereign  goddess  !  now  that 
I  am  ready  to  descend  to  the 
shades,  I  lay  myself  at  your 
feet  for  the  last  time.  Be  a 
mother  to  my  children. 
Grant  to  the  boy  a  loving 
wife,  to  the  girl  a  worthy 
husband.  Let  them  not  die, 
like  their  mother,  an  untime- 
ly death,  but  let  them,  hap- 
pier than  she,  live  out  the 
full  measure  of  their  days  in 
their  native  land. '  "  The 
slave  goes  on  to  recount  the 
sad  parting  of  Alcestis  with 
her  own  room.  "  Meanwhile 
her  children  kept  clutching 
her  dress  and  weeping ;  she 
took  them  in  her  arms,  kiss- 
ing them  in  turn,  as  about 
to  die.  All  the  slaves  were 
wandering  here  and  there  in 
the  palace,  lamenting  the 
fate  of  their  mistress ;  she 
offered  her  hand  to  every 
one,  and  there  was  none  so 
poor  to  whom  she  did  not 
speak  and  bid  farewell." 

This  last  is  a  touch  of 
pathos  that  with  all  the  rest 
brings  down  the  scene  from 
fairyland  to  every-day  life 
after  a  fashion  that  can   not 


BROWNING'S  RENDERING  OF  THE  FAREWELL  OF  ALCESTIS.      4° I 

be  said  to  mar  it.  This  piteous  bit  of  kindliness  simply  shows  us  the 
woman  in  all  her  thoughtful  gentleness,  and  can  art  do  more  than  that  ? 
The  same  effect  is  produced  when  Alcestis  herself  appears  upon  the 
stage,  and  controls  herself  for  parting  from  her  husband,  a  passage  that 
is  thus  rendered  by  Browning  in  his  "  Balaustion's  Adventure  ": 

"  Admetos, — how  things  go  with  me  thou  seest, — 
I  wish  to  tell  thee,  ere  I  die,  what  things 
I  will  should  follow.     I  —  to  honor  thee, 
Secure  for  thee,  by  my  own  soul's  exchange. 
Continued  looking  on  the  daylight  here  ^- 
Die  for  thee  —  yet,  if  so  I  pleased,  might  live. 
Nay,  wed  what  man  of  Thessaly  I  would, 
And  dwell  i'  the  dome  with  pomp  and  queenliness. 
I  would  not, —  would  not  live  bereft  of  thee. 
With  children  orphaned,  neither  shrank  at  all. 
Though  having  gifts  of  youth  wherein  I  joyed. 
Yet,  who  begot  thee  and  who  gave  thee  birth. 
Both  of  these  gave  thee  up ;  for  all,  a  term 
Of  life  was  reached  when  death  became  them  well, 
Ay,  well  —  to  save  their  child  and  glorious  die  : 
Since  thou  wast  all  they  had,  nor  hope  remained 
Of  having  other  children  in  thy  place. 
So,  I  and  thou  had  lived  out  our  full  time. 
Nor  thou,  left  lonely  of  thy  wife,  wouldst  groan 
With  children  reared  in  orphanage  :  but  thus 
Some  god  disposed  things,  willed  they  so  should  be. 
Be  they  so  !     Now  do  thou  remember  this, 
Do  me  in  turn  a  favor,  —  favor,  since 
Certainly  I  shall  never  claim  my  due. 
For  nothing  is  more  precious  than  a  life  : 
But  a  fit  favor,  as  thyself  wilt  say. 
Loving  our  children  here  no  less  than  I, 
If  head  and  heart  be  sound  in  thee  at  least. 
Uphold  them,  make  them  masters  of  my  house, 
Nor  wed  and  give  a  step-dame  to  the  pair. 
Who,  being  a  worse  wife  than  I,  thro'  spite 
Will  raise  her  hand  against  both  thine  and  mine. 
Never  do  this  at  least,  I  pray  to  thee  ! 
For  hostile  the  new-comer,  the  step-dame. 
To  the  old  brood  —  a  very  viper  she 
For  gentleness  !     Here  stand  they,  boy  and  girl ; 
The  boy  has  got  a  father,  a  defense 
Tower-like  he  speaks  to  and  has  answer  from : 
But  thou,  my  girl,  how  will  thy  virginhood 
Conclude  itself  in  marriage  fittingly  ? 
Upon  what  sort  of  sire-found  yoke-fellow 
Art  thou  to  chance  }  with  all  to  apprehend  — 
Lest,  casting  on  thee  some  unkind  report, 
She  blast  thy  nuptials  in  the  bloom  of  youth. 
.For  neither  shall  thy  mother  watch  thee  wed. 
Nor  hearten  thee  in  childbirth,  standing  by 
Just  when  a  mother's  presence  helps  thee  most ! 
No,  for  I  have  to  die  :  and  this  my  ill 
Comes  to  me,  nor  to-morrow,  no,  nor  yet 
The  third  day  of  the  month,  but  now,  even  now, 
I  shall  be  reckoned  among  those  no  more. 
Farewell,  be  happy !     And  to  thee,  indeed. 


402  EURIPIDES. 

Husband,  the  boast  remains  permissible 
Thou  hadst  a  wife  was  worthy !  and  to  you, 
Children,  as  good  a  mother  gave  you  birth." 

The  touches  which  appeal  to  every  mother's  heart  are  those  that 
Euripides  introduced  into  the  tragedy,  borrowing  his  language,  as 
Aristotle  has  said  in  speaking  of  the  changes  that  he  wrought,  from 
common  life  and  every-day  talk.  It  was  not  a  mere  coincidence  that 
at  the  same  time  Socrates  was  bringing  down  philosophy  from  the 
heavens  to  live  among  men. 

Then  follows  the  pathetic  parting  between  Alcestis  and  her  family, 
and  the  mourning  of  the  chorus.  Therewith  ends  the  first  part  of  the 
tragedy.  The  second  part  begins  with  the  entrance  of  Heracles,  who 
finds  Admetus  upbraiding  his  father  for  his  reluctance  to  die  when  so 
few  years  could  be  left  for  him  at  the  best.  The  god,  when  he  finds 
in  what  trouble  the  family  is,  goes  down  to  the  lower  regions  and 
brings  back  the  veiled  Alcestis,  whom  he  intrusts  to  the  care  of 
Admetus,  pretending  that  she  is  a  prize  he  has  just  won  at  wrestling. 
Gradually  Admetus  discovers  the  true  state  of  affairs,  and  all  ends 
well  with  the  reunited  family.  The  happy  termination  thus  made, the 
play  was  well  suited  to  take  the  place  of  the  extravagant  jollity  of  the 
customary  satyric  play.  It  had  an  adverse  effect,  however,  in  cutting 
it  out  from  the  list  of  tragedies,  which  was  taken  to  mean  those  plays 
that  ended  sadly.  If  we  do  not  accept  that  definition,  we  need  not 
accept  the  exclusion,  but,  whatever  it  is  called,  the  play  contains 
pathos  and  gloom  enough  to  earn  the  name.  The  latter  part  relieves 
it ;  but  certainly  makes  no  one  forget  the  qualities  just  described. 

The  Andromache  is  not  one  of  the  most  striking  of  the  plays  of 
Euripides.  It  describes  the  sufferings  of  the  heroine  after  the  fall  of 
Troy,  when,  in  the  division  of  spoils,  she  falls  to  the  lot  of  Neop- 
tolemus,  who  was  already  married  to  Hermione.  Hermione  was 
childless,  and  jealous  of  Andromache  and  the  son  she  had  borne  to  her 
new  husband.  In  the  absence  of  Neoptolemus,  who  had  gone  to  con- 
sult the  Delphian  oracle,  the  unhappy  Trojan  woman  is  exposed  to  the 
ill-treatment  of  her  rival,  who  accuses  her  of  employing  unholy  arts  to 
prevent  her  bearing  a  child.  Hermione,  in  her  wrath,  wishes  to  take 
vengeance  on  Andromache  and  her  son,  Molottus,  with  the  aid  of  her 
father,  Menelaus,  but  Peleus  interferes,  and  Menelaus  withdraws, 
leaving  Hermione  in  despair.  Then  Orestes  arrives ;  he  had  been  in 
old  times  a  lover  of  Hermione,  and  he  now  claims  her  hand,  which  she 
grants  him  on  receiving  his  assurances  that  he  will  dispose  of  her 
husband.  This  was  not  an  idle  assertion,  for  the  messenger  appears 
to  announce  the  violent  death  of  Neoptolemus.  Peleus  mourns 
this  turn  of  events,  but  Thetis  consoles  him  by  promising  him  immor- 


THE  DI SPUTA  TIVE  ELEMENT  IN  EURIPIDES'  PLA  YS.  403 

tality  and  bids  Andromache  and  her  son  to  be  sent  to  the  Molonian 
land. 

Obviously  it  would  be  a  carping  critic  who  should  complain  that 
this  play  lacked  incident.  Indeed,  it  shows  very  clearly  how  far 
Euripides  broke  the  old  rules  of  tragedy,  and  instead  of  uniting  with 
a  single  aim,  to  bring  out  one  great  emotion,  accumulated  incoherent 
actions  that  should  give  him  continual  opportunities  for  the  develop- 
ment of  novel  and  unexpected  turns  of  passion.  It  was  these  that 
tempted  him ;  it  was  heart-wringing  incidents  that  he  cared  for,  so  far 
as  they  presented  occasion  for  subtle  argument  and  disquisition.  The 
old  narrative  and  lyrical  forms  of  tragedy  faded  away  before  the  dis- 
putative,  which  was  full  of  reproach,  appeal,  and  denunciation.  This 
quality  had,  to  be  sure,  always  existed  in  the  earlier  plays,  but  he 
developed  it  abundantly,  sacrificing  the  unity  of  the  tragedy  to  the 
perpetual  excitement  of  the  emotions.  His  plays  became  intellectual 
and  passionate  duels;  the  incidents  being  mere  pretexts  for  eloquence. 
The  Andromache,  though  not  impressive  by  reason  of  its  discordant 
composition,  is  yet  full  of  tender  and  striking  touches.  It  has  another 
interest  to  the  student  in  the  fact  that  it  contains  many  political 
allusions,  and  that  Sparta  is  frequently  spoken  of  with  great  bitterness. 
Hence  the  conclusion  is  formed  that  it  was  written  during  one  of  the 
truces  in  the  Peloponnesian  war.  The  play  was  composed  for  the 
Argive  stage,  and  here  any  abuse  of  Sparta  was  very  welcome. 

II. 

The  Suppliants,  which  was  brought  out  in  420,  not  only  contains 
incidental  political  references,  but  is  throughout  a  sort  of  political 
pamphlet  in  which  Athens  is  praised  and  the  gratitude  of  Argos  is 
invoked.  The  ancients  themselves  called  the  play  an  encomium  of 
Athens,  and  with  good  reason,  for  it  referred  to  a  part  of  its  mytho- 
logical past  that  its  orators  never  let  be  forgotten.  The  Seven  against 
Thebes,  it  will  be  remembered,  ended  with  the  denial  of  the  rites  of 
burial  to  the  heroes  who  had  fallen  in  their  attack  upon  the  city. 
This  play  opens  with  the  appearance  of  Adrastus  and  the  mothers  of 
the  heroes  as  suppliants  for  the  interference  of  the  Athenians.  Aethra, 
the  mother  of  Theseus,  interests  herself  in  their  success,  and  summons 
her  son  to  listen  to  them.  His  sympathy  is  soon  won,  and  he  is  pre- 
paring to  send  a  messenger  to  Thebes,  when  a  herald  from  that  city 
appears,  who  demands  that  the  suppliants  be  at  once  expelled  from 
Attica.  This  at  once  arouses  Theseus,  and  he  declares  war  against 
Thebes,  and  soon  a  messenger  arrives  with  tidings  of  his  victory.  The- 
seus returns  with  the  corpses  of  the  Argive  leaders,  who  are  buried  at 


404  EURIPIDES. 


Eleusis.  This  simple  plot  is  further  employed  to  carry  an  earnest 
defense  of  democracy,  and  the  action  is  complicated  by  romantic 
details,  yet  these  are  no  less  prominent  than  elsewhere  in  the  work  of 
Euripides,  and  in  parts  one  may  feel  a  breath  of  the  old  ^schylean 
simplicity.     Yet  this  impression  is  at  the  best  only  momentary. 


HERCULES — TORSO  (Belvidere.) 
(Work  of  Apollonius  of  Athens.     Example  of  the  sculpture  of  the  Attic  Renaissance.) 

Very  similar  in  construction  is  the  Heraclidae,  which  was  written 
probably  at  about  the  same  time  as  the  Suppliants,  and  with  a  similar 
intent  of  praising  Athens.  This  time,  however,  the  Argives  came  in 
for  denunciation,  and  the  poet  spoke  out  plainly  the  old  hostility  be- 


POLITICAL  INTENT  OF    THE  HERACLID^.  405 

tween  Attica  and  the  Peloponnesus.  According  to  the  old  tradition, 
the  sons  of  Heracles  came  to  Athens,  after  being  driven  out  from 
every  other  part  of  Greece,  and  sought  protection  at  the  altars  of  the 
gods.  When  Erystheus,  the  King  of  Argos,  demanded  their  expul- 
sion and  tried  to  have  them  removed,  the  Athenian  king  Demophoon 
forbade  it,  although  the  Argive  herald  threatened  war.  The  oracles 
promised  victory  to  the  Athenian  king  if  he  would  sacrifice  to  Perse- 
phone a  noble  Athenian  virgin.  This  filled  his  heart  with  heaviness, 
but  Macaria,  one  of  the  daughters  of  Heracles,  offered  herself  as  a  vic- 
tim, so  that  the  Athenians  went  out  to  battle  full  of  confidence,  and 
were  victorious  over  the  Argives,  whose  king  they  made  captive. 
Undoubtedly  the  dimly-veiled  political  lessons  that  were  conveyed  to 
the  contemporaries  of  Euripides  by  this  representation  of  the  legend- 
ary hostility  between  the  two  great  geographical  divisions  of  Greece 
outweighed  the  literary  merits  of  this  play.  The  passage  in  which 
Macaria  offers  herself  for  sacrifice  is  a  bit  of  pathos  such  as  Euripides 
was  fond  of  employing,  but  even  this  is  left  incomplete,  although,  of 
course,  the  text  may  have  come  down  to  us  in  a  fragmentary  state. 
The  play  does  not  contradict  the  general  assertion  that  a  tragedy 
written  for  political  effect  will  necessarily  lose  a  good  measure  of 
literary  interest.  Yet  it  throws  much  light  on  the  anxiety  of  the 
Athenians  with  regard  to  the  Peloponnesian  war.  The  design  of 
Euripides  was  to  cheer  his  fellow-citizens,  and  to  console  them  with  a 
vivid  illustration  of  old  oracles  that  promised  them  divine  protection. 
The  Helen,  which  was  brought  out  with  the  Andromeda  in  41 2  B.C.,  is 
a  noteworthy  play  as  an  example  of  the  variety  that  its  author  employed 
in  the  handling  of  Greek  myths.  We  have  already  seen  how  he  modi- 
fied the  direct  effect  of  tragedy  by  the  introduction  of  pathetic 
scenes  and  incidents  ;  here  we  find  him  substituting  the  drama  for 
the  tragedy,  introducing  romantic  interest  in  the  place  of  the  older 
solemnity  and  simplicity.  The  Philoctetes  of  Sophocles  represents  a 
great  change  from  the  solemn  grandeur  of  ^schylus  ;  this  play  is 
quite  as  far  removed  from  the  Philoctetes  as  is  that  play  from  the 
work  of  the  first  of  the  great  tragedians.  The  change  was  very  great, 
and  it  is  easy  to  understand  how  shocked  some  of  the  public  must 
have  been  at  the  way  in  which  Euripides  handled  the  theatrical 
machinery.  This  play  depends  for  its  plot  on  the  story  already  men- 
tioned by  Stesichorus,  that  it  was  not  the  real  Helen  who  went  to 
Troy  with  Paris,  but,  instead,  a  counterfeit  likeness,  while  she  was 
transported  to  Egypt.  Thus  Euripides  did  not  invent  this  part  of  the 
story,  and  the  ancient  dramatists  seem  to  have  been  as  slack  in  inv^ent- 
ing  plots  as  their  modern  successors:  it  is  in  the  treatment  of  the 
plots  that    they  differ  from  other  people.     Herodotus  had  also  men- 


4o6  EURIPIDES. 

tioned  another  version  of  the  myth,  according  to  which,  Paris  on  his 
way  to  Troy  with  the  wife  of  Menelaus   was  driven    by   inclement 
weather  to  one  of  the  mouths  of  the  Nile,  and  thence  was  carried  to 
Memphis,  where  Proteus,  the  Egyptian  king,  denounced  his  crime,and, 
retaining  Helen,  sent  him  off.     When  the  Greeks  besieged  Troy,  the 
Trojans  were  not  able  to  return  Helen,  and  of  course  the  Greeks  could 
not  believe  the  reasons  that  were  assigned,  but  imagined  them  inven- 
tions.    After  the  war  Menelaus  on  his  way  home  landed  at  Egypt, 
when  Proteus  returned  his  wife  to  him.     Euripides  made  use  of  a  part 
of  this  story  in  his  play.     The  scene  is  Egypt  and  the  play  opens  with 
Helen's  long  speech,  as  prologue,  about  the  condition  of  things.     She 
mentions  the  phantom  that  went  to  Troy,  and  laments  that  the  son 
of  the  dead  Proteus  is  anxious  to  marry  her.     It  is  a  curious  fact 
that  she  mentions  her  alleged  descent  from  Zeus  with  scepticism.    And 
if  Helen,  his  own  daughter,  doubted  it,  who    need    believe  it  ?    the 
spectators  may  have  asked.      Suddenly  Teucer,   one    of   the    Greek 
heroes,  appears,  and  Helen  soon  gathers  from  his  evident  hatred  of  her 
in  what  estimation  she  is  held  by  the  Greeks.     He  tells  her  that  her 
mother  has  killed  herself  for  shame  at  Helen's  misdeeds,  and  that 
her  brothers,  Castor  and  Polydeuces,  or,  as  the  Romans  called  him,  Pol- 
lux, have  come  to  the  same  end.     She  hears  of  the  sufferings  of  the 
heroes  on  their  return  and  the  rumors  of  the  death  of  Menelaus.    Her 
despair  is  expressed  to  the  chorus  of  Greek  girls,  who  are  full  of  sym- 
pathy.    She  enters  the  house  to  learn  what  she  can  of  the   fate  of 
Menelaus  at  the  very  moment  when  that  hero  reaches  the  shore  where 
his  ship  has  been  wrecked.     He  is  in  dire  distress,  and  Euripides,  after 
his  fashion,  draws  a  pitiful  picture  of  his  misery  and  squalor.     This  was 
but  part  of  his  general  treatment  of  the  drama,  whereby  what  had 
been  abstract  personifications  of  more  or  less  majestic  qualities  became 
simple  men  and  women  who  aroused  sympathy  by  their  intelligible 
human  sufferings.     In  this   play  Menelaus  is  in  rags,  and   when   he 
knocks  at  the  door  of  a  house  he  is  answered  rudely  by  an   old  slave 
woman,  who  knows  the  fate  that  threatens  all  Greeks.     His  surprise  is 
great  when  he  hears  that  Helen  is  there ;  the  story  is  absolutely  inex- 
plicable.    Helen  returns  with  the  chorus,  and  the  husband  and  wife 
are  thus  brought  face  to  face.      He  comes  forward   as  a  suppliant, 
probably  with  a  bowed  head,  and  then  in  a  moment  they  recognize 
each  other.     Helen  possesses  the  key  of  the  mystery,  but  Menelaus  is 
naturally  puzzled  between  this  unexpected  appearance  of  his  wife  and 
his  confidence  in  the  whole  history  of  his  life  for  many  years,  and  he  is 
about  to  withdraw,  when  a  messenger  arrives  to  tell  him  that  his  wife, 
a  Trojan  captive,  whom  he  had  left  in  a  cave  on  the  shore  with  his 
companions,  had  vanished  into  thin  air,  uttering  words  that  removed 


NEW  DRAMATIC  SPIRIT  UNDER   THE   OLD  FORMS.  407 

all  doubt.  Helen  is  thus  restored,  unstained,  to  the  love  of 
Menelaus. 

The  rest  of  the  play,  nearly  a  thousand  lines,  is  taken  up  with  the 
planning  and  execution  of  an  ingenious  device  to  outwit  the  Egyptian 
king  and  to  reach  home.  Helen  tells  him  that  her  husband  has  been 
wrecked  here,  and  that  his  dead  body  has  been  cast  ashore.  She  says 
that  it  is  the  custom  of  the  Greeks  to  place  such  corpses  on  ships  and 
to  set  them  sailing  away  with  the  body  and  offerings  to  the  sea-gods. 
When  they  have  received  permission  from  the  king  to  do  this,  all  is 
settled,  and  they  put  it  into  accomplishment.  When  the  king  learns 
how  he  has  been  deceived  he  is  furious  with  his  sister  who  has  lent 
herself  to  the  plot,  but  his  wrath  is  stayed  by  the  Dioscuri,  Castor  and 
Polydeuces,  who  affirm  that  all  has  happened  according  to  the  will  of 
the  gods. 

The  modern  reader  notices  the  extreme  care  that  is  taken  to  prevent 
the  occurrence  of  any  incident  that  has  not  already  been  announced 
and  thoroughly  described  beforehand,  a  fact  which  shows  the  effort  of 
the  writer  to  make  most  prominent  his  treatment  of  the  theme.  What 
we  understand  by  the  dramatic  movement  was  not  allowed  to  out- 
weigh the  merit  of  the  execution.  The  dramatist  was  given  the 
freedom  of  choice  among  a  number  of  subjects  of  a  similar  kind,  and 
these  he  had  to  treat  in  a  more  or  less  conventional  way,  his  method 
being  the  striking  quality ;  just  as  the  Italian  painters  were  free  to 
paint  any  subject  that  they  could  find  in  religious  history,  and  every- 
thing depended  on  the  painter's  skill.  Yet,  as,  after  all,  the  leading 
figure  in,  say  the  scene  at  Gethsemane,  was  a  man  in  a  garden,  the 
truth  of  the  delineation  of  Euripides  is  only  determined  by  the  test 
of  comparison  with  human  life.  Or,  if  we  take  the  comparison  fre- 
quently made  between  this  side  of  the  Greek  tragedy  and  the  modern 
opera,  we  shall  notice  how  much  more  important  in  them  both  is  the 
lyrical,  musical,  narrative,  or  disputative  treatment  than  the  dramatic 
movement  which  we  demand  on  the  stage.  Yet,  in  the  Philoctetes  of 
Sophocles,  a  good  part  of  the  interest  lies  in  the  uncertainty  of  the 
spectator  as  to  whether  Neoptolemus  was  to  relent  or  to  persist  in  his 
harshness ;  and,  in  fact,  all  of  his  plays  that  have  come  down  to  us  are 
marked  by  careful  construction.  This  quality  disappears  in  Euripides, 
who  trusts  rather  to  vividness  of  momentary  effect.  In  modern  and 
very  modern  poetry  we  see  writers  in  the  same  way  placing  confidence 
in  lines  and  passages  with  no  inspiring  message  to  deliver  to  the  world. 

In  this  play  Euripides  shows  his  usual  skill  and  masterly  execution. 
The  chorus  sings  in  graceful  verses  the  escape  of  Helen  and  her  arrival 
at  home,  and  the  action  is  brisk.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  great  was  the 
influence  of  Euripides  on  the  later  comedy.     It  was  only  in  the  form 


4o8  EURIPIDES. 

that  he  clung  to  the  old  tragedy.  The  spirit  was  active  that  was  in 
time  to  abandon  the  paths  that  ^schylus  and  Sophocles  had  made 
their  own,  but  the  facility  of  his  workmanship  rendered  him  content 
with  the  old  forms.  The  modifications  that  Euripides  introduced  have 
been  the  object  of  severe  denunciations  from  those  who  fancy  that 
literature,  having  once  found  a  good  method,  should  always  preserve 
it ;  in  other  words,  that  the  expression  of  thought  should  be  above  all 
things  artificial ;  and  the  Helen,  with  its  happy  ending,  has  been  the 
especial  recipient  of  this  wrath.  Yet,  one  of  its  characters,  Theonoe, 
is  very  nearly  the  most  delicately  drawn  of  all  those  into  whom  Euri- 
pides has  breathed  a  quality  of  resemblance  to  life  and  a  subtle  per- 
sonality which  are  most  fascinating.  She  knows  the  minds  of  the 
gods,  that  Here  and  Aphrodite  are  at  variance  with  regard  to  the 
issue  of  the  adventure,  and  she  holds  the  decision  in  her  own  hands : 
if  she  tells  her  brother,  the  amorous  king  of  Egypt,  that  Menelaus  and 
Helen  are  there,  she  will  bring  them  to  ruin,  and  by  her  silence  she 
can  save  them.  The  prayers  of  Helen  and  her  husband  are  most 
earnest.  Helen  says,  "  If  you  who  are  a  prophetess,  and  believe  that 
the  gods  exist,  shall  subvert  your  father's  just  deeds  and  aid  your 
unjust  brother,  it  is  disgraceful  that  you  should  know  all  about  what 
is  divine  and  what  is  not,  and  should  yet  not  know  what  is  just."  Can 
we  not  see  why  the  spectators  liked  Euripides,  even  if  critics  said  then 
what  is  still  echoed,  that  he  was  corrupting  the  stage  with  novelties? 
Menelaus  is  even  more  urgent,  and  he  begins  by  asserting  that  he 
could  not  fall  at  her  knees  or  shed  tears,  because  that  would  be  weak- 
ness unbecoming  a  Trojan  hero.  This  is  a  whifT  of  modern  feeling, 
although  too  often  men  have  formed  an  inexact  notion  of  the  readiness 
of  the  Greeks  to  shed  tears,  from  the  lines  of  Homer,  and  have  extended 
the  alleged  habit  to  all  of  that  race  without  discrimination  of  time. 
This,  as  well  as  other  passages  which  might  be  quoted,  may  show  that 
what  was  apparently  common  enough  in  the  heroic  age,  had  disap- 
peared in  later  days  before  the  spread  of  civilization.  And  in  the 
representation  that  Euripides  gives  of  the  mythical  heroes,  he  did  not 
find  it  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  old  portrayal  of  their  qualities ;  he 
rather  brought  them  down  to  the  condition  of  people  in  his  own  time. 
The  rags  and  tatters  in  which  he  arrayed  them,  as  is  the  case  with 
Menelaus  in  this  play,  while  it  aroused  the  scorn  of  Aristophanes, 
brought  vividly  before  the  spectators  a  familiar  condition  of  suffering. 
This,  as  has  been  often  insisted  on,  is  the  most  essential  part  of  his 
treatment  of  tragedy. 

Indeed,  positive  proof  of  the  change  among  the  Greeks  in  respect  of 
lachrymosity  may  be  found  in  Plato's  Republic,  X.  605,  where,  after 
speaking  of  the  long  lamentations  usual  in  the  tragedies,  where  are 


PATHOS  AND  ELOQUENCE  IN  EURIPIDES.  409 

"persons  engaged  in  beating  their  breasts  and  bemoaning  themselves 
in  song,"  Socrates  goes  on  :  "  but,  on  the  other  hand,  whenever  sorrow- 
comes  home  to  one  of  us,  you  are  aware  that  we  pride  ourselves  upon 
the  opposite  conduct ;  that  is,  we  glory  in  being  able  to  endure  with 
calmness,  because  in  our  estimation  this  behavior  is  manly,  while  the 
other  is  womanish."  Yet,  Menelaus  goes  on,  "  they  say  it  is  the  part 
of  an  honorable  man  to  shed  tears  in  misfortunes,  but  not  even  this 
will  I  prefer  to  courage."  And  so  he  begins  to  entreat  her  earnestly 
and  courageously,  and  with  perfect  success.  It  is  easy  to  perceive 
that  Euripides  introduced  some  of  his  changes  in  the  drama  with  a 
clumsiness  that  presents  a  striking  contrast  with  the  smoothness  which 
the  older  forms  had  acquired,  but  he  atoned  for  this  by  his  skill  when 
the  characters  were  fairly  before  him,  and  at  times,  as  we  shall  see,  he 
modelled  his  plays  without  what  seems  to  us  awkwardness. 

III. 

Too  often,  however,  we  are  disposed  to  call  awkwardness  merely 
what  differs  from  our  own  notions,  and  since  what  we  have  been  taught 
to  expect  in  a  play  is  a  rounded  completeness,  we  are  prone  to  forget 
that  what  Euripides  tried  to  offer  and  his  audience  expected  to 
receive  was  abundant  opportunity  for  eloquence.  Any  means  that 
aided  this  object  could  not  fail  to  be  satisfactory.  In  the  Troades 
(415  B.C.)  the  action  is  nothing:  the  play  is  a  succession  of  pathetic 
scenes  that  deal  with  the  final  misery  of  that  captured  town,  and  one 
striking  thing  is  the  attempt  to  show  how  noble  was  Troy  even  in  its 
fall,  and  how  dearly  bought  was  the  Grecian  victory.  The  Greeks,  as 
Cassandra  says  in  the  play,  lost  innumerable  men,  and  gave  up  all  that 
made  life  sweet  in  behalf  of  a  woman  who  was  carried  away  by  her 
own  consent  and  not  by  violence.  They  died,  not  in  exile,  and  those 
whom  Ares  slew  saw  not  their  children,  nor  were  they  prepared  for 
the  tomb  by  the  hands  of  a  wife,  but  they  lie  in  a  strange  land.  The 
Trojans,  however,  won  the  fairest  renown,  inasmuch  as  they  died  for 
their  country ;  those  who  were  slain  in  battle  were  buried  with  all  the 
usual  rites,  honored  by  the  attentions  of  their  friends  and  relatives. 
And  those  who  had  been  spared  continued  to  live  with  their  wives 
and  children,  a  joy  denied  the  Greeks. 

No  occasion  is  lost  to  show  how  much  ruin  success  brought  upon 
the  Greeks  ;  nor  are  the  Trojan  woes  forgotten.  The  sufferings  of  the 
captured  women  who  are  divided  as  slaves  among  the  Greek  generals 
are  made  most  vivid.  Indeed,  nothing  is  spared  :  Cassandra  falls  into 
the  hands  of  Agamemnon  ;  Polyxena  is  destined  for  an  offering  on  the 
grave  of  Achilles  ;  Hecuba  is  assigned  to   Odysseus ;  Andromache  to 


41  o  EURIPIDES. 

Neoptolemus ;  and  the  young  Astyanax  is  snatched  from  his  mother 
to  be  flung  from  the  walls.  These  separate  incidents  are  not  enough : 
Helen  and  Hecuba  quarrel  in  the  presence  of  Menelaus,  who  seems  to 
condemn  yet  is  evidently  in  his  heart  ready  to  forgive  his  faithless 
wife,  and  finally  the  captive  women  are  led  forth  wailing,  while  Troy 
sinks  in  flames.  Such  are  the  woes  that  form  this  tragedy.  It  was 
written  ten  years  after  the  Hecuba,  which  seems  almost  to  be  a  con- 
tinuation of  it,  and  the  Andromache,  it  will  be  remembered,  treats  the 
same  events. 

The  Mad  Heracles  is  full  of  tragic  horror.  It  contains  two  separate 
actions,  woven,  however,  into  a  single  play  wherein  the  promised 
peaceful  solution  is  suddenly  changed  into  the  blackest  tragedy.  The 
scene  is  laid  in  Thebes,  before  the  temple  of  Zeus.  Lycus  has  seized 
the  throne  during  the  absence  of  Heracles,  who  is  ordered  by  Eurys- 
theus  to  fetch  Cerberus  from  the  lower  world,  and  has  determined  to 
put  to  death  Megara,  the  wife  of  Heracles,  and  her  children.  Just  at 
the  fatal  moment  Heracles  returns,  and  prepares  to  take  vengeance  on 
the  tyrant.  Suddenly,  however,  his  plans  are  frustrated  by  an  attack 
of  madness  :  he  fancies  that  he  is  at  Mycenae,  and  mistaking  his  own 
family  for  that  of  Eurystheus  he  kills  them  all.  This  delusion  is  sent 
upon  him  by  Here,  and  Pallas  Athene  rids  him  from  it.  His  remorse 
when  he  has  recovered  his  senses  is  most  acute  ;  he  wishes  to  kill  him- 
self, but  Theseus,  whom  he  had  brought  back  with  him  from  the  lower 
regions,  manages  to  console  him,  and  he  determines  to  accompany 
Theseus  to  Athens  and  there  to  atone  for  his  deeds  by  sacrifices.  For- 
tunately there  is  in  English  Mr.  Browning's  excellent  translation  of 
this  play,  to  which  the  reader  can  be  referred.  Here  is  a  song  of  the 
chorus,  who  lament  their  age  and  infirmity : 


"  Youth  is  a  pleasant  burthen  to  me  ; 
But  age  on  my  head,  more  heavily 
Than  the  crags  of  Aetna,  weighs  and  weighs. 
And  darkening  cloaks  the  lids  and  intercepts  the  rays. 
Never  be  mine  the  preference 
Of  an  Asian  empire's  wealth,  nor  yet 
Of  a  house  all  gold,  to  youth,  to  youth 
That's  beauty,  whatever  the  gods  dispense  ! 
Whether  in  wealth  we  joy,  or  fret 
Paupers, —  of  all  God's  gifts  most  beautiful,  in  truth  ! 


"  But  miserable  murderous  age  I  hate  ! 
Let  it  go  to  wreck,  the  waves  adown. 
Nor  ever  by  rights  plague  tower  or  town 
Where  mortals  bide,  but  still  elate 
With  wings,  on  ether,  precipitate. 
Wander  them  round  • —  nor  wait ! 


THE  MAD  HERACLES— EXTRACTS.  4" 

"  But  if  the  gods,  to  man's  degree, 
Had  wit  and  wisdom,  they  would  bring 
Mankind  a  twofold  youth,  to  be 
Their  virtue's  sign-mark,  all  should  see. 
In  those  with  whom  life's  winter  thus  grew  spring. 
For  when  they  died,  into  the  sun  once  more 
Would  they  have  traversed  twice  life's  racecourse  o'er  ; 
While  ignobility  had  simply  run 
Existence  through,  nor  second  life  begun. 

"  And  so  might  we  discern  both  bad  and  good 
As  surely  as  the  starry  multitude 
Is  numbered  by  the  sailors,  one  and  one. 
But  now  the  gods  by  no  apparent  line 
Limit  the  worthy  and  the  base  define; 
Only,  a  certain  period  rounds,  and  so 
Brings  man  more  wealth, —  but  youthful  vigor,  no!  " 

The  pathetic  scene  when  Heracles  awakes  from  a  slumber,  after 
murdering  his  wife  and  children,  is  most  impressive.  He  had  been 
fastened  to  a  column  as  he  sunk  in  a  swoon,  and  his  first  words  are  : 

"  Hah  — 
In  breath  indeed  I  am  —  see  things  I  ought  — 
^ther,  and  earth,  and  these  the  sunbeam-shafts  ! 
But  then  —  some  billow  and  strange  whirl  of  sense 
I  have  fallen  into  !  and  breathings  hot  I  breathe  — 
Smoked  upwards,  not  the  steady  work  from  lungs. 
See  now  !     Why  bound  —  at  moorings  like  a  ship  — 
About  my  young  breast  and  young  arm,  to  this 
Stone  piece  of  carved  work  broke  in  half,  do  I 
Sit,  have  my  rest  in  corpses'  neighborhood  ? 
Strewn  on  the  ground  are  winged  darts,  and  bow 
Which  played  my  brother-shieldman,  held  in  hand, — 
Guarded  my  side,  and  got  my  guardianship  ! 
I  can  not  have  gone  back  to  Haides  —  twice 
Begun  Eurustheus'  race  I  ended  thence  ? 
But  I  nor  see  the  Sisupheian  stone. 
Nor  Plouton,  nor  Demeter's  sceptred  maid  ! 
I  am  struck  witless  sure  !    Where  can  I  be  ? 
Ho  then  !  what  friend  of  mine  is  near  or  far  — 
Some  one  to  cure  me  of  bewilderment  ? 
For  naught  familiar  do  I  recognize." 

Then  the  hero's  father  comes  up  to  him  and  explains  the  condition 
of  things  slowly,  reluctantly,  as  if  fearing  still  for  his  son's  reason,  who 
presses  on  unsuspecting  and  is  at  last  overwhelmed  on  learning  all 
that  he  has  done.  When  he  bids  farewell  to  his  father  and  is  about  to 
start  away  with  Theseus,  his  words  are  most  impressive.  In  the  first 
place,  Euripides  put  into  the  mouth  of  Heracles  most  serious  doubts 
about  the  gods.  He  says  that  he  can  not  believe  they  are  so  adul- 
terous as  they  are  reputed  to  be, 

"  Nor,  that  with  chains  they  bind  each  other's  hands, 
•  Have  I  judged  worthy  faith,  at  any  time ; 

Nor  shall  I  be  persuaded — one  is  born 


412  EURIPIDES. 


His  fellows'  master!  since  God  stands  in  need 
If  he  is  really  God — of  nought  at  all. 
These  are  the  poets'  pitiful  conceits  !  " 


Probably  these  bold  expressions  of  Euripides  could  only  be  placed 
in  the  mouth  of  a  son  of  Zeus;  the  poet  left  for  himself  the  defense 
that  he  was  merely  making  a  dramatic  use  of  a  god's  grumbling,  while 
in  fact  he  was  making  a  serious  attack  on  the  whole  Greek  mythology. 
Heracles  thus  goes  on  : 

"  But  this  it  was  I  pondered,  though  woe-whelmed  — 
'  Take  heed  lest  thou  be  taxed  with  cowardice 

Somehow  in  leaving  thus  the  light  of  day  ! ' 

For  whoso  cannot  make  a  stand  against 

These  same  misfortunes,  neither  could  withstand 

A  mere  man's  dart,  oppose  death,  strength  to  strength. 

Therefore  unto  thy  city  I  will  go  " 

(He  is  speaking  to  Theseus  and  means  Athens). 

"  And  have  the  grace  of  thy  ten  thousand  gifts. 
There !  I  have  tasted  of  ten  thousand  toils 
As  truly  —  never  waived  a  single  one, 
Nor  let  these  runnings  drop  from  out  my  eyes ! 
Nor  ever  thought  it  would  have  come  to  this  — 
That  I  from  out  my  eyes  do  drop  tears !     Well ! 
At  present,  as  it  seems,  one  bows  to  fate. 
So  be  it !     Old  man,  thou  seest  my  exile  — 
Seest,  too,  me  —  my  children's  murderer  ! 
These  give  thou  to  the  tomb,  and  deck  the  dead. 
Doing  them  honor  with  thy  tears  —  since  me 
Law  does  not  sanction  !     Propping  on  her  breast, 
And  giving  them  into  their  mother's  arms, 
—  Reinstitute  the  sad  community 
Which  I,  unhappy,  brought  to  nothingness  — 
Not  by  my  will !     And,  when  earth  hides  the  dead, 
Live  in  this  city  !  —  sad,  but,  all  the  same, 
Force  thy  soul  to  bear  woe  along  with  me  ! 
O  children  —  who  begat  and  gave  you  birth  — 
Your  father,  has  destroyed  you  !  nought  you  gain 
By  those  fair  deeds  of  mine  I  laid  you  up. 
As  by  main-force  I  labored  glory  out 
To  give  you  —  that  fine  gift  of  fatherhood  ! 
And  thee,  too,  O  my  poor  one,  I  destroyed, 
Not  rendering  like  for  like,  as  when  thou  kept'st 
My  marriage-bed  inviolate, —  those  long 
Household-seclusions  draining  to  the  dregs 
Inside  my  house  !     O  me,  my  wife,  my  boys  — 
And,  O  myself,  how,  miserablymoved. 
Am  I  disyoked  now  from  both  boys  and  wife  ! 
O  bitter  those  delights  of  kisses  now  — 
And  bitter  these  my  weapons'  fellowship  ! 
For  I  am  doubtful  whether  shall  I  keep 
Or  cast  away  these  arrows  which  will  clang 
Ever  such  words  out,  as  they  knock  my  side  — 

'  Us  —  thou  didst  murder  wife  and  children  with  !  • 

Us  — child-destroyers  -—  still  thou  keepest  thine  !  ' 


INDIVIDUAL  JUDGMENT  PREFERRED    TO    TRADITION.  4^3 

Ha,  shall  I  bear  them  in  my  arms,  then  ?     What 
Say  for  excuse  ?     Yet,  naked  of  my  darts 
Wherewith  I  did  my  bravest,  Hellas  through. 
Throwing  myself  beneath  foot  to  my  foes, 
Shall  I  die  basely  ?     No  !  relinquishment 
Of  these  must  never  be, —  companions  once. 
We  sorrowfully  must  observe  the  pact ! 

O  land  of  Kadmos,  Theban  people  all, 
Shear  off  your  locks,  lament  one  wide  lament. 
Go  to  my  children's  grave  and,  in  one  strain. 
Lament  the  whole  of  us  —  my  dead  and  me  — 
Since  all  together  are  fordone  and  lost, 
Smitten  by  Here's  single  stroke  of  fate  !  " 

Even  to  this  Euripides  adds  a  few  lines  of  talk  between  Heracles 
and  Theseus  that  make  the  last  scene  yet  more  pathetic,  and  the  play- 
ends  with  their  departure  for  Athens. 

This  tragedy  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  the  art  of  Euripides.  The 
unexpected  change  by  which  the  arrival  of  Heracles,  that  promised 
relief  and  blessing,  suddenly  accomplishes  ruin,  was  a  device  that  he 
was  very  fond  of,  and  one  that  obviously  gave  his  plays  a  novel  charm. 
Even  more  important  was  the  way  in  which  the  pitiableness  of  the 
awakening  Heracles  is  brought  out.  To  be  sure,  the  machinery,  by 
means  of  which  Here  secures  his  madness,  is  like  some  of  that  in  the 
Iliad  ;  yet  the  tendency  of  the  play  is  towards  making  the  Greek 
deities  despised,  for  just  so  far  as  they  are  brought  down  from  heaven 
and  exhibited  as  human  beings,  is  their  conduct  estimated  as  would 
be  that  of  men  and  women  in  like  circumstances,  and  this  is  a  test 
which  they  can  not  well  endure.  So  long  as  they  were  kept  aloof  from 
criticism  in  an  unknown  heaven,  they  escaped  too  rigorous  judgment, 
as  does  any  aristocracy  which  is  hidden  from  its  victims.  Yet  in 
mythology,  as  in  life,  knowledge  is  a  democratic  element  ;  science  is 
the  great  solvent  of  conventions,  and,  since  there  is  but  one  right,  the 
mere  statement  of  wrong-doing,  especially  when  its  mischief  is  seen, 
is  at  once  condemnation.  It  was  in  this  way  that  Euripides  formed 
the  connecting  link  between  antiquity  and  modern  times,  by  repre- 
senting the  right  of  individual  judgment  and  its  superiority  over  the 
acceptance  of  tradition.  That  he  should  have  been  condemned  is 
only  natural :  the  man  who  first  utters  what  many  feel,  and  what  is 
to  become  a  commonplace  in  the  future,  is  sure  of  opposition.  Yet 
Euripides,  in  time,  carried  the  public  with  him,  for  views  like  his,  how- 
ever condemned  by  authority,  when  once  uttered  in  a  free  community, 
have  to  be  solved,  even  if  the  solution  overthrows  the  existing  state 
of  affairs ;  and  his  thoughts  were  those  of  a  period  when  the  old  faith 
was  decaying  and  new  questions  were  forcing  themselves  forward.     It 


414  EURIPIDES. 

is  true  that  the  person  who  gives  expression  to  any  feeling  helps  in  a 
way  to  further  its  influence,  but  he  does  not  create  it,  although  he 
suffers  all  the  opprobrium  that  attaches  itself  to  a  ringleader,  and  in 
this  way  Euripides  bore  the  brunt  of  all  the  odiousness  of  the  irre- 
sistible change.  There  were  very  rftany  to  blame  him  for  what  he  did, 
who  regretted  what  they  regarded  as  his  perversion  of  the  old  tragedy, 
his  abandonment  of  the  old  methods,  and  who,  as  was  the  case  with 
Aristophanes,  looked  back  longingly  on  the  happy  time  when  the 
tragedy  had  represented  something  greater  than  real  life,  forgetting 
that  ^schylus  had,  like  Euripides,  only  given  form  and  utterance  to 
the  feelings  of  his  own  day,  and  that  literature  languishes  when  a 
writer  decides  to  say  what  is  expected  of  him  rather  than  what  he 
feels.  We  shall  find  abundant  evidence  of  the  extent  to  which  even 
Aristophanes,  much  as  he  loved  the  past,  was  influenced  by  the  present 
in  his  management  of  his  art.  Euripides  apparently  felt  no  scruples 
about  moving  with  the  current,  and  so  gives  us  a  most  distinct  example 
of  the  changes  of  this  interesting  period. 

In  the  Electra  we  may  see  once  more  how  different  was  his  way  of 
looking  at  the  old  subjects  from  that  of  his  predecessors.  Fortunately, 
we  are  able  to  compare  it  directly  with  the  treatment  of  the  same  sub- 
ject by  both  ^schylus  and  Sophocles,  and  yet  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind 
that  the  relative  position  of  Euripides  is  not  to  be  determined  by  this 
play  alone.  One  striking  thing  in  it  is  the  frank  criticism  that  it  con- 
tained of  the  Libation  Pourers  of  -^schylus.  Then,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, Electra  recognizes  the  lock  that  Orestes  laid  on  her  father's 
grave  by  its  likeness  to  her  own  hair,  and  her  foot  exactly  filled  the 
print  left  on  the  sand  by  her  brother.  Now  Aristophanes,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  was  never  tired  of  turning  Euripides  to  ridicule,  and  of  com- 
paring him  unfavorably  with  ^schylus  ;  here  Euripides  had  a  chance 
to  revenge  himself,  and  although  he  made  the  older  poet  seem  absurd, 
he  put  himself  in  no  commendable  light.  Moreover,  the  more  marked 
the  success  of  his  fling  at  ^schylus,  the  greater  was  the  confusion 
that  this  double  wrought  in  his  own  play.  Yet  it  is  possible  to  find  a 
certain  satisfaction  in  detecting  this  answer  of  Euripides  to  the  jibes 
of  his  bitter  parodist.  It  is  but  two  or  three  lines  that  he  employs  for 
this  purpose,  but  they  must  have  had  a  great  effect  among  the  quick- 
witted Athenians.  After  all,  we  must  remember  that  he  had  been 
attacked  as  no  man  has  ever  been  attacked  in  the  whole  history  of 
literature  by  the  ablest  master  of  invective  that  the  world  has  ever 
known,  and  with  ribaldry  that  has  since  lost  the  social  position  it  then 
held.     Here  is  his  reply : 

An  old  man  who  had  carried  Orestes  away  when  .^gisthus  slew 
Agamemnon  is  present,  who  says  to  Electra : 


EURIPIDES'  REPLY   TO    THE  ASSAULTS  OF  ARISTOPHANES.      4^5 

"  Do  you  examine  the  hair,  placing  it  against  your  own,  whether  the  tint 
of  the  shorn  tresses  be  the  same.  For  of  children  of  the  same  father,  most 
parts  of  the  body  are  accustomed  to  be  naturally  alike." 

To  this  Electra  replies  : 

"  You  utter  words  unworthy  of  a  wise  man,  if  you  think  that  my  very  bold 
brother  would  come  into  this  land  by  stealth  through  fear  of  Aegisthus. 
Then  how  will  the  lock  of  hair  match  mine,  the  one  belonging  to  a  well-born 
man  trained  in  athletic  sports,  the  other  to  a  woman  employed  in  combing 
wool  ?  It  is  impossible.  And  you  will  find  a  great  many  persons,  in  no  way 
related,  having  hair  of  the  same  appearance." 

The  old  man  then  says : 

"  But  do  you  step  into  his  track  and  consider  the  print  of  his  slipper, 
whether  it  be  of  the  measure  of  your  foot." 

Electra:  "But  how  can  there  be  footprints  on  stony  ground  ?  And  if 
there  were  any,  the  feet  of  a  brother  and  of  a  sister  would  not  be  of  the  same 
size :  the  man's  foot  would  be  larger." 

That  was  all,  but  the  memory  of  these  lines  must  have  clung  to  those 
who  afterwards  saw  the  play  of  ^Eschylus  acted.  In  the  Phoenician 
Virgins  Euripides  had  also  paid  his  respects  to  the  earlier  dramatist, 
who  had  at  great  length  described  the  contending  generals  in  his  Seven 
against  Thebes.     Here  is  the  passage: 

Eteocles  says :  "  It  shall  be  so  ;  and  having  gone  to  the  city  of  the  seven 
towns,  I  will  appoint  chiefs  at  the  gates,  as  you  advise,  having  opposed 
equal  champions  against  equal  foes.  But  to  mention  the  name  of  each  would 
be  a  great  delay,  the  enemy  being  encamped  under  our  very  walls.  But  I 
will  go  that  I  may  not  be  idle  with  my  hand." 

While  we  remember  that  this  was  the  only  means  of  answering 
the  attacks  of  Aristophanes  that  lay  in  the  reach  of  Euripides,  that 
even  the  serious  tragedy  had  to  be  employed  by  him  as  a  means  of 
expressing  opinions  for  which  there  was  no  other  utterance,  just  as 
political  feeling  often  employed  the  same  device  ;  yet,  here  as  every- 
where, the  answer  to  the  attack  appears  unfortunate,  however  inter- 
esting it  may  be.  Euripides,  not  .^schylus,  is  hurt  by  the  implied 
a'ssault.  That  at  a  given  moment  his  patience  should  have  yielded  is 
only  natural,  and  our  sympathy  is  awakened  for  the  man  who  was  the 
object  of  so  violent  abuse  that  the  echo  of  it  still  affects  men's  judgment 
even  at  the  present  day,  but  his  ariswer  only  marred  the  singleness  of 
impression  that  his  play  would  otherwise  have  produced. 

The  subject  is  the  familiar  one,  Electra's  recognition  of  her  brother 
and    the    murder   of   ^gisthus    and    Clytemnestra.      Yet    Euripides 


4i6 


EURIPIDES. 


employs  his  usual  art  to  render  the  story  more  pathetic  by  representing 
Electra  as  the  wife  of  a  poor  peasant,  of  noble  family,  to  be  sure,  "  but 


ORESTES   AND    ELECTRA. 
{Hercuianeutn  Group.) 


yet  poor  in  means,"  he  says  of  himself,  "  whence  noble  descent  is 
lost,"  even  in  the  heroic  age.  This  humble  station  secured  the  pity 
of  the  audience  for  the  daughter  of  Agamemnon,  and  at    the  same 


EFFECT  OF  ADVANCING  CIVILIZATION   UPON  THE  DRAMA.      417 

time  made  it  unlikely  that  she  should  be  recognized  by  Orestes.  The 
recognition,  which  is  the  best  scene  in  the  play,  is  much  prolonged  by 
this  device,  and  is  only  brought  about,  in  the  failure  of  the  means  that 
^schylus  had  employed,  by  the  intervention  of  the  old  man  referred 
to  above.  He  employs  a  means  already  approved  by  Homer  and 
recognizes  Orestes  by  an  old  scar.  From  this  point  the  play  moves 
swiftly  to  its  end.  The  murder  of  Clytemnestra,  who  is  lured  into  the 
peasant's  hut,  is  impressive  ;  that  of  ^gisthus  is  described  by  a  mes- 
senger. At  the  conclusion  the  twins.  Castor  and  Polydeuces,  appear 
and  order  what  shall  be  done  afterwards.  The  play,  with  occasional 
merit,  is  ill-suited  to  bear  comparison  with  the  plays  of  ^schylus  and 
Sophocles  treating  the  same  subject. 

Euripides  does  himself  non-justice  in  his  Ion,  a  play  that  is  singu- 
larly important  in  its  indications  of  the  future  growth  of  the  drama. 
For  one  thing,  it  is  not  a  tragedy,  but  a  play  with  a  happy  ending  and 
a  long  and  complicated  plot.  In  this  respect  Euripides  was  an  inno- 
vator  ;  it  was  not  the  mere  crisis  of  an  event  that  he  chose  for  his  sub- 
ject, but  rather  an  enlargement,  a  fuller  development  of  the  event,  into 
which  he  introduced  unsuspected  circumstances.  Thus,  it  will  be 
noticed,  advancing  civilization  always  complicates  the  artist's  work, 
for  civilization  is  a  process  of  accumulating  knowledge  and  experience 
which  make  themselves  more  prominent  in  the  mirror  that  the  artist 
holds  up  to  nature.  Just  as  a  boy  in  gazing  at  a  landscape  will  see 
only  the  trees  on  which  green  apples  or  nuts  grow,  and  the  brook  in 
which  he  may  bathe  after  gorging  himself  with  unseasonable  fruit,  an 
older  person  will  perceive  innumerable  other  things  according  to  his 
knowledge  :  the  farmer  will  observe  the  wheat  that  needs  cutting,  the 
meadow  that  must  be  drained,  the  pasture  to  be  plowed ;  the  geolo- 
gist will  notice  the  lay  of  the  land,  the  rocks,  the  soil  ;  every  one  will 
-see  only  what  his  education  makes  prominent.  Thus,  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, the  poets  saw  in  the  landscape  only  a  violent  contrast  to  the 
city  ;  nightingales,  larks,  sparrows  were  but  birds  except  so  far  as  their 
differences  were  pointed  out  by  Latin  poets.  Flowers  were  flowers, 
without  distinction  of  variety.  Foliage  was  green,  the  sky  was  blue — 
the  reader  will  remember  how  the  Edinburgh  Review  took  Wordsworth 
to  task  for  flying  in  the  face  of  that  obvious  fact  by  calling  the  sunset 
^Y  green — the  evening  was  dark.  Gradually  there  became  perceptible 
in  the  colors  of  things  hues  that  before  were  overlooked  ;  insects  and 
birds  were  distinguished  and  defined.  The  old  bonds  were  soon 
broken  ;  the  peasant,  whose  appearance  in  literature  may  be  now  seen 
surviving  in  the  chorus  of  an  Italian  opera,  became  a  man,  and  this 
change  was  felt  in  politics,  theology,  philosophy,  as  well  as  in  art  and 
literature.      Euripides  saw  a  similar  change,  and  the  old  unity  was 


41 8  EURIPIDES. 

gone,  just  as  now  no  educated  person  can  read  a  newspaper  or  look  at 
a  landscape  without  receiving  a  host  of  impressions  such  as  our  great- 
grandfathers never  knew. 

Hence  we  are  justified  in  explaining  the  simplicity  of  the  earlier 
Greek  tragedies  as  the  result  of  unpracticed  perceptions  rather 
than  of  artistic  exclusion.  The  feeling  of  the  earlier  lack  of  com- 
plexity is  common,  and  was  thus  explained  by  Edgar  A.  Poe  in  his 
"  Marginalia":* 

"About  the  '  Antigone,'  as  about  all  the  ancient  plays,  there  seems 
to  me  a  certain  baldness,  the  result  of  inexperience  in  art,  but  which 
pedantry  would  force  us  to  believe  the  result  of  a  studied  and 
supremely  artistic  simplicity.  Simplicity,  indeed,  is  a  very  important 
feature  of  all  true  art — but  not  the  simplicity  which  we  see  in  the  Greek 
drama.  ...  In  the  drama,  the  direct,  straight-forward,  un-Ger- 
man  Greek  had  no  Nature  so  immediately  [as  to  the  sculptor]  from 
which  to  make  a  copy.  He  did  what  he  could.  .  .  .  The  pro- 
found sense  of  one  or  two  tragic,  or  rather  melo-dramatic,  elements 
(such  as  the  idea  of  inexorable  Destiny — this  sense  gleaming  at  inter- 
vals from  out  the  darkness  of  the  ancient  stage),  serves,  in  the  very 
imperfection  of  its  development,  to  show,  not  the  dramatic  ability,  but 
the  dramatic  z'/zability  of  the  ancients.  In  a  word,  .  .  the  complex 
[arts]  .  .  demand  the  long  and  painfully  progressive  experience 
of  ages.  To  the  Greeks,  beyond  doubt,  their  drama  seemed  perfec- 
tion— it  fully  answered,  to  them,  the  dramatic  end,  excitement,  and 
this  fact  is  urged  as  proof  of  their  drama's  perfection  in  itself.  It 
need  only  be  said,  in  reply,  that  their  art  and  their  sense  of  art 
were  necessarily  on  a  par." 

It  is  not  necessary  to  agree  with  the  whole  of  this  statement," 
trimmed  and  curtailed  as  it  is,  before  acknowledging  that  it  describes 
what  many  feel.  Thus  Mr.  Lowell,  in  his  article  on  Mr.  Swinburne's 
tragedies,  which  is  to  be  found  in  his  "  Among  My  Books,"  comparing 
the  Electra  of  Sophocles  with  Hamlet,  calls  attention  to  the  "  differ- 
ence between  the  straightforward  bloody-mindedness  of  Orestes  and 
the  metaphysical  punctiliousness  of  the  Dane.  Yet  each,"  he  goes 
on,  "  was  natural  in  his  several  way,  and  each  would  have  been  unin- 
telligible to  the  audience  for  which  the  other  was  intended.  That 
Fate  which  the  Greeks  made  to  operate  from  without,  we  recognize 
at  work  within  in  some  vice  of  character  or  hereditary  disposition." 

These  differences,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  were  not  rejected  by 
Sophocles,  any  more  than  the  expression  of  individual  characteristics 
was  rejected  by  the  great   Greek  sculptors  ;  they  and  he  did  not  feel 

*  See  his  Works.     New  York  :  Armstrong  (1884),  V.  266. 


PROGRESS  TOWARD  MODERNNESS  IN  THE  ION.  419 

them.  Euripides  did,  and  this  play  bears  many  traces  of  the  effect 
they  wrought  upon  his  mind.     Let  us  first  examine  the  plot. 

The  play  opens  with  the  usual  prologue,  after  which  Ion,  a  young 
attendant  of  the  temple  at  Delphi,  comes  in  and  sings  a  hymn  as  he 
performs  his  sacred  duties.  Then  there  enters  the  chorus  of  Athenian 
women,  who  wander  about  admiring  the  decorations  of  the  temple  ; 
they  are  accompanying  Creusa,  who  is  weeping.  Ion  asks  the  cause, 
and  she  makes  a  vague  answer,  that  sad  memories  were  called  up  and 
she  wonders  where  she  can  appeal  for  justice  if  we  are  undone  by  the 
injustice  of  the  gods.  She  then  explains  that  she  has  come  to  Delphi 
to  be  freed  from  barrenness,  and  tells  him  of  her  descent  and  mar- 
riage. In  turn  she  asks  him  who  he  is,  and  he  tells  her  that  he  was 
a  foundling,  and  was  carried  into  the  temple  and  brought  up  to  fill  his 
present  place,  and  that  he  has  no  means  of  knowing  who  his  parents 
were.  Creusa  then  recounts  her  own  story,  pretending  that  it  was  the 
experience  of  one  of  her  friends,  who  had  borne  a  child  to  Apollo  and 
had  laid  it  in  his  cave,  whence  it  had  mysteriously  disappeared.  If  the 
child  had  lived,  it  would  have  been  of  about  the  age  of  Ion.  She 
wonders  if  the  god  will  utter  an  oracle  disclosing  this  child's  fate,  but 
this  Ion  deems  unlikely,  for  it  would  be  to  his  interest  to  keep  the 
affair  concealed.  While  Creusa  complains  to  the  god,  her  husband 
Xuthus  enters,  who  tells  her  that  the  oracle  of  Trophonius  has  prom- 
ised that  they  should  not  leave  the  shrine  at  Delphi  childless.  Ion 
then  remonstrates  with  the  deity  while  going  on  with  sacred  rites, 
and  the  chorus  pray  that  the  house  of  Erechtheus,  to  which  Creusa 
belongs,  be  not  left  childless.  Then  Xuthus  appears  once  more  and 
meets  Ion,  whom  he  greets  as  his  child,  explaining  that  the  oracle  had 
promised  that  the  first  person  he  met  issuing  from  the  temple  should 
be  his  son.  Ion,  however,  is  filled  with  a  desire  to  see  his  mother,  and 
withstands  the  invitation  of  Xuthus  to  come  to  Athens,  because  he 
knows  the  contempt  that  the  people  of  that  city  feel  for  strangers.  At 
last,  however,  he  consents,  hoping  to  find  that  his  mother  belonged  to 
that  city,  and  the  two  depart  to  celebrate  the  answer  of  the  oracle 
with  a  feast.  This  action  pains  the  chorus,  who  see  what  a  disappoint- 
ment it  will  be  to  Creusa. 

They  were  right ;  when  she  finds  out  how  things  stand  she  is  indig- 
nant, and  she  expresses  very  plainly  her  wrath  with  Apollo.  An  old 
pedagogue  readily  persuades  her  to  seek  vengeance,  but  the  plan  mis- 
carries, and  when  it  has  been  determined  that  she  shall  be  stoned  to 
death  she  rushes  to  the  altar  as  a  suppliant.  Ion  hastens  to  pursue 
her  and  remonstrates  angrily  with  her;  he  is  unwilling  to  slay  her  at 
the  altar,  and  laments  that  she  should  escape  her  just  punishment,  till 
the  old  Pythia  appears,  bringing  with  her  the  wraps  he  had  worn  when 


MODERN  SPIRIT  OF  EURIPIDES. 


421 


she  found  him  in  his  infancy.  He  is  much  moved,  and  Creusa  is  soon 
able  to  prove  that  the  embroidery  was  her  work,  and  the  other  orna- 
ments of  the  child  she  describes,  so  that  Ion  is  manifestly  the  child 
whom  she  thought  she  had  lost.  Ion  himself  is  not  wholly  convinced, 
and  is  on  the  point  of  entering  the  temple  to  get  full  information  from 
Apollo  when  Athene  appears,  explaining  everything.  They  all  then 
withdraw  their  complaints  of  Apollo, and  the  play  ends. 

Such,  then,  is  the  plot  of  this  play,  with  its  intricacies  plainly  soluble 
by  the  audience  and  its  cross-purposes  thoroughly  intelligible  to  them 
at  least.  From  the  beginning  they  were  in  possession  of  the  whole 
secret,  and  they  watched  the  dialogue  of  Creusa  and  Ion,  and  their 
misunderstanding  with  doubtless  the  same  delight  that  one  feels  in 
witnessing  any  delicate  social  fencing.  To  be  sure,  by  the  necessities 
of  the  drama,  it  was  a  divine  myth  that  formed  the  plot,  but  all  that 
was  remote  was  their  names :  they  were  mother  and  son,  animated  by 
a  familiar  human  feeling.  They  were  not  abstract  personalities  moved 
hither  and  thither  by  a  blind  fate,  but  people  groping  their  way  to  the 
light  amid  ordinary  obstacles.  Custom  forbade  that  Euripides  should 
raise  his  fellow-citizens  to  the  position  that  was  held  by  gods  and 
mythical  heroes ;  but  these  heroes  and  divine  beings  he  was  at  liberty 
to  represent  like  his  fellow-citizens,  just  as  Voltaire  in  the  last  century 
veiled  his  modern  teaching  beneath  the  conventional  stage-dresses  and 
scenery.  The  great  public,  even  of  Athens,  atoned  for  its  real  change 
of  view  by  clinging  warmly  to  the  form,  just  as  now  a  man  who  wore 
his  hat  inside  of  a  church  would  be  more  obnoxious  than  a  decorous 
atheist. 

In  Creusa's  recognition  of  Ion's  baby-clothes  we  see  the  modern 
drama  making  its  appearance  on  the  Greek  stage.  There  is  no  antique 
simplicity  here,  but  the  new-born  complexity  of  emotion  in  which 
hopes  and  fears  are  shifting  with  every  line  that  is  uttered.  Indeed, 
one  may  almost  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  way  in  which  Xuthus 
recognizes  Ion  for  his  son  represents  the  old-fashioned  machinery  of 
the  stage,  and  that  Creusa's  slower  recognition  represents  the  greater 
interest  of  the  new  methods. 

It  is  to  be  noticed,  however,  that  this  novelty  must  be  limited  to  the 
devices  of  the  drama  alone,  and  that  in  Penelope's  slow  recognition  of 
Odysseus  we  have  an  authoritative  precedent  for  this  slow  solution, 
and  throughout  the  Greek  tragedies  we  are  struck  by  the  frequent 
corroboration  of  what  Plato  says  in  the  Republic  (x.  595).  "  Of  all 
those  beautiful  tragic  poets  he  seems  to  have  been  the  original  master 
and  guide."  Indeed,  if  the  digression  may  be  allowed,  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey  held  the  place  of  sacred  books  among  the  Greeks ;  they 
formed  the  Bible  that  underlay  the  whole  work  of  their  civilization,  just 


42  2  EURIPIDES. 

as  they  continue  to  hold  in  our  day  a  place  quite  equal  to  that  of  some 
of  the  remoter  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  And  as  they  were  in 
old  times  what  for  that  matter  they  are  now  in  part,  the  groundwork 
of  education,  we  continually  notice  to  how  great  an  extent  the  subse- 
quent literary  fabric  of  Greece  was  built  up  on  them  as  a  foundation. 
From  no  other  source  did  they  draw  such  light  and  guidance.  In  this 
case  there  stood  in  every  one's  memory  the  ideal  recognition  in  the 
Odyssey  just  mentioned  ;  and  throughout  the  poetry,  in  imitation  as 
well  as  in  the  unceasing  references,  we  find  continual  proof  of  the 
authority  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey. 

Even  more  interesting  in  the  Ion  is  the  condemnation  of  the  rude 
tales  of  the  old  mythology.  Ion  speaks  frankly:  "Apollo,"  he  says, 
"deserves  remonstrance.  What  is  he  doing?  He  betrays  virgins  by 
violence  and  neglects  the  perishing  children  whom  he  has  privily 
begotten.  Do  not  thou  act  so,  but  when  thou  hast  power  follow 
virtue.  For  whatsoever  mortal  is  base,  him  do  the  gods  punish.  How 
then  is  it  right  that  you,  who  establish  laws  for  mortals,  shall  yourselves 
be  guilty  of  lawlessness?  .  .  Ye  do  wrong,  pursuing  pleasure  rather 
than  prudence.  It  is  unjust  to  call  men  vile  who  imitate  the  evil  deeds 
of  the  gods  instead  of  those  who  give  such  teaching."  To  be  sure,  the 
play  ends  with  a  recognition  of  the  power  and  wisdom  of  the  gods,  but 
these  words  had  been  uttered,  and  their  justice  is  not  contradicted  by 
the  facts.  Elsewhere  in  the  play  Euripides  speaks  of  slaves :  "  For 
one  thing,"  he  says,  "  brings  shame  to  slaves,  the  name.  In  all  other 
respects,  no  slave  that  is  honorable  is  worse  than  a  free  man."  Words 
like  these  are  sure  to  be  remembered,  and  they  attest  for  us  the  new 
spirit  that  was  making  itself  felt  in  the  drama.  It  is  not  in  this  play 
alone  that  these  sentiments  are  to  be  found ;  here,  however,  they 
combine  with  the  general  construction  to  strengthen  the  impression 
of  modernness. 

The  exact  date  of  the  production  of  Ion  is  not  known,  but  it  is  con- 
jectured to  have  been  about  419  B.  C.  It,  at  least,  bears  no  traces  of 
having  been  composed  in  a  period  of  public  distress. 

IV. 

The  two  plays  of  which  Iphigeneia  is  the  heroine  are  very  note- 
worthy. The  Iphigeneia  in  Aulis  was  brought  out  with  the  Bacchae 
after  the  poet's  death,  and  was  one  of  his  latest  compositions.  It 
bears  distinct  marks  of  his  most  striking  qualities.  The  mythical 
story  is  made  interesting  by  its  compact  presentation  of  personal 
qualities;  the  Greek  heroes  and  the  fate  of  Troy  are  but  the  setting 
for  the  drawing  of  a  lovely  character. 


THE  IPHIGENEIAN  FLA  YS —  THEIR  STORY.  423 

Agamemnon  has  vowed  to  sacrifice  his  daughter  Iphigeneia  to 
placate  Artemis  who  prevents  the  fleet  from  sailing  to  Troy.  In  order 
to  bring  her  to  Aulis  he  writes  to  Clytemnestra  that  he  has  promised 
to  marry  their  daughter  to  Achilles,  and  the  two  women  join  him  in 
total  unconsciousness  of  what  is  really  designed.  When  they  discover 
Agamemnon's  intention,  Clytemnestra  is  overcome  with  wrathful  sor- 
row, and  Iphigeneia  at  first  pleads  for  her  life  ;  when,  however,  she  sees 
how  inevitable  is  the  sacrifice,  she  resigns  herself  to  her  fate  with  the 
most  touching  readiness.  At  the  last  moment,  however,  Artemis, 
relenting,  substitutes  a  hind  for  the  human  victim,  and  announces 
through  Calchas,  the  seer,  that  she  is  satisfied,  and  that  the  fleet  may 
sail.  Euripides  outdoes  even  himself  in  the  pathos  which  he  has 
woven  into  this  play. 

"  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to  die,"  says  Iphigeneia,  "  and  I  would 
fain  act  gloriously,  discarding  all  ignoble  thoughts.  .  .  The  sailing 
of  the  ships  and  the  destruction  of  Troy  depend  upon  me,  as  well  as 
the  future  fate  of  women,  that  the  barbarians  do  not  steal  them  away 
from  Greece.  All  these  things  I  shall  set  right  by  my  death,  and  my 
fame,  as  the  freer  of  Greece,  shall  be  blessed.  Moreover,  it  is  not 
right  that  I  should  be  too  fond  of  life,  for  thou  hast  brought  me  forth 
for  the  common  good  of  Greece,  not  for  thyself  alone.  .  .  If 
Artemis  wishes  my  body,  shall  I,  a  mere  mortal,  withstand  the  god- 
dess? That  can  not  be.  I  give  my  body  for  Greece.  Sacrifice  it  and 
capture  Troy.  This  shall  long  be  my  memorial,  my  children,  my  wed- 
ding, my  glory." 

The  whole  play  abounds  with  touching  scenes. 

In  the  Iphigeneia  among  the  Taurians,  which  was  written  earlier,  the 
time  is  laid  twenty  years  later,  when  Orestes,  who  in  the  other  play 
was  an  infant  that  had  fallen  asleep  when  his  mother  carried  him  to 
Agamemnon's  camp,  has  grown  up,  and  has  come  to  the  Tauri  to  bear 
away' the  image  of  Artemis  and  thus  secure  a  respite  from  the  Furies 
who  pursue  him  since  he  killed  his  mother.  He  is  accompanied  by 
Pylades,  and  the  play  gives  a  fascinating  picture  of  their  deep-seated 
friendship.  Iphigeneia  is  among  the  Tauri,  where  she  has  been  since 
Artemis  carried  her  away  from  Aulis,  and  she  has  just  had  a  dream 
which,  she  believes,  announces  the  death  of  Orestes,  when  word  is 
brought  to  her  that  two  strangers  have  landed  on  the  coast.  They  have 
thereby  exposed  themselves  to  a  great  peril,  for  it  is  the  custom  of  the 
place  to  sacrifice  to  the  goddess  all  the  Greeks  who  reach  that  inhospi- 
table shore.  She  sees  them,  and,  of  course,  not  knowing  who  they  are, 
determines  that  one  shall  be  spared  to  take  a  letter  to  her  brother.  Then 
follows  a  beautiful  contest  between  the  two  friends  as  to  which  shall 
give  up  his  life  to  save  the  other.     But  this  letter  makes  them  known. 


424 


EURIPIDES. 


and  at  once  the  state  of  affairs  is  altered.  The  sole  question  is  how  they 
shall  all  escape  with  the  image  of  Artemis  from  the  land  of  Thoas,  the 
king  of  the  country.  This  scene,  which  bears  a  likeness  to  the  similar 
adventure  in  the  Helen,  is  interesting,  especially  when  Thoas  captures 
them,  but  Athene  appears  and  bids  him  to  let  them  go,  and  with  this 
divine  interference  the  play  ends.  This  play,  it  will  be  remembered, 
has  been  imitated  in  later  times,  and  notably  by  Goethe,  but  no  one 
has  outdone  the  early  poet  in  his  vivid  rendering  of  the  power  of 
friendship.  It  was  already  a  stride  forward  to  have  seen  that  unsel- 
fishness was  an  admirable  thing ;  after  all,  a  decaying  civilization,  like 


IPHIGENEIA   GIVING   THE    LETTER   TO    PYLADES. 
(^Front   Apulian  Amphora^ 


waning  health,  opens  men's  eyes  to  unsuspected  virtues.  Nor  is  this 
all  that  Euripides  has  done  in  this  play  ;  he  has  told  the  incidents 
with  a  care  and  grace  he  has  seldom  equalled.  The  captive  Greek 
maidens  utter  the  tenderest  longing  for  their  distant  home,  and  the 
modern  reader  feels  in  perfect  sympathy  with  the  play  until  the 
attempt  is  made  to  deceive  Thoas ;  then  a  discord  arises.  As  one 
might  say,  we  can  sympathize  with  the  Achilles  of  the  Iliad,  but  we 
can  not  approve  of  Odysseus,  the  father  of  Greek  deceit,  and  here, 
while  friendship  and  fraternal  affection  are  put  in  an  honorable  light, 
the  way  in  which  Thoas  is  circumvented  is  painful  and  repellant.    Even 


COMPLICA  TIONS  CA  USED  B  V  THE  INTERFERENCE  OF  THE  GODS.   425 

the  ready  appeal  to  divine  sanction  does  not  convince  us,  though  it 
may  explain  the  discord.  The  savagery  of  the  Greek  mythology  ate 
into  the  heart  of  morality,  and  although  the  gods  approved  deceit,  they 
were  unable  to  make  it  honorable,  and  only  brought  confusion  upon 
themselves.  The  Greeks  paid  dearly  for  their  subtle  intellect  by 
letting  it  weave  an  ingenious  web  over  simplicity  and  straightfor- 
wardness. 

Even  more  striking,  however,  is  the  construction  of  the  end  of  the 
play,  where  the  goddess  Athene  appears  and  complicates  what  was 
drawing  to  a  natural  end  by  special  interposition.  This  method  of 
concluding  his  plays  by  means  of  a  deus  ex  machina  is  one  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  later  drama  as  handled  by  Euripides,  and,  like  almost 
everything  that  is  peculiar  to  him,  it  has  been  attacked  as  an  enfeeble- 
ment  of  the  tragedy  by  those  who  disliked  him,  and  has  been  stoutly 
defended,  sometimes  indeed  held  up  for  special  commendation,  by 
those  who  admired  him.  The  safest  course  may  be  simply  to  men- 
tion it  as  a  change  from  the  old  custom,  and  one  that  he  employs  very 
frequently.  Thus  in  the  Orestes,  Hippolytus,  Andromache,  Sup- 
pliants, Iphigeneia  among  the  Taurians,  Ion,  Helen,  and  Electra,  we 
find  divinities  appearing  who,  in  all  except  the  Andromache  and  Elec- 
tra, have  a  more  or  less  important  influence  upon  the  action  of  the 
play.  Only  a  few  are  without  them  ;  among  these  are  the  Heraclidae, 
Iphigeneia  in  Aulis,  the  Phoenician  Women,  and  the  Medea,  and  in 
this  last  Medea  is  removed  by  a  machine,  as  Aristotle  in  his  "  Poetics  " 
notes  and  condemns,  saying  that  the  conclusion  of  a  tragedy  should  be 
the  result  of  the  action,  and  not  be  introduced  by  an  artifice  as  here. 
In  the  Iphigeneia  in  Tauris,  or  among  the  Taurians,  all  goes  smoothly 
to  its  end,  but  the  leading  persons,  when  escaping,  are  driven  back  by 
a  storm,  only  to  be  released  by  Athene,  who  once  again  sets  them 
free. 

The  reason  of  this  modification  of  the  drama  is  not  plain.  Unfor- 
tunately many  of  the  opinions  of  modern  men  with  regard  to  Euri- 
pides are  taken  without  question  from  his  deadly  foe  Aristophanes,  who 
lost  no  opportunity  to  deride  his  detested  contemporary,  and  always 
ascribed  the  worst  motives  to  all  that  he  did.  In  this  case,  however, 
it  may  have  been  the  desire  to  bring  the  play  into  coherence  with  the 
old  myth,  and  one  especially  flattering  to  the  Athenians,  that  inspired 
the  clumsy  device.  It  is  hard  to  suppose  that  the  general  modification 
of  the  drama  was  introduced  without  what  at  least  seemed  some  im- 
portant intention,  and  it  may  be  hasty  to  condemn  it,  because  its  real 
meaning  is  obscure.  Calderon,  in  modern  times,  made  frequent  use  of 
similar  methods,  so  far  without  condemnation ;  and  it  may  be  that 
Euripides,  by  assigning  this  important  influence  to  the  gods,  expressed 


426  EURIPIDES. 

the  general  or  common  sentiment  of  his  audience  that  their  inter- 
ference in  human  affairs  was  possible,  or  that  in  the  past  it  had  been 
possible.  What  to  ^schylus  had  been  implied  by  the  course  of  affairs 
now,  in  darker  days,  seemed  like  a  miracle,  not  a  natural  event.  Fate 
seemed  to  deny,  what  had  once  been  plain,  that  the  divine  control  pro- 
duced good  fortune  insensibly.  At  this  time  it  was  necessary  to  show 
that  the  appearance  of  the  gods  was  fitful  and  intermittent.  Their 
introduction  was  homage  to  their  power,  and  only  in  this  way  could 
their  authority  be  conceived.  All  these  suggestions  are  of  course  but 
the  most  meager  hypotheses  ;  the  fact  remains  that  the  deiis  exmacJiina 
is  a  very  mysterious  divinity,  and  that  the  number  of  his  worshippers 
is  very  small.  Crude  as  may  be  the  plan  of  Euripides,  it  is  evident 
that  it  betokens  a  different  view  of  the  old  question  of  responsibility 
for  sin.  In  -^schylus,  and  even  in  the  earlier  plays  of  Sophocles,  there 
are  abundant  signs  of  the  survival  of  the  notion  that  guilt  is  an  inher- 
ited thing,  that  may  be  atoned  for  vicariously,  while  the  later  growth 
of  individuality  produced  in  the  plays  of  Euripides  a  sense  of  personal 
responsibility  which  demanded  the  separate  appearance  of  the  gods,  if 
their  control  of  events  was  to  receive  any  sort  of  recognition.  The 
apparent  clumsiness  of  his  device  is  but  the  inevitable  result  of  its 
novelty  ;  what  is  done  for  the  first  time  is  sure  to  be  ill  done.  The 
masterly  skill  of  his  predecessors  only  makes  it  clear  that  they  em- 
ployed generally  accepted  methods  of  accounting  for  the  tragic 
discord. 

V. 

In  the  Bacchae,  or  the  Priestesses  of  Dionysus,  we  have  the  only 
Greek  tragedy  concerned  with  the  story  of  the  god  from  the  worship 
of  whom  tragedy  had  risen.  Thespis,  Phrynichus,  and  .^schylus  had 
already  treated  similar  subjects,  but  their  treatment  of  these  myths  is 
wholly  lost.  This  play,  which  was  brought  out  after  the  death  of 
Euripides,  by  his  nephew,  alone  survives  to  bring  vividly  before  us  a 
side  of  the  religious  life  of  the  Greeks  which  only  careful  study  can 
make  at  all  intelligible. 

Dionysus  opens  the  play  with  the  announcement  that  he  is  come  to 
the  land  of  Thebes  from  the  distant  East,  introducing  his  worship  into 
Hellas,  and  he  deprecates  the  opposition  of  Pentheus,  the  king  of  the 
land,  while  he  is  glad  of  the  number  of  his  worshippers  who  already 
have  joined  his  maddening  revels.  The  chorus  sing  a  wild  lyrical  song 
in  praise  of  the  god,  and  Cadmus,  the  former  king,  and  Teiresias,  the 
blind  seer,  both  old  men,  appear  with  the  announcement  that  they,  too, 
are  bent  on  honoring  the  same  deity.     They  are  joined  by  Pentheus 


DIONYSUS     AND     PERSONIFIED     WINE. 


428  EURIPIDES. 

who  has  been  absent  and  has  returned  to  find  his  peaceful  kingdom  in 
a  strange  commotion  ;  the  women  have  left  the  palace  and  are  wander- 
ing about  the  mountains,  dancing  in  honor  of  this  new  deity,  being 
lured  away  by  the  charmer  from  the  Lydian  land,  whom  he  threatens 
severely:  "  If  I  catch  him  under  this  roof  I  will  stop  his  making  a  noise 
with  the  thyrsus,  and  I  will  put  an  end  to  his  waving  his  hair  by  cut- 
ting off  his  neck  from  his  body."  His  surprise,  which  is  certainly  very 
natural,  is  only  augmented  by  seeing  the  venerable  Teiresias  arrayed 
in  dappled  deer-skins,  and  his  own  grandfather,  Cadmus,  raging  about 
with  a  thyrsus — the  ivy  and  vine-wreathed  wand  carried  by  the 
adherents  of  Dionysus  —  he  appeals  to  them  to  come  to  their  senses. 
The  two  elders  reason  with  the  king  and  urge  him  to  join  the  reveling 
crew  and  to  withdraw  his  opposition  to  the  new  divinity,  but  Pentheus 
refuses.  He  renews  his  threats  against  the  god  and  gives  orders  to 
have  him  brought  bound  before  him  if  he  is  caught.  Remonstrance 
only  hardens  him,  nor  is  he  moved  by  the  appeal  that  the  chorus  make 
to  the  goddess  of  sanctity  and  their  condemnation  of  those  men  who 
are  full  of  self-conceit  and  think  themselves  wiser  than  any  one  else. 

At  this  point,  when  the  zeal  of  the  adherents  of  Dionysus,  and  the 
indignation  of  his  enemy  have  been  clearly  indicated,  the  god  is  brought 
in,  bound,  before  Pentheus.  The  men  who  bring  him  describe  their 
capture  as  only  a  god  could  be  described :  "  He  was  docile  in  our  hands, 
nor  did  he  withdraw  his  foot  in  flight,  but  yielded  willingly.  Nor  did 
he  turn  pale  or  change  his  wine-colored  cheek,  but  laughed  and  per- 
mitted us  to  bind  him  and  carry  him  away."  They  go  on  to  say  that 
the  Bacchae  who  were  shut  up  had  escaped  and  were  free,  dancing  in 
the  meadows,  invoking  Bromius  as  their  god  :  "  Of  their  own  accord 
the  fetters  fell  from  their  feet,  and  the  keys  unlocked  the  doors  with- 
out mortal  hand,  and  full  of  wonders  is  this  man."  Yet  all  these  signs 
have  no  weight  with  Pentheus,  though  he  himself  acknowledges  the 
more  than  human  beauty  of  the  god.  He  at  once  proceeds  to 
examine  the  stranger,  unconscious  that  he  has  the  god  himself  before 
him.  Dionysus  does  not  declare  himself,  but  speaks  only  of  his  orgies, 
which  he  says  that  he  derived  from  the  god  of  wine.  Pentheus  orders 
him  to  confinement  near  the  stable;  "then,"  he  says,  "you  may 
dance.  And  as  for  the  women,  your  companions,  I  Avill  either  sell 
them  or  keep  them  at  work  as  slaves."  Dionysus  goes  off  to  his  place 
of  punishment  of  his  own  will,  threatening  Pentheus,  however,  with 
punishment  for  his  wanton  insolence. 

This  scene  is  followed  by  a  song  from  the  chorus,  who  foretell  the 
future  success  of  the  Dionysiac  rites,  and  they  invoke  the  god,  wher- 
ever he  may  be,  to  free  their  companion  and  themselves  from  persecu- 
tion.    Their  prayer  is  heard  ;  the  voice  of  the  god  sounds  from  his 


THE  BACCHM— TRIUMPH  OF  DIONYSUS.  42g 

prison  :  "  lo,  hear  ye,  hear  my  song,  lo  Bacchae  !  lo  Bacchae  !  "  An 
earthquake  shakes  the  palace  and  announces  the  present  god  ;  the 
flame  blazes  up  about  the  tomb  of  Semele,  and  the  chorus  sink  to  the 
ground  in  terror.  Dionysus  then  enters  and  describes  his  escape  from 
prison.  Pentheus  had  mistaken  a  bull  for  his  victim,  and  had  bound 
him  instead  of  his  prisoner,  and  was  trying  to  tie  him  when  the  earth- 
quake and  flame  made  him  think  that  the  palace  was  on  fire.  He 
called  to  the  servants  for  water,  and  then  drawing  a  sword  he  had 
chased  a  phantom  under  the  impression  that  he  was  killing  his  prisoner, 
who  had  meanwhile  left  the  king  to  his  furies  and  had  stepped  out  un- 
hurt. Then  Pentheus  finds  him  with  some  surprise,  and  Dionysus,  still 
known  only  as  the  stranger,  explains  that  the  god  had  helped  him. 
Then  a  messenger  comes  in  with  a  long  account  of  the  marvelous 
doings  of  the  revelling  Theban  women ;  wine,  water,  and  milk  flowed 
from  the  ground  when  they  struck  it.  Being  interrupted  in  their 
sacred  rites  by  herdsmen,  they  had  determined  to  capture  the  king's 


PENTHEUS   TORN   TO   PIECES. 


mother  in  order  to  win  the  king's  favor,  and  they  had  without  difificulty 
driven  away  the  intruders,  destroyed  their  herds,  ruined  everything. 
Armed  men  had  been  defeated  by  them.  There  was  no  limit  to  the 
wonders  they  had  done.  In  conclusion,  he  urges  the  king  not  to 
oppose  this  mighty  deity.  But  Pentheus  is  not  moved  ;  he  determines 
to  quell  the  scandal,  although  the  stranger  assures  him  of  the  hopeless- 
ness of  his  attempt.  The  king  declines  his  offer  to  bring  the  women 
to  the  palace,  but  accepts  the  proposition  that  he  shall  go  to  see  them 
for  himself,  disguised  as  a  woman.  When  he  is  gone  in  to  dress  himself 
in  women's  garments,  the  stranger  assures  the  chorus  that  the  king  is 
now  in  their  toils,  and  he  prays  that  his  wits  may  leave  him  as  he 
comes  in  the  power  of  Dionysus.  After  a  song  from  the  chorus,  the 
king  comes  out,  the  victim  of  delusion,  imagines  that  he  sees  two  suns 
and  two  cities  of  Thebes,  and  that  his  escort  is  a  horned  bull.  The 
chorus  pray  that  he  may  receive  his  deserts,  and  presently  a  messenger 
appears  to  narrate  the  fate  that  has  befallen  Pentheus  :  He  had  climbed 


43°  EURIPIDES. 

a  fir-tree  to  observe  the  revels,  when  the  stranger  vanished,  and  a 
voice  called  forth  from  heaven,  bidding  the  women  to  punish 
the  intruder.  Agave  mistook  her  son  Pentheus  for  a  beast  of 
chase,  and  with  the  help  of  the  others  she  uprooted  the  tree,  and 
with  her  sisters  tore  him  to  pieces.  Agave  returns  to  the  city, 
bearing  the  head  of  her  son,  which  she  thinks  is  that  of  a 
lion,  but  Cadmus  soon  undeceives  her,  and  Dionysus  appears 
to  warn  that  old  monarch  of  the  fate  that  awaits  him,  for 
Dionysus  is  angry  at  the  treatment  he  had  received  at  the  hands 
of  the  Thebans. 

In  this  description  of  the  play  it  may  yet  be  possible  to  see,  through 
"a  gray  veil" — as  Shelley,  with  more  justice,  called  a  translation — 
what  it  was  that  the  poet  wrote,  and  even  this  disguise  may  not  wholly 
hide  the  literary  art  that  the  poet  brought  to  the  composition  of  this 
memorable  tragedy.  Even  if  the  wonder  at  the  might  of  Dionysus  is 
something  that  has  lost  religious  significance  to  us,  yet  its  expression, 
which' is  as  genuine  and  intense  as  that  of  those  feelings  which  we  can 
comprehend,  can  not  fail  to  impress  the  least  sympathetic  reader. 
Here  science  may  aid  us  by  showing  us  that  orgies  such  as  are  here 
described  still  survive  among  savage  races,  and  when  we  read  of  North 
American  Indians  who  carry  rattlesnakes  in  their  mouths,  we  are  not 
too  remote  from  the  crude  religious  nature-worship  that  underlay  the 
Greek  religion.  That  Euripides  appealed  to  a  genuine  feeling  is 
obvious,  but  our  lack  of  sympathy  may  well  explain  our  failure  to  com- 
prehend the  object  that  the  poet  had  in  view  in  writing  this  play. 
That  he  had  some  definite  intention  is'  an  obvious  and  unavoidable 
conclusion.  It  is  impossible  for  us  to  imagine  a  man's  making  a  single 
statement  without  a  purpose,  and  a  fortiori  no  one  can  write  a  play 
without  a  distinct  intention.  There  is  a  certain  opposition  to  this 
opinion  from  those  who  are  vexed  that  men  ask  solely  what  was  the 
moral  aim  of  the  author,  but  even  this  question  is  capable  of  a  wider 
meaning  than  it  sometimes  receives.  Euripides  could  even  less  have 
written  the  play  without  a  meaning  than  we  can  read  it  without  asking 
for  one.  Yet  just  what  meaning  it  had  for  him  we  perhaps  can  con- 
jecture as  little  as  he  could  have  conjectured  our  wonder  at  the  play, 
for  wholly  apart  from  the  sincere  admiration  of  the  author's  skill  is 
the  knowledge  of  the  religious  feeling  that  animated  Euripides. 
Many  other  things  as  unlike  our  current  way  of  regarding  things  we 
understand,  if  not  by  personal  sympathy,  yet  by  the  possession  of  an 
unbroken  tradition.  Thus  many  of  the  forms  of  medievalism  are  as 
remote  from  us  as  the  nature-worship  which  throbs  through  these  won- 
derful lines,  but  we  comprehend  them  as  a  part  of  our  intellectual  in- 
heritance from  our  ancestors ;  yet  this  play  reminds  us  of  the  abyss 


RELIGIOUS  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  BACCHyE.  43 1 

that  separates  the  Greeks  from  ourselves,  that  only  patient  study  of 
uncultivated  races  can  ever  hope  to  bridge. 

Meanwhile  hypotheses  abound  :  some  suggest  that  Euripides  in  his 
old  age  felt  impelled  to  confess  that  the  path  of  the  skeptic,  in  which 
he  had  long  strayed,  was  a  hopeless  one,  and  that  here  he  renewed  his 
allegiance  to  the  orthodox  faith.  To  be  sure,  it  is  a  singular  ortho- 
doxy ;  but  it  was  all  that  he  had.  Others  have  thought  that  perhaps 
he  was  willing  to  suggest  to  the  young  Macedonian  agnostics  that 
their  unripe  opposition  to  religion  was  not  what  he  could  favor, 
and  that  while  he  reserved  his  own  right  of  judgment,  he  condemned 
their  undue  haste.  It  may  be,  however,  that  in  an  uncongenial  place 
he  was  willing  to  conceal  his  own  opinions  and  to  celebrate  a  popular 
worship,  for  the  Macedonians  did  not  scorn  Dionysus.  Nothing  would 
have  more  endeared  him  to  his  new  admirers  than  such  conduct.  But 
by  far  the  most  probable  explanation  is  that  he  set  here  in  dramatic 
form  the  religious  reaction  against  modern  learning  that  developed 
itself  even  earlier  than  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  war,  and  that  its 
fanaticism  is  to  be  discerned  in  the  lurid  lines  of  this  play.  Euripides 
felt  the  change,  for  no  man  endures  such  feeling  alone  ;  the  wrath  of 
any  one  man  iinds  its  counterpart  among  other  men  ;  no  one  ever 
curses  oppression  that  others  are  not  muttering  their  anger,  and  the 
religious  excitement  in  these  dark  days  must  have  been  shared  by 
most  of  those  who  saw  ruin  falling  upon  Athens.  Superstition  was 
begotten  of  terror  and  despair,  as  often  happens  in  history,  and  this 
was  perhaps  the  inspiration  of  the  Bacchae.  Moreover,  the  dramatic 
capabilities  of  the  subject  could  not  fail  to  tempt  Euripides.  Whatever 
his  purpose,  he  wrote  a  play  that  abounds  with  fire  and  enthusiasm 
such  as  carry  force  even  when  the  religious  belief  that  they  expressed 
is  wholly  incongruous  and  remote.  The  ancients  who  clearly  compre- 
hended the  worship  of  Dionysus  greatly  admired  this  play,  which  left 
its  mark  on  much  Latin  poetry,  and  was  a  favorite  wherever  Greek 
literature  was  known.  We  read,  for  example,  in  Plutarch's  life  of 
Crassus,  that  the  Parthians  who  defeated  and  slew  that  general  were 
greatly  delighted  when  some  one  repeated  the  tragic  ending  of  the 
Bacchae  when  the  head  of  Crassus  was  brought  before  them. 

No  one  who  reads  the  play  will  fail  to  notice  the  wonderful  way  in 
which  the  background  of  natural  scenery  is  coordinated  with  the  nat- 
ural forces  that  make  up  the  interest  of  this  complex  tragedy. 
Throughout  the  plays  of  Euripides  we  observe  his  keen  eye  for 
nature,  his  susceptibility  to  the  diverse  beauty  of  land  and  sky,  and 
often  a  very  modern  touch  that  makes  it  clear  how  very  much  men's 
ways  of  looking  at  things  are  the  natural  result  of  the  measure  of  civ- 
ilization  in  which   they  live.     Of  course  the    resemblance  remains  a 


432  EURIPIDES. 

slight  one :  medievalism  and  the  spirit  of  northern  nations  have 
left  on  the  minds  of  modern  men  an  indelible  mark  of  which  the 
earlier  Greeks  were  innocent.  Homer  sees  nature,  as  he  sees  men, 
with  direct  vision,  and  it  is  mainly  in  comparisons  that  he  draws  his 
vivid  pictures,  as  here  (II.  xii.  278) :  "  But  as  flakes  of  snow  fall  thick 
on  a  winter  day,  when  Zeus  the  Counsellor  hath  begun  to  snow,  shoot- 
ing forth  these  arrows  of  his  to  men,  and  he  hath  lulled  the  winds,  and 
he  snoweth  continually,  till  he  hath  covered  the  crests  of  the  high  hills 
and  the  uttermost  headlands,  and  the  grassy  plains,  and  rich  tillage 
of  men  ;  and  the  snow  is  scattered  over  the  burns  and  shores  of  the 
gray  sea,  and  only  the  wave  as  it  rolleth  in  keeps  off  the  snow,  but  all 
other  things  are  swathed  over,  when  the  shower  of  Zeus  comes  heavily, 
so  from  both  their  sides  their  stones  flew  thick,"  etc. 

Sophocles  already  detects  the  sympathy  which  at  times  nature 
appears  to  have  for  men,  as  when  Electra  wails  before  the  palace- 
gates  over  the  woes  of  her  household  : 

"  O  holy  light  of  morn  ! 
O  air  that  does  the  whole  earth  compass  round  ! 
Oft  have  ye  heard  my  cries  of  grief  forlorn, 

And  oft  the  echoing  sound 

Of  blows  the  breast  that  smite. 

When  darkness  yields  to  light. 

And  lo,  I  will  not  fail 
To  weep  and  mourn  with  wailings  and  with  sighs, 
While  yet  I  see  the  bright  stars  in  the  skies, 

Or  watch  the  daylight  glad  — 

No,  no,  I  will  not  fail. 

Like  sorrowing  nightingale. 
Before  the  gate  to  pour  my  sorrows  free. 
My  woe  and  sorrow  at  my  father's  door." 

Yet  when  she  sings  these  words  the  Attendant  has  just  said  : 

"  For  lo  !  the  sun's  bright  rays 
Wake  up  the  birds  to  tune  their  matin-songs. 
And  star-deckt  night's  dark  shadows  flee  away." 

And  the  student  will  recall  the  beautiful  choral  ode  in  the  CEdipus 
at  Colonus,  already  quoted,  where  the  beauty  of  the  scene  stands  in 
marked  contrast  with  the  melancholy  of  the  play.  Very  memorable, 
too,  is  the  conclusion  of  Philoctetes  when  that  hero  bids  farewell  to 
Lemnos: 

Philoctetes. 
Come,  then,  and  let  us  bid  farewell 
To  this  lone  island  where  I  dwell  : 
Farewell,  O  home  that  still  did'st  keep 
Due  vigil  o'er  me  in  my  sleep  ; 

Ye  nymphs  by  stream  or  wood  that  roam  ;  ,  ■ 

Thou  mighty  voice  of  ocean's  foam, 


DAWNING   OF    THE  MODERN  SPIRIT— NATURAL  BEAUTY.      433 

Where  oftentimes  my  head  was  wet 

With  drivings  of  the  South  wind's  fret; 

And  oft  the  mount  that  Hermes  owns 

Sent  forth  its  answer  to  my  groans, 

The  wailing  loud  as  echo  given 

To  me  by  tempest-storms  sore  driven ; 

And  ye,  O  fountains  clear  and  cool. 

Thou  Lykian  well,  the  wolves'  own  pool  — 

We  leave  you,  yea,  we  leave  at  last. 

Though  small  our  hope  in  long  years  past : 

Farewell,  O  plain  of  Lemnos'  isle, 

Around  whose  coasts  the  bright  waves  smile, 

Send  me  with  prosperous  voyage  and  fair 

Where  the  great  Destinies  may  bear, 

Counsel  of  friends,  and  God  supreme  in  Heaven, 

Who  all  this  lot  of  ours  hath  well  and  wisely  given. 

The  modernness  of  Euripides  continually  appears  in  his  view  of  the 
relation  that  bridges  the  gulf  between  nature  and  man  ;  thus,  in  the 
Suppliants,  he  speaks  of  "  the  insatiable  joy  of  grief,  that  is  like  the 
drop  forever  oozing  from  the  steep  rock."  In  the  same  play  the  cho- 
rus says  :  "  Like  a  wandering  cloud,  I  float  before  the  stormy  winds." 
There  is  frequent  mention  of  the  yearning  that  is  called  up  by  watch- 
ing the  flight  of  birds,  but  the  expression  varies  from  the  formality  of 
the  lyric  odes  to  the  simplicity  of  lines  and  half-lines  that  merely  color 
the  passage  in  which  they  stand,  while  the  more  artificial  measures  rest 
upon  the  long-cultivated  melic  verse.  The  brief  utterances  indicate, 
perhaps,  a  deeper  and  more  widely-spread  perception  of  natural  beauty 
than  do  the  others,  which  may  owe  part  of  their  quality  to  a  long  for- 
gotten religious  significance  that  had  sunk  to  the  state  of  rhetorical 
decoration.  In  Euripides,  too,  we  see  the  beginning  of  a  love  of  lone- 
liness, of  escape  from  the  confusion  of  the  world  ;  in  a  word,  he  parts 
from  the  simplicity  and  calmness  of  classical  antiquity,  and  begins  to 
share  the  complexity  of  modern  life. 

The  Cyclops  possesses  unusual  interest  as  the  sole  specimen  that  has 
reached  us  of  the  satyric  pieces  that  followed  the  tragic  trilogies,  and 
were  it  not  for  this  solitary  survival  it  would  have  been  impossible,  it 
can  not  be  said  to  form  conjectures,  but  to  form  a  satisfactory  notion 
of  this  form  of  dramatic  composition.  As  it  is,  no  well-organized  mind 
can  avoid  regretting  that  we  have  not  also  one  of  the  satyric  plays  of 
.^schylus,  but  they  were  naturally  regarded  as  of  far  less  importance 
than  the  tragedies  which  they  accompanied,  and  were  allowed  to  dis- 
appear without  an  effort  to  save  them,  for  the  last  thing  which  anti- 
quity could  have  comprehended  would  have  been  the  modern  scientific 
curiosity  which  rejects  nothing.  Even  now  there  are  plenty  of  people 
who  fail  to  understand  why  students  should  find  an  interest  in  any- 
thing but  acknowledged  masterpieces. 


434 


EURIPIDES. 


From  this  play,  and  from  what  we  know  of  the  others  of  the  same 
sort,  it  is  clear  that  the  satyric  pieces  were  distinguished  from  the 
comedies  by  the  fact  that  they  had  nothing  to  do  with  current  life,  but 
drew  their  subjects  from  the  same  stores  of  myths  and  legends  that 
were  used  for  the  tragedies.  This  quality  made  them  act  more  readily 
as  a  relief  to  the  tragic  gloom  of  the  other  members  of  the  tetralogy. 
After  three  plays  of  a  serious  kind,  a  short  one  in  which  the  tense 
pathetic  interest  could  find  relief  was  necessary,  and  a  hero  who  could 
be  laughed  at  or  with,  after  a  succession  of  those  who  appealed  to  com- 
miseration, was  required  to  restore  the  mental  equilibrium  of  the  spec- 
tators. Apparently  the  historic  origin  of  the  satyric  plays  is  to  be 
found,  as  the  name  implies,  in  the  old  chorus  of  satyrs  that  took  part 
in  the   Dionysiac  festivities,  and   from  their  antics  arose  the  merri- 


CHORUS   IN    SATYRIC    PIECE. 


ment  that  formed  the  most  prominent  quality  in  these  plays.  In  the 
earliest  times  they  presented  the  ridiculous  side  of  the  old  legends, 
and  this  they  preserved  later. 

In  this  play,  it  is  the  adventure  of  Odysseus  with  the  Cyclops  that 
forms  the  subject.  The  story  is  narrated,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  the 
ninth  book  of  the  Odyssey,  and  here  it  is  repeated  with  only  slight  vari- 
ations. The  characters,  too,  appear  as  they  would  in  a  tragedy  on  the 
same  subject,  but  they  are  treated  with  what  is  almost  the  spirit  of 
parody,  as  the  extracts  will  show.  Thus,  the  play  opens  with  a 
speech  of  Silenus  for  a  prologue,  like  those  of  the  tragedies  of  Eurip- 
ides, wherein  he  explains  that  Dionvsus,    having  been    captured    by 


THE    CYCLOPS— ODYSSEUS  AND   SILENUS.  435 

Tyrrhenian  pirates,  the  satyrs  had  started  under  his  guidance  to 
recover  him,  but  that  they  had  been  wrecked  on  this  island,  where 
Polyphemus  kept  them  for  his  slaves.     The  young  ones 

"  tend  on  the  youngling  sheep, 
But  I  remain  to  fill  the  water  casks, 
Or  sweeping  the  hard  floor,  or  ministering 
Some  impious  and  abominable  meal 
To  the  fell  Cyclops.     I  am  wearied  of  it !  " 

as  it  is  put  in  Shelley's  translation. 

After  a  song  of  the  satyrs,  a  Greek  vessel  is  seen  approaching  the 
coast,  which  turns  out  to  be  that  containing  Odysseus. 

"  Oh  !  I  know  the  man. 
Wordy  and  shrewd,  the  son  of  Sisyphus," 

says  Silenus,  and  an  explanation  follows,  after  the  pattern  of  those 
in  the  tragedies  ;  Odysseus  explains  that  stress  of  weather  had  driven 
him  thither  on  his  homeward  way  from  Troy,  and  learns  what  this 
strange  land  is,  and  that  its  inhabitants  live,  not  on  corn,  but  on  milk 
and  cheese  and  on  the  flesh  of  sheep. 

"  Od.  Have  they  the  Bromian  drink  from  the  vine's  stream  } 
SiL.  Ah  !  no;  they  live  in  an  ungracious  land. 
Od.  And  are  they  just  to  strangers  }  —  hospitable  ? 
SiL.  They  think  the  sweetest  thing  a  stranger  brings 

Is  his  own  flesh. 
Od.  What !  do  they  eat  men's  flesh  } 

SiL.  No  one  comes  here  who  is  not  eaten  up." 

But  the  Cyclops  is  away,  and  Odysseus  is  anxious  to  get  meat 
before  his  return.  For  it  he  offers  wine,  which  Silenus  drinks  with 
pleasure  before  going  to  fetch  the  food.  Then  the  satyrs  appear  and 
ask  many  questions  about  the  siege  of  Troy,  which  is  treated  as  an 
amusing  joke.     Helen,  Silenus  says, 

"  left  that  good  man  Menelaus. 
There  should  be  no  more  women  in  the  world 
But  such  as  are  reserved  for  me  alone." 

But  their  chatter  is  interrupted  by  the  return  of  the  Cyclops,  and 

an  echo  of  the  tragedies  fills  the  words  of  Odysseus  when  he  is  bidden 

to  hide  himself: 

"  That  will  I  never  do  ! 
The  mighty  Troy  would  be  indeed  disgraced 
If  I  should  fly  one  man.     How  many  tirnes 
Have  I  withstood,  with  shield  immovable, 
Ten  thousand  Phrygians  !  —  if  I  needs  must  die. 
Yet  will  I  die  with  glory  ;  —  if  I  live, 
The  praise  which  I  have  gained  will  yet  remain." 


436 


EURIPIDES. 


Probably  it  was  the  contrast  between  these  expressions  of  determin- 
ation, common  enough  in  the  tragedies,  and  the  frivolity  of  the  gen- 
eral tone  of  the  satyric  plays,  that  gave  the  audience  especial  delight. 
The  Cyclops  enters,  hungry  for  his  dinner,  and  the  satyrs  wait  upon 
him  with  amusing  servility  ;  suddenly  he  descries  the  newly-landed 
Greeks  and  the  provisions  that  had  been  set  aside  for  them ;  and  he 
fancies  that  they  are  thieves.  He  sees  that  the  face  of  Silenus  is  red, 
and  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  he  has  been  beaten.  Silenus  does  not 
disabuse  him,  and  Cyclops  announces  his  determination  to  eat  them  : 

"  Nay,  haste,  and  place  in  order  quickly 
The  cooking  knives,  and  heap  upon  the  hearth, 
And  kindle  it,  a  great  faggot  of  wood  — 
As  soon  as  they  are  slaughtered,  they  shall  fill 
My  belly,  broiling  warm  from  the  live  coals. 
Or  boiled  and  seethed  within  the  bubbling  caldron. 
I  am  quite  sick  of  the  wild  mountain  game. 
Of  stags  and  lions  I  have  gorged  enough. 
And  I  grow  hungry  for  the  flesh  of  men." 

At   this  statement   Odysseus  interrupts  the  monster  and   Silenus 

who  is  encouraging  these  cannibalistic 
tastes.  The  wily  Greek  in  vain  as- 
sures Polyphemus  that  Silenus  gave 
him  the  things.  He  is  not  be- 
lieved, any  more  than  is  the  chorus 
who  in  vain  assert  the  truth.  Odys- 
seus further  goes  on  to  explain  that  he 
was  returning  from  Troy,  but  this  is 
only  an  additional  argument  to  him  in 
favor  of  exterminating  such  base  men, 
whom  he  bids  get  into  the  cave  to  be 
cooked.     Odysseus  breaks  out : 

"  Ai !  ai !  I  have  escaped  the  Trojan  toils, 
I  have  escaped  the  sea,  and  now  I  fall 
Under  the  cruel  grasp  of  one  impious  man. 
O  Pallas,  mistress,  Goddess,  sprung  from  Jove, 
Now,   now,  assist  me !     Mightier  toils  than 

Troy 
Are  these  ;  —  I  totter  on  the  chasms  of  peril." 

After  a  grim  song  of  the  chorus,  in 
which  the  monster's  cannibalism  is 
most  grimly  and  minutely  described, 
Odysseus  comes  forth  from  the  cave 
and  narrates  the  terrors  he  has  just 
seen  within,  where  he  had  beheld  his  comrades  devoured,  and  "  a 
divine  thought "  had  occurred  to  him :   to  fill  the  Cyclops  with  wine. 


ODYSSEUS  OFFERING  CYCLOPS  WINE. 


THE    CYCLOPS  DRUGGED    WITH    WINE.  437 

He  tells  the  satyrs  of  his  further  intentions  to  blind  the  ogre  with  a 
glowing  shaft,  a  plan  which  the  chorus  hear  with  rapture.  Then  Odys- 
seus goes  back  into  the  cave  in  order  to  share  the  danger  with  his 
companions.     Soon  Polyphemus  comes  forth, 

"  With  the  young  feast  oversated 
Like  a  merchant's  vessel  freighted 
To  the  water's  edge,  my  crop 
Is  laden  to  the  gullet's  top. 
The  fresh  meadow  grass  of  spring 
Tempts  me  forth  thus  wandering 
To  my  brothers  on  the  mountains, 
Who  shall  share  the  wine's  sweet  fountains, 
Bring  the  cask,  O  stranger,  bring  !  " 

As  he  sings  before  he  lies  down  on  the  grass  to  continue  his  revels, 
Odysseus  manages  him  with  characteristic  craft,  dissuading  him  from 
assembling  his  brothers,  and  plying  him  with  the  strong  wine.  When 
Cyclops  asks  Odysseus  his  name  the  answer  is : 

"  My  name  is  Nobody.     What  favor  now 
Shall  I  receive  to  praise  you  at  your  hands  ?  " 

Cyclops  promises  that  he  shall  be  the  last  to  be  eaten,  and  mean- 
while he  continues  his  debauch.  When  the  monster  has  fallen  asleep 
preparations  are  made  for  blinding  him.  Here  occurs  an  unexpected 
turn  :  the  satyrs,  who  have  been  forever  bragging  of  their  bravery,  sud- 
denly lose  heart  and  proffer  feeble  excuses  when  Odysseus  asks  them 
to  seize  the  great  stake  : 

"  We  are  too  far ; 
We  cannot  at  this  distance  from  the  door 
Thrust  fire  into  his  eye," 

sings  one  semi-chorus,  and  the  other : 

"  And  we  just  now 
Have  become  lame;  cannot  move  hand  or  foot." 

The  chorus  goes  on  : 

"  The  same  thing  has  occurred  to  us, —  our  ancles 
Are  sprained  with  standing  here,  I  know  not  how." 

Odysseus  asks : 

"  What,  sprained  with  standing  still  ? 
Chorus.  "And  there  is  dust 

Or  ashes  in  our  eyes,  I  know  not  whence. 
Od.  Cowardly  dogs  !  ye  will  not  aid  me  then  ? 

Cho.  With  pitying  my  own  back  and  my  backbone. 

And  with  not  wishing  all  my  teeth  knocked  out. 


438  EURIPIDES. 

This  cowardice  comes  of  itself  —  but  stay, 
I  know  a  famous  Orphic  incantation 
To  make  the  brand  stick  of  its  own  accord 
Into  the  skull  of  this  one-eyed  son  of  earth." 

Once  more,  it  will  be  noticed,  Euripides  sneers  at  current  super- 
stitions, and  Odysseus  can  do  no  more  than  call  on  them  to  sing 
inspiring  words,  which  they  do,  and  the  stake  is  plunged  in  the  eye  of 
Polyphemus.  Thereupon  there  is  great  uproar;  the  poor  Cyclops 
roars  and  groans ;  when  the  chorus  ask  if  he  fell  into  the  fire  when  he 
was  drunk,  he  says  nobody  blinded  him,  and  he  hurls  himself  about  to 
catch  his  persecutors,  misled  by  the  words  of  the  jeering  chorus. 
Odysseus  finally  tells  him  his  real  name,  and  the  play  ends  with  these 
words : 

Od.  "  I  bid  thee  weep  —  consider  what  I  say, 

I  go  towards  the  shore  to  drive  my  ship 

To  mine  own  land,  o'er  the  Sicilian  wave. 
Cyc.  Not  so,  if  whelming  you  with  this  huge  stone 

I  can  crush  you  and  all  your  men  together  ; 

I  will  descend  upon  the  shore,  though  blind, 

Groping  my  way  adown  the  steep  ravine. 
Cho.  And  we,  the  shipmates  of  Ulysses  now. 

Will  serve  our  Bacchus  all  our  happy  lives." 

These  last  words  were  probably  the  customary  ending  of  these 
satyric  plays  which  preserved  the  old  worship  of  Dionysus.  The 
humor  is,  doubtless,  simple  to  our  taste,  but  then  we  can  not  under- 
stand how  very  many  implications  of  amusement  may  have  lain  hidden 
in  the  traditional  reputation  of  the  satyrs  that  their  appearance  and 
cowardliness  called  forth.  Every  conventional  jest  or  jester  has  a 
certain  authority  from  association,  just  as  certain  opposite  objects 
invariably  evoke  gloom.  Thus  the  clown  in  the  circus  does  not  always 
depend  on  the  novelty  of  his  witticisms  for  his  success,  and  the  satyrs 
were  similar  licensed  merry-makers  on  whom  no  restraints  were  thrown. 
The  whole  question  of  the  Greek  humor  belongs  more  properly,  how- 
ever, to  the  discussion  of  the  Greek  comedy. 

Before  leaving  Euripides  it  is  necessary  to  mention  the  Rhesus,  a 
play  always  printed  in  the  works  of  Euripides,  although  its  authorship 
is  distinctly  a  matter  of  uncertainty.  Among  those  to  whom  it  has 
been  variously  assigned  are  the  younger  Euripides,  the  nephew  of  the 
poet ;  Sophocles  ;  an  imitator  of  ^schylus  ;  an  unknown  literary  forger 
who  fed  the  hungry  Alexandrian  market ;  and  an  equally  unknown 
writer  who  anticipated  the  current  fashion  by  writing  for  the  closet 
instead  of  the  stage  ;  choice  between  these  and  the  alleged  writer  is 
dif^cult.  The  opinion  is,  at  least,  common  among  scholars  that  the 
play  can  not  be  ascribed  with  any  positiveness  to   Euripides.      The 


THE  RHESUS.— FRAGMENTS  OF  EURIPIDES.  439 

subject  is  taken  from  the  tenth  book  of  the  Iliad,  which  describes  how 
the  Greeks  sent  forth  Odysseus  and  Diomed  to  examine  the  Trojan 
camp  at  the  same  time  that  Dolon  came  forth  for  a  similar  purpose 
from  the  other  side.  Dolon  is  slain,  but  before  his  death  he  makes 
some  statements  that  are  of  great  service  to  the  Greeks.  The  result 
is  that  an  attack  is  made  on  the  band  of  Rhesus,  a  young  Thracian 
who  has  just  joined  the  Trojan  army,  and  he  is  slain.  Whoever  wrote 
it,  the  play  lacks  the  qualities  that  are  to  be  found  elsewhere  in  the 
work  of  Euripides,  and  it  bears  more  frequent  marks  of  study  of  the 
Iliad  than  any  other  tragedy  that  has  reached  us. 

Abundant  fragments  of  other  plays  of  Euripides  have  come  down  to 
us,  and  in  Aristophanes  there  are  many  traces  of  his  denunciation  of 
tragedies  that  have  not  survived.  Thus  a  Peleus  is  ridiculed  in  the 
comedian's  Clouds.  Mention  is  made  elsewhere  of  an  QEdipus  and  an 
Antigone.  In  the  first  of  these  the  old  king  did  not  blind  himself,  as 
in  the  play  of  Sophocles,  but  his  eyes  were  put  out  by  the  servants  of 
Laius  ;  and  the  Antigone  received  a  joyful  termination  :  the  heroine, 
after  her  brother's  burial,  is  led  away  to  death  by  command  of  Creon, 
but  she  is  rescued  by  Haemon,  and  the  play  ends,  like  a  modern  novel, 
with  their  marriage.  All  the  tragedians  supplied  material  for  quotation 
which  was  freely  practiced  in  later  days,  and  these  extracts  often  give 
us  lines  of  great  beauty ;  those  from  Euripides,  as  Mr.  Symonds  has 
pointed  out,  lose  least  by  being  separated  from  the  context,  for  his 
aim  was  less  the  artistic  whole  than  beauty  of  the  separate  parts.  Of 
some  of  the  plays,  too,  we  have  fuller  accounts  than  we  possess  of  the 
work  of  certain  other  tragedians  whose  names  and  reputations  are 
frequently  mentioned. 

In  Mr.  Symonds's  "  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,"  vol.  ii.,  is  a  chapter 
on  the  fragments  of  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides,  where  the 
reader  will  find  numerous  beautiful  translations.  Here  is  one  from  the 
Dictys  of  Euripides : 

"  Think'st  thou  that  Death  will  heed  thy  tears  at  all, 
Or  send  thy  son  back,  if  thou  wilt  but  groan  ? 
Nay,  cease;  and,  gazing  at  thy  neighbor's  grief, 
Grow  calm  :  if  thou  wilt  take  the  pains  to  reckon 
How  many  have  toiled  out  their  lives  in  bonds. 
How  many  wear  to  old  age,  robbed  of  children. 
And  all  who  from  the  tyrant's  height  of  glory. 
Have  sunk  to  nothing.     These  things  shouldst  thou  heed." 


VL 

Of  the  later  tragedians  little  is  known  except  their  names.     Ion  cf 
Chios,  who  was  young  when  ^schylus  was  writing,  and  Achaeus  of 


44°  EURIPIDES. 

Eretria,  a  few  years  the  junior  of  Sophocles,  were  assigned  places  little 
inferior  to  that  which  ^schylus  held.  The  sons  of  ^schylus,  Bion 
and  Euphorion,  and  his  nephew,  Philocles,  long  held  an  important 
position,  in  good  measure  because  the  family  enjoyed  the  right  of 
bringing  out  the  plays  of  their  illustrious  ancestor.  It  was  as  if 
the  family  retained  the  copyright,  or  stage-right,  of  his  plays.  Of 
Philocles  we  know  that  he  won  the  first  prize  over  Sophocles  with  his 
King  CEdipus,  and,  to  counterbalance  this,  that  he  was  ridiculed  by 
Aristophanes.  His  son,  Morsimos,  and  his  grandson,  Astydamas, 
acquired  some  reputation  as  writers  of  tragedies ;  this  Astydamas 
was  also  the  father  of  two  tragic  poets.  The  fame  of  Ion  of  Chios 
was,  however,  much  greater;  he  studied  philosophy  and  rhetoric, 
and  his  first  appearance  as  a  tragedian  was  in  the  year  452  B.C. 
and  we  hear  of  him  again  as  a  competitor  with  Euripides  and  lophon 
in  428  B.C.  These  meagre  incidents,  with  the  exception  of  the  fact 
that  his  poetical  composition  was  affected  by  his  rhetorical  studies, 
are  about  all  that  we  know.  Of  Achaeus  even  less  can  be  said.  A 
fragment  of  Neophron's  Medea  has  been  given  above.  Theognis  is 
called  by  Aristophanes  a  cold  poet,  a  fame  to  which  annihilation  would 
have  been  preferable.  Morychos  had  an  even  more  unfavorable 
renown :  stupider  than  Morychos  was  a  familiar  and  decisive  phrase. 
Carcinus  and  his  descendants  are  embalmed  in  the  plays  of  Aris- 
tophanes as  examples  of  incompetence,  but  of  course  that  comedian 
is  not  an  unbiassed  witness.  Nothippus,  Sthenelus,  Melanthius, 
Pythangelus,  Meletus,  are  but  names  without  an  echo.  Of  their  con- 
temporaries Agathon  has  found  him  distinctly  an  object  of  modern 
curiosity.  He  is  supposed  to  have  been  born  about  447  B.C.,  and  his  first 
dramatic  victory,  as  well  as  his  first  appearance  as  a  tragic  writer,  took 
place  in  416  B.C.  The  scene  of  the  Symposium  of  Plato  is  the  supper- 
party  given  to  celebrate  this  success.  Like  Euripides,  Agathon  visited 
Macedonia.  The  names  of  only  five  of  his  plays  are  known,  but  we 
have  distinct  information  with  regard  to  the  grace  and  tenderness  of 
his  style.  Doubtless,  he  followed  the  fashion  of  which  Euripides  was 
regarded  as  a  representative,  and  carried  further  the.  modern  refine- 
ments and  delicacies.  Of  lophon  and  Ariston,  the  sons  of  Sophocles, 
and  his  grandson,  Sophocles,  scarcely  more  than  the  names  survive, 
lophon,  however,  was  highly  regarded. 

Later  tragedians  were  numerous  who  followed  with  diminishing  force 
the  fashions  that  once  had  flourished,  and,  doubtless,  carried  them  to 
the  inevitable  extreme.  Such  were  Dicaeogenes,  Antiphon,  Cleophon, 
Chaeremon,  Diogenes,  the  later  Carcinus  and  Xenocles,  Theodictes, 
Aphareus,  etc.  Of  Cleophon  we  know  only  that  in  his  eleven  plays, 
or  in  some  of  them  at  least,  he  turned  his  attention  to  every-day  life. 


442  EURIPIDES. 

which  he  represented  with  realistic  language,  thus,  doubtless,  forming 
a  connecting  link  between  the  later  tragedy  and  the  new  comedy. 
While  the  Greek  tragedy  was  thus  fading  out  of  existence  in  Athens, 
its  influence  was  spreading  throughout  Greece  and  the  neighboring 
countries,  especially  in  Asia.  We  have  already  seen  that  Euripides 
and  Agathon  visited  Macedonia ;  later  Philip  and  Alexander  showed 
their  fondness  for  the  theater,  and  their  successors  had  the  same  taste. 
Alexander,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  three  thousand  comedians 
brought  from  Greece  to  celebrate  the  funeral  games  in  honor  of 
Hephaestion.  In  Egypt,  at  the  court  of  the  Ptolemies,  the  stage  was 
highly  honored.  Even  into  Judea  this  taste  made  its  way:  Herod 
had  two  theaters  built  there,  one  in  Caesarea,  and  the  other  in  Jerusalem. 
The  anecdote  quoted  above,  in  the  account  of  the  Bacchae,  concerning 
the  incident  that  took  place  after  the  defeat  of  Crassus,  shows  how 
general  was  the  influence  of  the  Greek  stage.  Later  we  shall  see  its 
great  influence  in  Rome,  and  indeed  this  extended  throughout  the 
civilized  world.  The  Sanskrit  drama  was  in  part  indebted  to  the 
influence  of  that  of  Greece,  knowledge  of  which  was  carried  to  India 
by  the  army  of  Alexander,  besides  spreading  from  simpler  causes; and 
possibly,  through  India,  it  called  forth  the  Chinese  drama.  And  the 
fathers  of  the  church  saw  the  masterpieces  of  tragedy  and  comedy  still 
performed. 

That  the  work  of  the  other  tragedians  has  disappeared  so  utterly 
from  the  face  of  the  earth  may  be  readily  explained.  Their  work 
was  held,  and,  doubtless,  with  justice,  to  be  inferior  to  that  of  the 
three  great  men  we  have  been  studying,  and  the  taste  of  the  Alex- 
andrines exercised  absolute  exclusion  of  all  work  that  was  held  to  be 
but  second-class,  and  when  we  remember  that  what  has  left  has  survived 
the  ruin  of  two  civilizations  we  need  not  wonder  that  so  much  has  been 
lost.  As  Mr.  Symonds  puts  it  in  his  "  Studies  on  the  Greek  Poets," 
ii.  117: 

"  What  the  public  voice  of  the  Athenians  had  approved  the  scholiasts 
of  Alexandria  winnowed.  What  the  Alexandrians  selected  found  its 
way  to  Rome.  What  the  Roman  grammarians  sanctioned  was  carried 
in  the  dotage  of  culture  to  Byzantium.  At  each  transition  the  peril 
by  land  and  sea  to  rare  codices,  sometimes,  probably,  to  unique  auto- 
graphs, was  incalculable.  Then  followed  the  fury  of  iconoclasts  and 
fanatics,  the  firebrands  of  Omar,  the  remorseless  crusade  of  churchmen 
against  paganism,  and  the  then  great  conflagrations  of  Byzantium." 

It  is,  indeed,  not  strange  that  in  so  many  cases  only  names  have 
reached  us.  These,  at  least,  serve  to  show  us  how  vast  was  the  bulk 
of  the  Greek  civilization,  and  the  extent  of  its  influence  is  even  more 
remarkable. 


DISINTEGRATION  OF  GREEK   THOUGHT.  443 

What  most  thoroughly  survived  these  many  vicissitudes  was  the 
influence  of  Euripides,  who  stood  then  as  he  stands  now,  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  disintegration  of  the  Greek  thought.  .The  greatness 
of  ^schylus  and  Sophocles  was  fully  acknowledged,  but  Euripides 
had  the  tone  of  modernness  ;  he  spoke  to  his  hearers  and  later  spectators 
and  readers  their  own  language,  while  the  qualities  of  his  predecessors, 
although  they  commanded  admiration,  were  yet  remote,  as  the  lan- 
guage and  inspiration  of  Shakspere  and  Milton  are  remote  from  us. 
The  prevalence  of  his  authority  is  indirect  proof  of  the  fact,  which  is 
sufficiently  established  by  history,  that  the  whole  course  of  the  modifi- 
cation of  Greek  thought  follows  the  lines  on  which  it  began  in  his  time  ; 
it  was  a  perpetual  inquiry  concerning  men's  relations  to  the  gods  and 
to  one  another  which  accompanied  the  continuous  weakening  of  the 
old  beliefs.  The  natural  and  well-founded  pride  of  the  Greeks  in  their 
intellectual  superiority  over  their  Macedonian  and  Roman  masters 
helped  to  keep  them  faithful  to  the  literary  traditions  of  their  prime, 
and  in  the  confidants  of  the  classical  Italian  and  French  tragedies  we 
see  a  survival,  or  petrifaction,  of  the  old  Greek  methods  which  forbade 
the  use  of  unexpected  incident  or  violent  action  as  a  means  of  arousing 
interest.  The  whole  attention  was  devoted  exclusively  to  the  treat- 
ment, a  custom  which  has  also  prevailed  in  French  novels.  The 
comedy  of  Greece,  at  least  when  it  was  in  the  hands  of  Aristophanes, 
knew  no  such  law ;  later,  the  authority  of  Euripides  and  the  death 
of  its  political  influence  enforced  a  similar  monotony.  It  became  a 
work  of  art  when  it  ceased  to  be  an  expression  of  political  interest, 
and  as  such  was  subject  to  this  artistic  law  of  universal  extent  among 
the  Greeks,  as  we  shall  see  again  in  the  study  of  their  oratory. 

It  is  perhaps  scarcely  worth  while  to  insist  on  another  point  that 
suggests  itself;  for  although,  in  the  absence  of  full  information,  every 
detail  that  has  reached  us  is  of  interest  and  value,  it  is  very  easy  to 
regard  trifles  as  more  important  than  they  really  are,  yet  it  is  curious 
to  notice  that,  according  to  Athenaius,  Euripides  was  one  of  the  first 
of  the  Greeks  to  own  a  large  library,  and  in  the  Frogs  of  Aristophanes 
(1.  1409)  we  find  another  reference  to  his  books,  when  ^Eschylus  con- 
sents to  have  them  all  thrown  into  the  scale  along  with  Euripides 
himself,  his  wife,  children,  and  his  friend  and  counsellor,  Cephisophon, 
confident  that  he  will  outweigh  this  feathery  load  with  two  of  his  own 
verses.  There  is  no  doubt,  then,  that  Ave  have  in  Euripides  the  first 
great  poet  who  was  a  reader,  and  among  his  many  anticipations  of 
modern  tastes  this  may  deserve  to  be  counted.  Certainly,  a  Greek 
who  read  at  this  time  was  pointing  the  way  for  his  descendants ;  for, 
when  the  active  life  of  that  race  ceased,  it  at  once  began  to  expound 
what  had  been  done  in  the  past. 


CHAPTER  VI.— THE  COMEDY. 

I. — Obscurity  of  its  Early  History ;  its  Alleged  Origins,  in  the  Dionysiac  Festivals, 
and  in  Various  Places,  as  in  Sicily,  Among  the  Megarians,  etc. — The  Early 
Writers  of  Comedy.  II.— Aristophanes — Comedy  as  he  Found  it ;  its  Technical 
Laws ;  the  Chorus,  etc. — The  Acharnians — The  Seriousness  of  All  the  Com- 
edies;  Their  Conservatism — The  Horse-play.  III. — The  Knights;  its  Attack 
on  Cleon,  and  General  Political  Fervor.  IV. — The  Clouds,  with  its  Derision  of 
Socrates,  and  of  Modern  Tendencies.  V. — The  Wasps,  and  its  Denunciation  of 
Civic  Decay.  VI.— The  Peace,  and  its  Political  Implications — The  Poetical  Side 
of  Aristophanes.  VII.— The  Birds.  VIII. — The  Lysistrata,  and  the  Thesmo- 
phoriazusge — The  Attack  on  Euripides  Directly,  and  Indirectly  on  Current 
Affairs — Hopelessness  of  the  Position  held  by  Aristophanes.  IX. — The  Frogs  ; 
Euripides  Again  Assaulted,  and  yEschylus  Exalted.  X. — The  Ecclesiazusas,  and 
the  Plutus — The  Altered  Conditions — The  Unliterary  Quality  of  Attic  Comedy  in 
its  Early  Days — Importance  of  Aristophanes  as  a  Mouth-piece  of  the  Athenian 
People.  XI. — The  Later  Development  of  Comedy — Philemon  and  Menander; 
the  Contrast  between  their  Work  and  that  of  Aristophanes — Its  Relation  to  the 
Later  Times. 

I. 

THE  early  history  of  the  Greek  comedy  is  quite  as  obscure  as  that 
of  the  tragedy  ;  indeed,  our  knowledge  of  it  is  even  more  limited, 
for  only  seven  plays  of  a  single  comic  writer  have  been  preserved  out 
of  which  we  may  form  our  notion  of  the  nature  of  this  great  division 
of  Greek  literature.  To  the  Greeks  themselves  the  investigation  of 
the  beginning  of  literary  forms  was  vastly  less  important  than  the 
study  of  acknowledged  masterpieces.  Moreover,  the  long  period  in 
which  the  comic  poetry  held  an  ignoble  position  as  a  gross  amusement 
of  ignorant  rustics  that  only  slowly  developed  into  a  recognized 
branch  of  literary  work,  is  a  satisfactory  excuse  for  their  indifference 
to  the  remote  beginnings.  A  race  that  has  grown  up  without  an  im- 
portant admixture  of  foreign  influence  has  certainly  less  impulse  to 
study  its  own  past  than  have  those  that  have  deliberately  imitated 
antiquity  at  almost  every  step  that  they  have  taken.  Science,  too, 
would  contemn  its  own  lessons  if  it  failed  to  remember  that  its  limit- 
less curiosity  is  of  only  very  recent  growth. 

While  the  tragedy  always  maintained  the  dignity  of  its  serious 
religious  significance,  and  celebrated  those  ancient  myths  that  told 
over  the  painful  conflict  of  heroic  strength  against  indomitable  powers, 
the  comedy    for  a    long  time   existed  as  a  mere   rustic  sport  of  wine- 


THE  DION  Y SI  AC  FESTIVALS.  445 

gatherers  who  celebrated  the  joyous  side  of  their  divinity.  Far  from 
finding  a  complicated  literary  form  like  the  dithyramb  to  give  it 
standing,  it  developed  out  of  the  coarse  songs  which  sounded  the 
fructifying  powers  of  nature,  and  these  were   celebrated  with  all  the 


THALIA. 
(  The  Muse  of  Comedy^ 


frankness  and  boldness  of  a  half-civilized  race  whose  religion  was 
simple  nature-worship,  and  who  at  no  period  of  their  history  were 
under  the  dominion  of  what  they  would  have  called  prudery  had  the 
quality  existed.     It  is  in  respect  of  this  trait  that  the  chasm   between 


446  THE   COMEDY. 

antiquity  and  modern  times  is  widest,  and  a  full  description  of  the 
license  of  the  Dionysiac  festivities.  They  can  only  be  equalled  at  the 
present  day  by  what  we  read  of  some  of  the  rites  of  savage  nations. 
In  Greece,  however,  this  spirit  was  combined  with  an  intellectual 
vivacity  that  retained  this  direct  combination  of  thought,  impulse  and 
action  to  an  extent  that  we  can  scarcely  understand  now.  It  was 
among  the  Dorians  that  these  sports  flourished  most  freely,  and  that 
comedy  first  appeared,  although  they  never  raised  it  to  the  highest 
literary  excellence.  The  Megarians  were  the  first  to  lend  to  the  song 
scurrility  and  the  quality  of  personal  and  political  satire  ;  and  possibly 
their  lack  of  an  outlet  in  political  life  concentrated  their  attention  in 
this  direction.  They,  apparently,  inserted  into  the  Dionysiac  song 
various  references  to  current  events,  and  in  all  the  early  comedy  of  the 
Dorians  we  find  the  comic  art  employed  in  caricaturing  the  interests 
and  manners  of  every-day  life.  This  was  at  least  the  characteristic  of 
the  humble  comedy  that  existed  among  the  Spartans.  Something  of 
the  sort  seems  to  have  been  carried  to  Sicily.  Although  ^schylus 
visited  the  court  of  Hiero,  it  appears  that  the  Sicilians  at  the  time  of 
the  Peloponnesian  war  could  have  had  but  little  definite  knowledge  of 
the  growth  of  the  Attic  drama  than  such  as  they  saw  in  the  rendering 
of  his  plays,  because  at  the  end  of  Plutarch's  life  of  Nicias  we  read 
that  some  of  the  survivors  of  the  unfortunate  Sicilian  expedition 
"  owed  their  preservation  to  Euripides.  Of  all  the  Grecians,  his  was 
the  muse  whom  the  Sicilians  were  most  in  love  with.  From  every 
stranger  that  landed  in  their  island  they  gleaned  every  small  specimen 
or  portion  of  his  works,  and  communicated  it  with  pleasure  to  each 
other.  It  is  said  that,  on  this  occasion,  a  number  of  Athenians,  upon 
their  return  home,  went  to  Euripides  and  thanked  him  in  the  most 
respectful  manner  for  their  obligations  to  his  pen,  some  having  been 
enfranchised  for  teaching  their  masters  what  they  remembered  of  his 
poems,  and  others  having  got  refreshments  when  they  were  wandering 
about,  after  the  battle,  by  singing  a  few  of  his  verses.  Nor  is  this  to 
be  wondered  at,  since  they  tell  us  that  when  a  ship  from  Caunus, 
which  happened  to  be  pursued  by  pirates,  was  going  to  take  shelter 
in  one  of  their  ports,  the  Sicilians  at  first  refused  to  admit  her ;  upon 
asking  the  crew  whether  they  knew  any  of  the  verses  of  Euripides,  and 
being  answered  in  the  afifirmative,  they  received  both  them  and  their 
vessel." 

These  statements  attest  not  only  a  most  intelligent  curiosity  but 
also  the  difficulties  of  gratifying  it,  and  when  Plato  recommended  the 
Clouds  of  Aristophanes  to  Dionysius,  that  play  could  not  have  been 
familiar  even  to  the  ruler  of  Syracuse.  In  so  complete  isolation,  some- 
thing very  different  from  the  Attic  comedy  might  well  have  grown  up, 


SICILIAN  COMED  Y—EPICHARMUS—SA  TIRE. 


447 


and  in  the  plays  of  Epicharmus  there  was  probably  a  spirit  very  unlike 
that  which  has  immortalized  Aristophanes,  For  a  long  time  the  Doric 
comedy  had  prevailed  in  Sicily,  which  had  been  colonized  mainly  by 
Dorians.  Selinus,  a  member  of  a  Megarian  colony,  Aristoxenes 
(about  660  B.C.),  Antheas  (about  596),  are  the  names  of  these  early 
poets  who  made  use  of  the  license  of  the  Dionysiac  festivals  for  more 
or  less  formal  expression  of  satire  and  personal  abuse  or  caricature,  but 
it  was  in  the  hands  of  Epicharmus  that  the  Sicilian  comedy  at  last 
assumed  its  definite  shape.  In  his  early  years  he  went  to  Sicily  with  his 
father,  and  finally  established  himself  in  Syracuse,  where  his  talents 
were  encouraged  by  the  patronage  of  the  tyrants  Gelon  and  Hiero. 
His  philosophical  studies  were  quite  as  celebrated  as  his  comedies,  but 
it  is  these  alone  that  concern  us  now.  None  of  them  have  reached  us, 
but  their  fame  in  antiquity  was  great  enough  to  secure  for  their  author 
a  place  among  the  brief  list  of  the  greatest  writers  of  comedies.     Plato 


PARODY  OF  THE   ANTIGONE. 
(Vase  Painting). 

set  him  at  the  head  of  all,  and  another  writer  mentioned  him  with  Or- 
pheus, Hesiod,  Choerilus,  and  Homer,  as  the  greatest  of  the  Hellenic 
poets.  Plautus  chose  him  for  his  model,  and  Cicero  admired  his  wit 
and  apt  invention.  He  is  said  to  have  left  fifty-two  plays ;  other 
authorities  mention  thirty-five  or  thirty-seven,  and  apparently  they 
were  written  with  considerable  literary  art.  The  refinement  of  the 
Syracusan  court,  when  Pindar  and  iEschylus,  his  contemporaries,  were 
welcome  and  admiring  guests,  is  a  fair  guarantee  of  the  equivalent 
value  of  his  skill.  His  subjects  were  frequently  taken  from  the 
familiar  myths  and  legends,  and  it  may  be  conjectured  that  Epi- 
charmus neglected  no  opportunities  to  set  in  a  ridiculous  light  what 
other  poets  had  recorded  seriously.  Thus,  in  the  Busiris,  Heracles 
appeared  as  an  insatiable  glutton ;  in  a  number  of  the  plays  the 
Homeric   myths  were  caricatured ;    in    Pyrrha  and    Prometheus    the 


448  THE    COMEDY. 

traditional  flood  and  the  creation  of  mankind  is  the  subject.  In  other 
plays  he  appears  to  have  chosen  ridiculous  characters  and  scenes  out 
of  every-day  life,  and  it  was  possibly  here  that  Plautus   imitated   him. 

Among  those  who  followed  in  his  footsteps  was  his  son  or  pupil  Dino- 
lochus,  and  Phormus,  the  tutor  of  Gelon's  children,  but  soon  the  Sicil- 
ian comedy  died  out,  and  was  succeeded  by  a  new  form  called  mimes. 
These  lacked  the  formal  construction  of  the  kind  just  mentioned,  and 
consisted  merely  of  farcical  presentations  of  absurd  incidents  of  com- 
mon life.  Sophron,  a  native  of  Syracuse,  was  the  best  known  writer  of 
these  light  compositions.  He  was  a  contemporary  of  Sophocles  and 
Euripides.  Besides  the  farcical  mitnes,  he  composed  serious  ones  ; 
but  in  both  the  realism  and  lack  of  formality  were  the  striking  qual- 
ities. They  were  both  inspired  by  the  distinct  mimetic  skill  of  the 
Sicilians  ;  indeed  their  quick-witted  conversational  flavor  is  said  by 
Aristotle  to  have  exerted  a  direct  influence  on  the  growth  of  the 
Socratic  dialogue  of  Plato,  who  learned  to  know  them  when  in  Syra- 
cuse, and  carried  them  to  Athens,  where  he  studied  them  carefully. 
An  example  of  one  of  these  is  to  be  found  in  one  of  the  idyls  of 
Theocritus,  under  whose  works  it  will  be  studied  later,  when  it  will  be 
seen  how  vivid  is  the  breath  of  fresh  air  that  it  carries  into  another 
form  of  literature. 

Returning  to  Attica  we  find  that  the  earliest  trace  of  comedy  here, 
as  elsewhere  in  the  Hellenic  world,  is  to  be  traced  back  to  Megara,  for 
it  was  an  inhabitant  of  that  city  who,  in  578  B.C.,  introduced  comic 
choruses  into  Icaria,  the  oldest  seat  in  Attica  of  the  worship  of  Dionysus. 
The  Bacchic  comos,  or  merrymaking,  from  which  comedy  gets  its  name, 
was  doubtless  much  older.  What  Susarion  did  was  to  introduce  such 
personal  and  political  references  as  to  mould  them  into  something  like 
dramatic  form,  though  yet  very  far  from  any  thing  like  theatrical  effect. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  degree  of  excellence  attained  by  these 
crude  beginnings,  into  which,  probably,  the  general  lyrical  superiority 
of  the  people  brought  considerable  literary  refinement,  no  great  steps 
were  taken  for  a  long  time.  The  political  conditions  did  not  encourage 
unbridled  license  until  Athens  became  democratic  and  satire  became  a 
common  property.  These  attempts  possibly  went  but  little  further 
than  the  work  of  the  Megarian  Maeson,  whose  special  disguise  was 
that  of  a  cook  or  scullion,  which  h&  presented  with  such  skill  that  his 
name  became  the  common  title  of  these  people  in  Athens.  The  Italian 
commedia  delf  arte  is  the  nearest  approach  that  we  find  in  modern 
literature  to  this  sort  of  typical  dramatic  effect  attained  by  actors  who 
caricatured  certain  familiar  types.  In  fact,  however,  this  comedy  pro- 
duced no  important  results,  and  a  Megarian  jest  was  for  antiquity  a 
by-word  like  Scotch  humor  in  these  later  days. 


ORIGIN  OF   COMEDY.  449 

For  the  eighty  years  after  Susarion  lived  there  are  no  traces  of 
comedy  in  Attica,  but  in  487  B.C.,  three  years  after  Marathon,  when 
^schylus  was  laying  the  foundation  of  his  fame,  we  hear  of  Chionides, 
Euetes,  Euxenides,  Myllus,  and  Magnes,  all  contemporaries  of  Epi- 
charmus.  Of  these  only  the  first  and  last  named  had  even  in  antiquity 
any  literary  prominence,  and  but  little  is  known  of  their  work;  but  it 
is  easy  and,  doubtless,  right  to  suppose  that  the  vulgar  humor  of  the 
Megarian  comedy  found  less  commendations  among  the  swiftly 
ripening  Athenians  than  among  less  cultivated  people,  and  that  the 
general  swift  intellectual  advance  of  that  city  carried  with  it  the 
improvement  of  the  comedy.  After  all,  comedy  and  tragedy  are  but 
different  sides  of  the  same  shield,  and  when  one  side  is  held  aloft  the 
other  can  not  be  left  behind.  The  delight  of  the  Athenians  in  the 
tragedies  of  ^Eschylus  naturally  raised  the  tone  of  every  sort  of 
dramatic  performance,  and  comedy  improved,  as  in  the  Renaissance  it 
improved  simultaneously  with  modern  tragedy;  in  each  case,  of  course, 
preserving  marks  of  its  origin.  The  titles  of  som.e  of  the  plays  of 
Magnes  make  it  clear  that  Aristophanes  had  him  in  mind  when  com- 
posing his  comedies ;  for  example,  the  Frogs,  Birds,  and  Gadflies. 
Magnes  won  the  first  prize  in  the  contest  of  comedies  no  less  than 
eleven  times,  but  he  was  soon  lost  sight  of  in  admiration  for  the  work 
of  his  more  brilliant  successors.  There  were  many  others  who  won 
the  glorious  obscurity  of  leaving  their  names  in  the  list  of  forgotten 
Greek  comedians.  Of  these  forty  immortals  one  or  two — is  not  that 
the  usual  average? — have  left  more  than  their  names  for  the  informa- 
tion of  posterity.  Among  these  is  Cratinus,  who  holds  to  the  Attic 
comedy  the  same  position  that  ^schylus  held  to  the  tragedy,  although 
he  was,  in  fact,  a  contemporary  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  and,  sur- 
viving to  the  great  age  of  ninety-seven,  was  a  frequent  rival  of  Aris- 
tophanes, over  whom  he  was  victorious  with  his  Winebottle,  his  latest 
work,  for  he  died  in  423  B.C.  or  422  B.C.  He  was  aroused  to  the  com- 
position of  this  last  play  by  a  violent  assault  which  Aristophanes  made 
upon  him  in  his  Knights,  possibly  under  the  influence  of  that  feeling 
with  which  the  men  of  every  generation  regard  their  immediate  predeces- 
sors. Moreover,  as  we  shall  see,  the  Attic  comedy  was  always  marked 
by  extravagant  license  of  personal  abuse.  Cratinus  himself  won  a  repu- 
tation for  violence  in  this  respect,  but  he  has  a  more  honorable  claim  to 
mention  as  the  man  who  gave  artistic  completeness  to  the  early  simple 
comedy. 

Another  important  man  is  Crates,  whose  first  appearance  as  a  writer 
of  comedies  was  in  449  B.C. ;  he  had  previously  learned  from  experience 
as  an  actor  what  was  needed  on  the  stage,  and  he  brought  out  a  number 
of  comedies  in  which  he  seems  to  have   eschewed  the  personal  satire 


45°  THE  COMEDY. 

that  Cratinus  had  freely  employed,  notably  against  Pericles,  and  to 
have  chosen  incidents  from  private  rather  than  from  public  life  for  his 
subjects.  Pherecrates,  a  contemporary  of  Aristophanes,  appears  to 
have  followed  Crates  in  this  respect.  Eupolis,  born  446  B.C.,  was  for 
some  time  a  friend  of  Aristophanes,  and  his  fellow-worker  in  the  task 
of  enforcing  upon  the  Athenian  public  serious  ethical  and  political  les- 
sons.    These  he  conveyed  with  literary  art  and  grace. 

Yet^of  the  whole  Attic  comedy  but  eleven  plays  have  been  left,  and 
these  are  all  the  work  of  Aristophanes,  the  acknowledged  master  of 
this  form  of  composition.  It  was  in  the  year  427  B.C.  that  this  writer 
first  presented  himself  to  the  Athenian  public,  under  another  name,  out 
of  diffidence,  or,  perhaps,  out  of  compliance  with  a  law  that  forbade 
the  writing  of  comedies  to  men  under  a  certain  age.  Very  soon  he 
acquired  fame  by  his  wit  and  boldness  in  attacking  the  leaders  of  the 
people,  and  his  comedies  followed  one  another  in  swift  succession. 
His  last  appearance  was  in  388  B.C.  Of  the  facts  of  his  life,  it  will  be 
noticed,  but  little  is  known.  The  examination  of  his  plays  will  serve 
to  indicate  his  aim  and  method,  but  before  studying  these  it  will  be  well 
to  examine  the  formal  condition  of  the  Athenian  comedy  at  this  time. 
Remembering  that  it  grew  from  the  license  of  the  Dionysiac  festivals 
and  their  opportunity  for  wantonness  and  scurrility,  we  shall  not  be 
surprised  to  find  traces,  and  more  than  traces,  of  these  qualities  in  the 
ripe  and  perfected  work  of  later  times.  All  serious  poetry  bears  the 
mark  of  its  religious  origin  in  its  liturgical  rhythms  and  choice  of 
words,  to  say  nothing  of  its  subjects,  and  these  consequences  of  its 
remote  beginning  survive  even  in  late  days  in  the  frequent  aristocratic 
aversion  of  poetry  to  treat  other  than  certain  formal  themes.  This  is 
possibly  truer  of  modern  than  of  ancient  times.  The  religious  origin 
of  the  art  of  painting  is  still  an  obstacle  to  its  intelligent  growth  so 
long  as  the  public  demand  from  it,  not  the  play  of  light  and  shade,  but 
an  indefinable  something  which  remains  vague  even  when  it  is  called 
soul.  Struggle  as  we  may,  the  highest  flight  of  the  imagination  is 
nothing  more  than  an  impressive  arrangement  of  familiar  details,  and 
no  artist  can  do  more  than  choose  among  acknowledged  facts.  When 
the  Greek  tragedians,  or  Shakspere,  or  Homer,  move  us,  they  do  it  by 
the  intelligent  handling  of  familiar  material ;  yet,  in  literature  and  the 
arts,  we  find  that  the  religious  significance,  that  is  to  say,  an  impossible 
mystery,  is  often  expected.  Fortunately,  comedy  escaped  this  handi- 
capping.     It  remained    a   profane  weapon    for   the  denunciation  of 


COMEDY  AS  AN  ORGAN  OF  CONSERVATISM— THE  PAR  ABA  SIS.    45 1 

absurdities  ;  and  since  new  thoughts  are  tolerably  sure  to  appear  absurd 
to  those  who  do  not  share  them,  it  became  a  recognized  organ  of  con- 
servatism. The  steps  by  which  the  satyric  chorus  developed  into  an 
important  part  of  the  comedy  are  obscure,  but  the  importance  of  the 
chorus  survived  in,  at  least,  one  peculiarity  of  the  comedy,  the  para- 
basis  (or  going  aside,  digression),  which  followed  the  exposition  of  the 
play,  or  prologue.  In  this  parabasis  the  poet  was  able  through  the 
chorus  to  address  the  public  face  to  face ;  he  could  explain  his  inten- 
tions, offer  any  apology  or  defense  that  he  thought  necessary.  The 
chorus,  which  previously  had  stood  on  the  stage  to  take  part  in  the 
play  as  an  actor,  would  step  down  into  the  orchestra,  nearer  the  specta- 


FIGURES    IN   COMEDY. 


tors,  and  utter  the  parabasis.  This  division  of  the  play  consisted,  when 
complete,  of  distinct  parts  as  formal  as  all  Greek  lyric  verse,  in  which 
invocations  to  the  gods  or  in  defense  of  the  state  or  city  are  accom- 
panied with  political  advice  or  warning.  In  the  later  plays  it  lost  its 
force,  and  was  succeeded  by  simpler  lyric  passages.  Gradually,  as  we 
shall  see,  the  value  of  the  chorus  evaporated  away.  The  other  lyrical 
portions  of  the  chorus  bore  no  special  names.  These  were  generally 
devoted  to  ridicule  of  various  persons,  generally  such  as  had  no  con- 
nection with  the  play.  They  were  accompanied  with  music  and  dance. 
The  dance  of  the  comedies  was  the  cordax,  a  licentious  performance, 
inherited   from   the  earlier    rites.     Aristophanes    condemned   it,   but, 


452 


THE   COMEDY. 


nevertheless,  at  times,  he  employed  something  very  like  it.  Other 
dances  were  also  put  on  the  stage  by  him,  although  these  were  pos- 
sibly of  a  less  free  nature. 

The  chorus  consisted  of  twenty-four  persons,  and  the  expenses  of 
preparing  it  were  borne  by  the  city,  as  was  the  case  with  the  tragedy. 
The  masks  which  they  wore  were  naturally  different,  at  least  so  far  as 
the  expression  was  concerned,  from  those  worn  by  the  tragic  actors. 
Different  ages  and  professions  were  distinguished  by  various  conven- 
tional attributes,  and  prominent  people  had  their  personal  appearance 
caricatured  when  the  play  required  it.  In  those  plays  in  which  birds 
or  wasps  appeared  as  characters  the  mask  became  a  very  important 

p'art  of  the  disguise,  probably  surviving 
from  the  animal  masks  used  by  many 
savage  races.  Their  costumes  were  in 
ordinary  cases  probably  like  those  of 
ordinary  citizens,  but,  doubtless,  were 
variously  modified  when  extraordinary 
circumstances  in  the  play  required  a 
change.  In  a  word,  all  the  resources  of 
the  theater  were  continually  employed  to 
produce  a  vivid  and  life-like  impression. 
The  stage-effects  appear  to  have  been 
simple.  But  what  is  lost  in  the  lapse  of 
time  in  the  setting  of  the  play  on  the 
stage  is  even  less  than  is  lost  in  eveiy 
translation  of  Aristophanes.  The  deli- 
cacy and  vivacity  of  his  dialogue  and  the 
abundant  splendor  of  his  lyrical  inter- 
ludes receive  but  scant  justice  in  even 
the  best  English  versions. 

The  whole  number  of  the  plays  of 
Aristophanes  was  about  forty,  for  authori- 
ties vary  as  to  the  exact  list.  Of  these, 
as  has  been  said,  eleven  survive  in  a  complete  form,,  and  of  the  rest 
more  than  seven  hundred  fragments  give  us  vivid  instances  of  his 
boundless  wit  and  invention,  though  but  vague  notions  of  the  lost 
plots.  Fortunately,  the  plays  cover  his  long  career,  from  425  B.C.,  three 
years  after  his  first  appearance,  to  388  B.C.,  the  date  when  he  brought  out 
his  last  play,  so  that  we  can  see  many  of  the  variations  in  his  method  ; 
but  there  are,  of  course,  plays  missing  that  scholars  would  very 
gladly  regain,  such  as  those  in  which  he  handled  tragic  myths. 

The  earliest  of  those  that  survive  is  the  Acharnians,  425  B.C.,  the  third 
piece  that  Aristophanes  produced,  but  the  earliest  to  win  the  first  prize. 


ARISTOPHANES. 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  COMEDY.  453 

It  is  a  political  piece,  not  only  full  of  allusions  to  contemporary  events, 
but  depending  for  its  main  interest  on  the  state  of  the  Peloponnesian 
war  that  was  now  in  its  sixth  year.  Thus  the  comedy  has  an  interest 
for  us  and  a  deep  significance  wholly  beside  its  humorous  effect. 
Indeed,  while  every  work  of  art  is  the  resultant  of  all  the  forces  that 
work  upon  the  mind  of  the  artist,  we  find  in  the  comedy  an  immediate 
presentation  of  scenes  such  as  is  found  only  with  more  difificulty  in  the 
tragedy.  The  comic  writer  is  necessarily  near  life.  A  jest  that  can 
only  be  understood  after  it  is  explained  by  commentators  loses  its 
right  to  that  name,  and  to  the  Athenians  the  writings  of  Aristophanes 
had  a  vividness  that  was  its  most  striking  quality.  With  time,  of 
course,  much  of  this  is  lost,  but  enough  remains  to  justify  the  high 
praise  that  he  received.  We  shall  see  how  grave  after  all  is  the  come- 
dian's -work ;  behind  the  laughing  mask  is  an  active,  serious  brain  that 
is  grappling  with  momentous  questions;  the  comicality  is,  as  it  were, 
a  literary  quality,  like  eloquence,  for  the  more  striking  enforcement  of 
solemn  truths.  Always  humor  stands  in  relief  against  the  tragic 
intensity  of  life ;  it  continually  implies  a  reference  to  what  we  know  is 
not  amusing.     It  counts  by  its  suggestions  of  what  is  left  unsaid. 

A  noticeable  thing  is  this,  that  in  the  hands  of  Aristophanes  comedy 
was  employed  as  a  buttress  of  society,  as  a  defender  of  the  old  tra- 
ditions which  we  have  seen  attacked  and  exposed  by  Euripides, 
although  it  is  commonly  held  that  wit  is  a  corrosive  that  eats  only  into 
venerable  absurdities.  Yet,  as  often  as  not,  it  is  a  conservative  force, 
especially  when  the  attack  on  society  is  made  by  fanatics  whose 
earnestness  and  enthusiasm  present  a  ludicrous  side.  This  was  the 
position  of  Voltaire  in  his  treatment  of  Rousseau,  as  well  as  of  Aris- 
tophanes, and  if  ridicule  killed,  its  victims  would  have  been  long  since 
forgotten ;  on  the  other  hand,  Erasmus,  Rabelais,  and  Heine  were 
prominent  among  those  who  helped  to  bring  about  a  change  by  the 
application  of  their  wit  to  contemporary  affairs,  so  that  it  appears 
impossible  to  make  any  general  statement  as  to  the  side  on  which  the 
wits  shall  enlist.  Like  every  one  else,  they  decide  that  for  themselves, 
and  every  quality  may  be  found  on  both  sides  of  the  continual  con- 
troversy between  conservatism  and  radicalism  that  forever  agitates  the 
world.  When  even  wealth  and  position  fail  to  secure  men's  loyalty  to 
tradition,  how  can  intelligence  be  expected  to  count? 

Yet  nowhere  do  we  find  greater  conservatism  than  in  the  apparatus 
of  humor  and  ridicule ;  even  coronations  are  tainted  with  modernness 
by  the  side  of  the  machinery  of  comedy.  We  detect  this  antiquity 
not  only  in  the  mouldy  jests  that  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  flint 
period,  but  in  the  painted  cheeks  of  the  circus  clown,  who  probably 
represents  the  survival  of  an  earlier  civilization  than  any  to  be  observed 


454 


THE   COMEDY. 


elsewhere  in  the  community,  and  in  the  fool's  cap  that  still  lingers  in 
the  schoolroom  for  the  correction  of  careless  boys.  Punch  himself,  the 
fantastic  figure  of  fun  that  we  see  every  week,  carries  us  back  by  his 
uniform  to  a  very  remote  past.  Aristophanes  shows  us  the  venerable 
forms  of  what  was  already  antiquity  in  the  allegorical  personifications 
that  crowd  his  pages,  and  in  the  conventional  merry-making  of  his 
plays,  his  drastic  rendering  of  old  jokes  by  living  beings  who  act  them 
out.  The  tragedy  outgrew  its  inheritance  from  older  times  in  its  swift 
development  from  ^schylus  to  Euripides,  and  became,  as  it  were,  the 
organ  of  progress,  the  outlet  for  the  expression  of  the  new  thought  that 
made  its  home  in  Athens,  while  the  comedy  retained  its  old  forms  and 
became  a  strictly  conservative  force,  its  literary  method  remaining  the 
contemporary  of  the  thought  that  it  uttered. 


GRECIAN    FARMERS. 


In  the  Acharnians  one  will  find  few  traces  of  subtle  work ;  no  other 
play  of  Aristophanes  is  fuller  of  roaring  horse-play  than  this, — horse- 
play tempered  with  corrosive  satire  that  must  have  burned  into  some 
of  the  objects  of  his  condemnation, — and  its  abundant  and  vivacious 
merriment  may  well  serve  to  indicate  to  what  an  extent  the  old  comedy 
was  untrammeled  by  literary  traditions.  In  this  play  the  author  set 
before  his  public  a  serious  thought,  but  he  clothed  it  in  a  form  which 
is  neither  comedy  nor  farce,  as  we  understand  those  words,  but  rather 
with  bubbling,  over-running  freedom  and  extravagance  and  the  most 
lavish  invention.  The  subject  is  a  denunciation  of  the  Peloponnesian 
war,  which  had  been  raging  for  five  years  and  had  done  great  mischief 
to  the  regions  lying  outside  of  Athens.  The  Athenians  maintained 
their  courage  in  spite  of  all  their  reverses ;  a  few  years  earlier  the 


THE  ACHARNIANS— OPPOSITION    TO    THE    WAR.  455 

plague  had  raged  in  the  over-crowded  city  and  carried  away  Pericles, 
who  had  been  succeeded  by  the  demagogue  Cleon.  Yet,  it  was  against 
the  military  spirit  that  Aristophanes  made  bold  to  speak,  and  in 
selecting  the  Acharnians  he  chose  the  most  vigorous  supporters  of  the 
war  as  the  object  of  his  satire.  The  suburb  in  which  they  lived  lay 
about  eight  miles  from  Athens,  and  every  year  it  had  been  exposed  to 
the  ravages  of  the  enemy ;  but  their  spirit  was  unbroken,  and  these 
charcoal  burners  (for  preparing  charcoal  was  their  main  occupation), 
formed  a  large  part  of  the  military  contingent.  The  leading  character 
Dicaeopolis,  or  good  citizen,  is  a  farmer  who  has  been  driven  from  the 
country  to  seek  protection  within  the  walls  of  the  city,  and  is  anxious 
for  the  restoration  of  peace.  At  the  opening  of  the  play  he  is  found 
sitting  in  the  Pnyx,  where  the  citizens  are  accustomed  to  hold  their 
public  meetings,  and  there  he  waits  for  them  to  assemble.  Meanwhile, 
he  recounts  his  joys  and  sorrows,  and  the  dramatist's  tongue  begins  its 
lashing : 

"  How  oft  have  I  been  vexed  to  the  very  soul ! 
How  seldom  had  a  treat !     A  brace,  perhaps  ; 
Two  brace,  at  most  —  and  then  my  disappointments  — 
Oh,  they  were  miUions,  bilHons, —  sea-sand-illions. 
Come,  then  :     What  did  I  really  enjoy  ? 
Yes  :  one  sight  fill'd  my  soul  with  delectation, 
Cleon  disgorging  those  five  talents.     Ah, 
How  I  enjoy'd  it !     How  I  love  the  Knights 
Still  for  that  deed,  one  worthy  Hellas  thanks. 
But  then,  per  contra  stands  that  stage  surprise 
Most  shocking,  when  I  sat  with  mouth  agape 
Waiting  for  ^schylus,  and  the  crier  called  — 
'  Theognis,  bring  your  chorus  on  ';  just  fancy 
The  shock  it  gave  me." 

Here  we  have  the  earliest  extant  reference  of  Aristophanes  to  Cleon, 
between  whom  waged  bitter  strife,  and  the  scratch  at  the  frigid  trage- 
dies of  Theognis,  but  these  are  only  introductory  to  the  complaint  of 
the  hero  over  the  dilatoriness  of  the  citizens,  and  especially  of  the 
presidents,  who  only  come  in  at  the  last  minute  : 

"  Pushing  and  crushing 
To  get  at  the  best  seats,  like  streams  they  roll  on  ! 
For  peace  they  never  care." 

Dicaeopolis,  however,  has  chosen  a  good  place  from  which  he  can 
howl  down  all  those  who  shall  speak  of  anything  but  peace.  When 
the  meeting  is  opened  Amphitheus,  a  demi-god,  announces  himself 
with  a  formality  parodying  the  tragic  manner  of  Euripides,  and  asserts 
that  the  gods  have  given  him  a  special  license  to  make  a  peace  with 
Sparta ;  he  would  be  grateful,  however,  for  a  small  contribution  from 


456  THE   COMEDY. 

the  presiding  officers.  He  is  instantly  dragged  away,  and  the  Persian 
ambassadors  appear  upon  the  stage.  Curiously  enough,  in  a  single 
line  which  they  utter,  later  Orientalists  have  discovered  fairly  good 
ancient  Persian,  which  had  proved  a  stumbling-block  to  those  who 
tried  to  interpret  it  as  bad  Greek.  These  men  are  represented  as 
ridiculous  creatures  ;  their  words  are  translated  into  a  promise  of 
money,  and  the  accompanying  Greeks  give  absurd  excuses  for  the  long 
time  they  have  been  absent,  drawing  pay.  The  ambassadors  are  in- 
vited to  a  public  dinner,  which  incident  gives  the  last  touch  to  the 
wrath  of  Dicaeopolis,  so  that  he  at  once  asks  of  Amphitheus  a  peace 
for  himself  and  family  with  Sparta.  Then  Theorus  enters  to  report 
upon  his  success  in  seeking  alliance  with  Thrace.  He  brings  an  army 
on  the  stage  that  can  be  compared  only  with  Falstaff's  forces.  Al- 
though the  native  troops  are  not  paid,  these  worthless  allies  are  almost 
engaged,  when  Dicaeopolis  breaks  up  the  meeting  and  their  acceptance 
is  postponed. 

Immediately  Amphitheus  returns,  having  narrowly  escaped  mobbing 
at  the  hands  of  the  Acharnians,  with  three  samples  of  peace  in  wine- 
jars  for  Dicaeopolis  to  choose  from.  The  five  and  ten  years'  truce  he 
rejects,  but  the  thirty  years'  truce  contents  him  and  off  he  goes.  No 
sooner  is  he  away  than  the  chorus  of  Acharnians  comes  on,  in  search 
of  the  peace-loving  rascal.  Here  the  old  form  of  the  comedy  survives: 
Dicaeopolis  sings  a  phallic  hymn  in  praise  of  the  joys  of  peace  and  in 
condemnation  of  the  horrors  of  war,  and  then  afterward  he  discusses 
with  the  angry  chorus  what  he  has  just  done.  How  full  the  humor  of 
Aristophanes  is  of  malicious  invention  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that 
he  caricatures  here  a  play  of  Euripides,  who,  in  his  Telephus,  now 
lost,  had  let  one  of  the  characters  produce  a  royal  infant  whom  he 
threatened  to  kill  with  his  sword  if  he  were  not  granted  a  hearing ; 
Dicaeopolis  brings  forward  a  coal-scuttle  wrapped  up  in  long 
clothes  and  threatens  to  run  it  through.  This  overwhelms  the 
Acharnians  : 

"  We  are  done  for!     Do  not  kill  him  !     Our  own  demesman!     Oh,  forbear! 
Oh,  that  scuttle !     Do  not  harm  him  !     Spare  him,  we  beseech  thee,  spare  ! 
Die.  Bawl  away,  for  I  shall  slay  him,     I'll  not  hear  you,  on  my  soul. 
Chor.  Oh,  mine  own  familiar  comrade  !     Oh,  my  noble  heart  of  coal ! 

Die.  But  just  now  you  would  not  hear  me  speak  a  word  about  the  peace. 
Chor.  Speak  it  now,  and  praise  the  Spartans  to  the  top  of  your  caprice  ! 
For  1  never  will  prove  traitor  to  my  little  scuttle  here  !  " 

Before  getting  to  the  argument,  Dicaeopolis  wishes  to  make  the 
most  complete  preparations,  and  for  this  purpose  he  seeks  the  aid  of 
Euripides,  going  to  his  house  to  borrow  some  of  the  tattered  garments 
in  which  that  poet's  heroes  were  accustomed  to  be  arrayed.     He  asks 


EURIPIDES  IN   THE  ACHARNIANS.  457 

for  one  thing  and  another  until  finally  he  accumulates   nearly  all  the 
tragedian's  pathetic  properties. 
He  asks  if  Euripides  is  in  : 

Ceph.  Even  so. 

His  soul's  abroad  collecting  versicles  ; 

His  bodily  presence  here  play-mongering 

In  a  garret. 
Die.  Happy,  happy,  happy  poet ! 

Whose  slave  can  logic  chop  so  learnedly  : 

Summon  him. 
Ceph.  But  I  could  not. 
Die.   But  you  must. 

I  will  not  go  away  :  I'll  keep  on  knocking. 

Euripides,  my  sweet  Euripides  ! 

Open  to  me,  if  ever  you  admitted 

A  mortal  man.     I'm  Dicasopolis 

Of  Chollid  ward. 
Eur.  This  is  no  holiday. 
Die.  Well,  bid  them  turn  the  house-front  and  display 

Th'  interior. 
Eur.  But  I  could  not. 
Die.  But  you  must. 

Eur.  I'll  do,  then,  as  you  ask,  but  won't  come  down. 
Die.  Euripides  ! 
Eur.  What  screamest.'' 
Die.  Why  not  write 

Down  here,  instead  of  perching  in  that  cockloft  ? 

That's  why  your  characters  go  lame  before 

They  come  to  us.     And  what's  the  use  of  all 

These  sorry  weeds  and  stage  rags  .'*     That  is  why 

You  put  so  many  beggars  on  the  stage. 

But  I  beseech  you,  for  sweet  pity's  sake. 

Give  me  some  rag  from  some  old  worn-out  play, 

For  to  the  Chorus  I  am  bound  to  make 

A  speech  ;  and  if  I  fail,  'twill  cost  my  life. 
Eur.  Rags,  and  what  rags  ?     Those  in  which  Oeneus  here 

Erst  played,  that  "  very  feeble,  fond  old  man  "  .'* 
Die.  Not  Oeneus,  no.     There  was  a  worse  than  that. 
Eur.  Phoenix,  blind  Phoenix  .'' 
Die.  No,  not  his;  there  was 

A  character  more  ragged  still  than  Phcenix. 
Eur.  What  "  thing  of  shreds  and  patches  "  would'st  thou  have  .'' 

Is  it  the  beggar  Philoctetes'  rags  .'' 
Die.  No.     Something  far  more  beggarly  than  his. 
Eur.  What,  then  ">    The  squalid  tatters  of  the  lame  Bellerophon  .-* 
Die.  No,  lame  he  was  indeed. 

And  used  to  beg,  and  well  could  wag  his  tongue. 
Eur.  I  know  the  one  you  think  of:  Telephus, 

The  Mysian  king. 
Die.  The  very  man. 
Eur.  Here,  boy  ! 

Bring  me  the  tattered  garb  of  Telephus; 

It  lies  upon  the  Thyestean  rags, 

'Twixt  them  and  Ino's.     Take  them,  there  they  are. 
Die.  O,  Zeus,  that  lookest  down  on  everything. 

And  seest  through  them  ail,  may  I  succeed 

In  garbing  me  in  guise  most  miserable. 


458  THE    COMEDY. 

And  since  you've  been  so  kind,  Euripides, 

Lend  me  the  other  properties  that  go 

Along  with  these  :  I  mean  the  Mysian  cap, 

"  For  I  this  day  must  play  the  beggar  here  — 

Be  what  I  am,  but  other  far  appear." 

The  house  must  recognize  me  as  myself  — 

The  Chorus  standing  by  like  fools,  that  I 

At  the  old  cocks  may  poke  my  quiddities. 
Eur.  Here.     "Thy  device  is  shrewd,  and  right  thy  rede." 
Die.   Oh,  blessings  on  you ;  "  and  on  Telephus  — 

What's  in  my  thoughts."     Bravo,  I'm  getting  full 

Of  quibbles.     But  I  want  a  beggar's  staff.  ' 
Eur.  Take,  then,  the  staf¥,  and  leave  the  "  marble  halls." 
Die.  My  soul,  thou  seest  how  I'm  driven  forth. 

Though  many  properties  I  lack.     But  thou 

Be  in  thy  begging  whine  importunate. 

{To  Euripides)  Lend  me  a  basket  that  the  lamp  has  burn'd 

A  hole  in. 
Eur.  Of  this  wicker  thing,  poor  wretch, 

What  need  hast  thou  } 
Die.  Need  have  I  none,  but  wantit. 
Eur.  I  tell  you,  you  annoy  me,  and  must  go. 
Die.  Ah  !  may  God  bless  you  —  like  your  blessed  mother. 
Eur.  Now  pray  be  off. 
Die.  Well,  give  me  just  one  thing  — 

A  little  cup  with  broken  rim. 
Eur.  Oh,  take  it. 

A  murrain  with  it  !     You're  a  bore,  I  tell  you. 
Die.  Thou  knowest  not  yet  what  mischief  thou  art  doing. 

But,  sweet  Euripides,  just  one  thing  more. 

A  pipkin  with  a  hole  in't,  plugg'd  with  sponge. 
Eur.  You're  robbing  me  of  all  my  tragic  art. 

Take  it  and  go. 
Die.  I  will.     And  yet,  how  can  I ! 

One  thing  I  need,  and  if  I  get  it  not 

I'm  ruined.     Listen,  dear  Euripides  ; 

If  I  get  this  I'll  go  and  come  not  back  :  — 

Some  refuse  cabbage  leaves  to  fill  my  basket. 
Eur.  You'll  ruin  me  :  there  !  —  now  you've  taken  all 

My  tragic  genius. 

With  this  aid  DicaeopoHs  is  able  to  make  so  moving  an  appeal  in 
behalf  of  peace,  and  so  effective  a  defense  of  the  Spartans,  that  he 
secures  the  favor  of  half  the  chorus  ;  the  other  half  invoke  the  aid  of 
the  warlike  Lamachus,  a  famous  general.  Lamachus  vows  a  renewal 
of  hostilities,  while  Dicaeopolis  offers  free  trade  to  Megara,  Boeotia, 
and  the  whole  Peloponnesus. 

At  this  point  comes  the  parabasis,  in  which  Aristophanes  directly 
addressed  the  audience  and  defended  himself  from  the  charge  of  libel- 
ing the  state.  Afterward  the  chorus  complained  of  the  way  in  which 
old  servants  were  neglected,  and  the  extent  to  which  they  were  ill- 
treated  in  courts  of  law,  and  no  contrast  is  greater  than  that  between 
the  reveling  of  the  rest  of  the  play  and  these  serious  addresses  to  the 
Athenians. 


ANIMATION  AND  HUMOR   OF   THE  ACHARNIANS. 


459 


When  the  play  begins  again,  people  have  begun  to  arrive  at  Dicae- 
opolis's  market  in  order  to  trade.  A  Megarian  brings  his  daughters 
to  sell  as  pigs,  and  Dicaeopolis  purchases  them  for  some  salt  and  gar- 
lic, and  saves  the  Megarian  from  an  informer.  Then  a  Boeotian  comes 
with  an  abundance  of  valuable  things  which  he  sells  for  one  obnoxious 
informer,  namely,  Nicharchus,  who  threatened  to  denounce  the 
stranger  for  bringing  a  wick  into  the  city,  wherewith  he  might  have 
burned  down  the  dockyard.  The  chorus  sing  a  lyric  in  praise  of 
peace,  and    then  appears  a  herald  who    promises  a  skin  of  wine  to 


MARKET   SCENE. 


the  most  successful  tippler.  Dicaeopolis  makes  his  preparations,  and 
gives  to  no  one  a  taste  of  his  precious  wine  except  to  a  bride  who 
wants  a  drop  in  order  to  keep  her  husband  at  home.  Lamachus 
receives  orders  to  go  out  into  the  snow  on  military  service,  and  Di- 
caeopolis receives  an  invitation  to  dinner ;  finally  they  both  return,  the 
general  wounded  and  wretched,  and  Dicaeopolis  drunk  and  happy. 
Thus  the  advantages  of  peace  are  most  vividly  portrayed,  for  the  far- 
cical contrast  between  the  bruised  soldier  and  the  wine-flown  lover 
of  peace  gives  an  impressive  close  to  the  play.  Its  vinous  flavor 
belongs  to  it  as  a  part  of  the  worship  of  Dionysus,  and  the  final 
absurdity  keeps  it  well  in  the  region  of  comedy. 

No  one  has  ever  worked  with  a  broader  brush  than  has  Aristophanes 
in  this  play  and  the  next  one,  the  Knights.  They  are  both  compact 
with  life.  The  humor  moves  in  a  great  current  that  drags  with  it  the 
direct  inculcation  of  the  sweetness  of  peace,  contempt  for  ambitious 
leaders  and  perpetual  reproof  of  Euripides.  The  play  is  full  of  lines 
that  caricature  and  parody  lines  from  his  Telephus  ;  a  messenger  comes 
in  and  mocks  the  long  speeches  of  the  tragic   bearers  of  evil  tidings; 


46o  THE   COMEDY. 

the  informers,  a  class  that  poisoned  the  political  life  of  Athens  at  its 
roots,  are  denounced  most  bitterly.  The  play  abounds  with  life  ;  it  is 
magnificently  rich  in  reality,  a  vast  outbreak  of  tumultuous  emotion, 
not  a  mere  tender  stream  of  acid  comment  or  ill-natured  sarcasm.  Only 
Rabelais  comes  so  near  being  an  elemental  force. 


III. 

The  Knights,  which  appeared  in  the  next  year,  424  B.C.,  bears  many 
marks  of  likeness  to  the  Acharnians,  and  this  time  it  is  Cleon,  the 
demagogue,  who  is  marked  for  slaughter.  All  the  earlier  plays  of 
Aristophanes  had  been  brought  out  by  some  one  else  ;  for  what  reason 
is  not  known,  although  it  has  been  suggested  that  perhaps  the  youth 
of  the  author  stood  in  the  way  of  his  undertaking  the  task.  He  not 
only  brought  out  this  play,  he  also  took  the  part  of  Cleon,  and  since 
no  one  was  willing  to  make  a  mask  that  should  represent  the  features 
of  that  well-known  man,  Aristophanes  appeared  without  a  mask,  but 
with  his  face  smeared  with  the  lees  of  wine,  after  the  old  Bacchic 
custom,  in  such  a  way,  however,  as  to  suggest  the  man  whom  he  was 
caricaturing.  Nowhere  is  Cleon's  name  mentioned,  possibly  out  of 
deference  to  some  law  forbidding  that  irreverent  assault,  but  the  attack 
lost  none  of  its  point  by  that  prohibition;  a  joke  is  not  injured  by 
being  hidden,  and  skating  on  thin  ice  always  attracts  attention.  The 
play  is  an  improvement  on  the  Acharnians  ;  Aristophanes  had  a  single 
object  in  view,  and  every  thing  is  brought  to  bear  on  that,  and  certainly 
it  required  much  courage  for  a  young  author  to  attack,  single-handed, 
the  most  powerful  man  in  Athens.  Cleon  had  made  an  enemy  of  the 
poet,  not  only  by  his  political  position,  but  also  by  trying  to  disprove 
the  claims  of  Aristophanes  to  Athenian  citizenship,  in  his  wrath  against 
the  lost  play,  the  Babylonians.  The  poet  escaped  legal  defeat,  but  he 
maintained  his  grudge  against  the  demagogue.  One  can  not  but  feel 
an  admiration  for  a  state  that  permitted  such  absolute  freedom  as 
Athens  enjoyed ;  no  comic  poet  ever  had  half  such  license  as  abounds 
here.  An  American  political  contest  is  coldly  conventional  by  the  side 
of  it.  Witty  as  Aristophanes  was,  it  will,  of  course,  be  understood  that 
the  position  which  he  held  as  a  fearless  opponent  of  what  he  regarded 
as  serious  political  errors  did  not  depend  on  his  personal  audacity 
alone,  for  he  would  have  been  powerless  if  he  had  not  expressed  a 
wide-spread  feeling,  and  he  would  not  have  spoken  so  frankly  if  the 
condition  of  Athens  had  not  been  one  that  permitted  the  utmost  free- 
dom of  speech.  Comedy  existed,  not  as  one  form  of  literary  amuse- 
ment, or  even  as  a  corrective  for  the  universal  weaknesses  of  human 


LICENES  OF   THE  DRAMA— POLITICAL    CRITICISM.  461 

nature,  but  as  a  direct  expression  of  the  keen  political  interest  of  an 
eager  people,  and  it  was  this  quality  that  it  possessed  as  an  exponent 
of  public  life  that  gave  it  its  importance  at  the  time  and  makes  it 
valuable  to  us  as  a  record  of  the  people  speaking  through  their  favorite 
mouthpiece  on  current  events.  Only  in  freedom  can  such  license 
exist,  when  there  are  no  panicky  terrors  about  propriety  or  safety. 
Long  custom  secured  the  writer  from  the  charge  of  indecorum  or 
undue  harshness,  and  the  result  is  that  we  see  in  his  comedies  the 
failures,  or  what  were  considered  the  failures,  of  Athens,  as  we  see  the 
lofty  and  noble  aims  in  the  tragedies.  At  no  time  in  the  world's  history 
have  there  been  known  such  vividness  and  intensity. 

The  Knights  opens  with  the  grumbling  of  two  distinguished  generals, 
Nicias  and  Demosthenes,  who  are  represented  as  slaves,  over  the 
unreasonableness  of  their  master,  Demos,  in  whom  is  personified  the 
Athenian  public,  just  as  John  Bull  and  Brother  Jonathan  respectively 
personify  all  Englishmen  and  all  Americans.  Demos  has  just  been 
thrashing  them  when  they  run  forth  complaining  and  whimpering. 
Immediately  a  distinction  is  drawn  between  the  two  men  :  Demos- 
thenes is  the  bolder,  and  Nicias  is  less  positive,  an  echo  of  his  compan- 
ion, and  these  characteristics  are  maintained  throughout.  This  is  the 
way  in  which  Demosthenes  describes  Demos,  and  pays  his  respects  to 
Cleon,  who  is  mentioned  as  the  Paphlagonian.     Demos,  he  says,  is 

"  a  man  in  years, 
A  kind  of  bran-fed,  husky,  testy  character. 
Choleric  and  brutal  at  times,  and  partly  deaf. 
It's  near  about  a  month  now,  that  he  went 
And  bought  a  slave  out  of  a  tanner's  yard, 
A  Paphlagonian  born,  and  brought  him  home, 
As  wicked  a  slanderous  wretch  as  ever  lived. 
This  fellow,  the  Paphlagonian,  has  found  out 
The  blind  side  of  our  master's  understanding, 
With  fawning  and  wheedling  in  this  kind  of  way : 
'  Would  not  you  please  go  to  the  bath,  sir  }  surely 
It's  not  worth  while  to  attend  the  courts  to-day.' 
And,  '  Would  not  you  please  to  take  a  little  refreshment  ? 
And  there's  that  nice  hot  broth  —  and  here's  the  threepence 
You  left  behind  you  —  And  would  not  you  order  supper  ? ' 
Moreover,  when  we  get  things  out  of  compliment 
As  a  present  for  our  master,  he  contrives 
To  snatch  'em  and  serve  'em  up  before  our  faces. 
I'd  made  a  Spartan  cake  at  Pylos  lately. 
And  mixed  and  kneaded  it  well,  and  watched  the  baking; 
But  he  stole  round  before  me  and  served  it  up. 

if.  -if.  if.  Up.  ^  -if. 

Sometimes  the  old  man  falls  into  moods  and  fancies. 
Searching  the  prophecies  till  he  gets  bewildered  ; 
And  then  the  Paphlagonian  plies  him  up, — 
Driving  him  mad  with  oracles  and  predictions. 
And  that's  his  harvest." 


462  THE    COMEDY. 

The  Spartan  cake  refers  to  the  success  of  Cleon  in  suddenly  accepting 
command  and  capturing  a  number  of  Spartans  at  Pylos  when  he  was 
urged  to  make  good  his  statement  of  what  the  generals  should  do. 
Certainly,  demagogues  who  do  what  they  promise  can  afford  to  endure 
ridicule. 

Then,  when  Demosthenes  gets  hold  of  some  wine,  he  finds  some 
reports  of  the  oracles  which  declare  that  Pericles  shall  have  such  and 
such  successors,  who  shall  be  followed  by 

"  a  viler  rascal 
.     .     .     In  the  person  of  a  Paphlagonian  tanner, 
A  loud,  rapacious,  leather-selling  ruffian." 

He,  in  his  turn,  is  to  be  superseded  by  a  sausage-seller.  Thereupon 
there  appears  a  sausage-seller  to  whom  Demosthenes  communicates 
the  words  of  the  oracle. 

Naturally  the  humble  vendor  of  sausages  is  as  much  confused  as 
elated  at  this  swift  promotion,  and  naturally  has  some  doubts  about 
his  capacity. 

There  is  nothing  easier,  Demosthenes  assures  him  : 

"  Stick  to  your  present  practice  :  follow  it  up 
In  your  new  calling.     Mangle,  mince,  and  mash. 
Confound  and  hack,  and  jumble  things  together ! 
And  interlard  your  rhetoric  with  lumps 
Of  mawkish  sweet  and  greasy  flattery. 
Be  fulsome,  coarse,  and  bloody  !  —  For  the  rest, 
All  qualities  combine,  all  circumstances. 
To  entitle  and  equip  you  for  command  ; 
A  filthy  voice,  a  villainous  countenance, 
A  vulgar  birth,  and  parentage,  and  breeding. 
Nothing  is  wanting  —  absolutely  nothing." 

The  sausage-seller  still  hesitates,  saying  : 

"  For  all  our  wealthier  people  are  alarm 'd 
And  terrified  at  him  ;  and  the  meaner  sort 
In  a  manner  stupefied,  grown  dull  and  dumb." 

Demosthenes  says : 

"  Why  there's  a  thousand  lusty  cavahers 
Ready  to  back  you,  that  detest  and  scorn  him  ; 
And  every  worthy,  well-born  citizen  ; 
And  every  candid,  critical  spectator  ; 
And  I  myself ;  and  the  help  of  Heaven  to  boot :  — 
And  never  fear  ;  his  face  will  not  be  seen. 
For  all  the  manufacturers  of  masks, 
From  cowardice,  refused  to  model  it. 
It  matters  not ;  his  person  will  be  known  : 
Our  audience  is  a  shrewd  one  —  they  can  guess." 


RIDICULE   OF  CLEON  BY  ARISTOPHANES. 


463 


Certainly  the  entrance  of  Cleon  could  not  be  more  cleverly  pre- 
pared, and  he  comes  blustering  on  the  stage,  denouncing  treachery 
and  plots,  so  that  the  sausage-seller  starts  to  run  off,  but  Demosthenes 
encourages  him,  and  the  chorus  of  knights  appears  and  begins  to 
denounce  Cleon  : 

"  Close  around  him,  and  confound  him,  the  confounder  of  us  ail. 
Pelt  him,  pummel  him  and  maul  him  ;  rummage,  ransack,  overhaul  him, 
Overbear  him  and  outbawl  him  ;  bear  him  dow^n  and  bring  him  under. 
Bellow  like  a  burst  of  thunder,  robber  !  harpy  !  sink  of  plunder  !  "  etc. 

The  choice  of  the  knights  for  the  chorus  was  most  discreet,  for  this 
class  represented  the  bitterest  opposition  to  Cleon,  and  felt  the  strong- 
est yearning  for  his  overthrow  and  the  restoration  of  an  oligarchy  in 


PEDAGOGUE. 


which  they  should  be  powerful.  Cleon  had  offended  them  by  his 
devotion  to  the  baser  populace,  and  what  we  have  already  seen  of 
the  play  shows  that  the  fundamental  discord  is  the  familiar  conflict 
between  an  antiquated  aristocracy  and  a  vulgar  democracy.  As  we 
go  on  we  shall  see  how  the  knights  consented  to  overthrow  their 
present  antagonist  by  joining  hands  with  a  yet  lower  man,  for  political 
science  teaches  that  men's  actions  at  different  periods  of  the  world's 
history  are  apt  to  move  in  similar  circles. 


464  THE    COMEDY. 

The  chorus  tell  the  sausage-seller  that  if  he  will  outdo  Cleon  in 
impudence  the  victory  is  his,  and  the  fight  begins  and  rages  with 
the  excess  of  violence  which  two  such  blackguards  would  naturally 
exhibit  when  entirely  free  from  literary  conventions.  There  is  no 
limit  to  their  foul-mouthed  abuse  of  each  other.     Thus : 

Cleon.  Dogs  and  villains,  you  shall  die  ! 
S.  S.   Ay !  I  can  scream  ten  times  as  high. 
Cl.   I'll  overbear  ye,  and  outbawl  ye. 
S.  S.  But  I'll  outscream  ye,  and  outsquall  ye. 
Cl.   I'll  impeach  you,  whilst  abroad. 

Commanding  on  a  foreign  station. 
S.  S.  I'll  have  you  sliced,  and  slashed,  and  scort(!. 
Cl.  Your  lion's  skin  of  reputation. 

Shall  be  flay'd  off  your  back  and  tanned. 
S.  S.  I'll  take  those  guts  of  yours  in  hand. 
Cl.  Come  bring  your  eyes  and  mine  to  meet ! 

And  stare  at  me  without  a  wink  ! 
S.  S.  Yes !  in  the  market-place  and  street, 
I  had  my  birth  and  breeding  too  ; 
And  from  a  boy  to  blush  or  blink, 
I  scorn  the  thing  as  much  as  you." 

And  so  the  two  exchange  the  compliments  of  Billingsgate,  rolling 
in  the  mire  which  serves  as  a  magazine  of  offensive  missiles,  until  Cleon 
hurries  to  the  Senate  to  make  short  work  of  his  adversary  with  all 
manner  of  accusations. 

At  this  point  occurs  the  parabasis,  in  the  more  important  part  of 
which  Aristophanes  takes  occasion  to  denounce  Magnes,  Crates,  and 
Cratinus.  His  insults  to  Cratinus  brought  swift  punishment,  for  in 
the  next  year,  as  has  been  said  above,  the  old  veteran  woke  up  and 
wrote  a  play  that  won  for  him  the  first  prize  over  the  Clouds  of  Aris- 
tophanes. The  poet  also  asks  the  favor  of  the  gods  and  sounds  the 
praises  of  the  knights.  When  the  play  begins  again  the  sausage-seller 
recounts  how  he  got  ahead  of  Cleon  in  securing  the  favor  of  the  Sen- 
ate. Cleon,  it  seems,  had  burst  in  with  the  statement  that  the  fisher- 
men had  just  landed  with  the  largest  haul  of  pilchards  that  had  been 
known  since  the  war  began,  and  had  proposed  that  they  buy  the  fish 
while  they  were  cheap.  Then  he  moved  that  a  general  thanksgiving 
be  proclaimed  and  a  hundred  oxen  sacrificed.  This  was  the  bid  of 
a  demagogue,  because  it  was  well  understood  by  the  audience  that 
only  the  thighs  and  fat  were  offered  to  the  gods,  and  that  all  the  rest 
fell  to  the  poor  citizens.  Consequently  the  sausage-seller  proposed  a 
sacrifice  of  two  hundred  oxen,  and  so  outdid  Cleon.  That  baffled 
leader  then  proposed  that  the  Senate  delay  their  purchase  of  the  fish 
to  hear  news  of  peace  brought  from  Lacedaemon  by  a  herald,  but  the 
Senate  think  it  no  time  to  listen  to  talk  about  peace  when  fish  are  so 


MEANING  OF    THE  ACHARNIANS— PRAISE   OF    THE  PAST.        465 

cheap — a  pleasing  slur  on  Athenian  politics — and  they  adjourn.  The 
sausage-seller  bought  all  the  fennel  in  the  market  to  present  to  the 
populace  for  their  fish-sauce,  and  so  won  their  warm  gratitude.  The 
chorus  are  loud  in  their  encouragement : 

"  With  fair  event  your  first  essay  began, 
Betokening  a  predestined  happy  man. 
The  villain  now  shall  meet 

In  equal  war 
A  more  accomplished  cheat, 

A  viler  far ; 
With  turns  and  tricks  more  various. 
More  artful  and  nefarious. 
—  But  thou  ! 
Bethink  thee  now ; 
Rouse  up  thy  spirit  to  the  next  endeavor ! 
—  Our  hands  and  hearts  and  will. 
Both  heretofore  and  ever 

Are  with  thee  still." 

The  sausage-seller  calls  out : 

"  The  Paphlagonian  !     Here  he's  coming,  foaming 
And  swelling  like  a  breaker  in  the  surf. 
With  his  hobgoblin  countenance  and  look  ; 
For  all  the  world  as  if  he  would  swallow  me  up." 

Not  that  Cleon  was  a  Paphlagonian,  but  the  word  accused  him  of 
foreign  birth,  the  charge  he  had  brought  against  Aristophanes,  and 
carried  with  it  besides  that  insult — and  the  Paphlagonians  bore  an  ill 
name — a  punning  allusion  to  his  foaming,  sputtering  manner  of  speak- 
ing. Here  he  undertakes  to  browbeat  the  man  who  begins  to  appear 
like  a  formidable  rival.  He  appeals  to  Demos  himself,  and  it  is 
decided  that  they  shall  settle  their  superiority  before  the  people.  Then 
there  is  no  limit  to  their  extravagance  ;  each  tries  to  outdo  the  other 
with  flattery  of  Demos,  who  is  soon  won  by  the  sausage-seller's  inge- 
nious pertinacity.  Cleon  in  despair  asks  leave  to  get  some  oracles  that 
support  him,  and  his  rival  starts  off  to  get  his  own,  and  they  both 
return  staggering  under  their  loads.  There  is  an  amusing  match 
between  them  that  well  illustrates  the  credulity  of  the  people,  and 
then  the  sausage-seller  renews  his  bidding  for  the  popular  favor  and 
the  play  ends  with  his  unworthy  triumph.  The  sausage-seller,  or 
Agoracritus,  according  to  his  name,  which  is  at  last  announced,  makes 
Demos  over  anew  by  boiling  him,  and  the  Demos  comes  upon  the 
stage  in  his  rejuvenescence,  determined  that  justice  shall  be  done  and 
peace  made.  This  conclusion  brings  out  clearly  the  serious  meaning 
of  the  play,  and  the  hopefulness  of  the  conservative  who  sees  the  sole 
chance  for  the  future  in  the  glory  of  the  past.     Yet   where  else  could 


466  THE    COMEDY. 

he  look  for  it  ?  The  present,  even  allowing  for  violent  exaggeration 
in  his  presentation  of  it,  was  enough  to  fill  any  one  with  despair. 

The  question  of  the  justice  of  Aristophanes  will  be  decided  by  every 
one  according  to  his  feelings,  so  that  any  final  judgment  is  impossible. 
Circumstances,  at  least,  allow  us  to  approve  the  clearness  of  his  per- 
ceptions, for  the  glory  of  Athens  died  from  the  disease  which  he  por- 
trayed. The  vividness  of  his  drawing  needs  no  comment ;  right  or 
wrong,  his  political  feeling  and  enthusiasm  have  remained  unequaled. 
The  Athenians  could  laugh  at  this  rendering  of  their  infamous  weak- 
ness, and  yet  give  him  the  first  prize,  a  sure  test  of  fair-mindedness  or, 
possibly,  of  cynical  indifference. 

Whatever  the  emotion  by  which  the  populace  was  swayed,  the  lines 
of  Aristophanes,  at  least,  show  us  the  hot  conflict  that  was  waging 
between  what  was  deemed  venerable  in  the  past  and  what  was  thought 
to  be  revolutionary  in  the  present ;  and  the  mirror  that  Aristophanes 
held  up  before  his  audience  did  not  offend  on  the  side  of  flattery.  The 
play  shows  us  how  great  was  the  commotion  caused  by  the  struggle 
between  old  principles  and  new  methods,  and  indeed,  to  leave  the 
political  questions  that  it  invokes,  we  may  see  in  its  composition  the 
curious  juxtaposition  of  Cleon  and  the  allegorical  figure  of  the  people, 
personified  as  Demos,  which  bears  witness  to  the  preservation  of  an 
earlier  literary  form  in  their  most  vivid  application  to  current  events. 
Only  in  Shakspere  can  we  find  such  indifference  to  literary  by-laws, 
and  even  he  did  not  enjoy  the  same  absolute  freedom  that  distinguishes 
Aristophanes,  for  whom  no  rules  exist.  The  allegorical  figure  was,  to 
be  sure,  a  part  of  his  inheritance,  but  the  uses  to  which  it  was  put 
must  have  been  new,  because  never  before  had  Athenian  life  known 
the  intensity  of  its  mingling  glory  and  decay.  Never  were  the  heat 
and  confusion  of  actual  events  so  caught  and  set  down  as  in  his 
pathetic  pages.  While  the  tragedy  preserves  the  remoteness  of  a 
ritual,  the  comedy  is  rank  with  life ;  we  see  Athens  as  we  see  no  other 
city  of  the  past.  Elsewhere  we  may  behold  the  court,  the  church,  or 
a  mass  of  refined  people;  here  we  see  the  place  itself. 

IV. 

His  next  play,  the  Clouds,  is  not  so  easily  placed.  It  was  brought  out 
in  423  B.C.,  fourteen  months  after  the  Knights,  and  is  devoted  to  turning 
Socrates  to  contempt.  It  failed  of  success  on  the  stage,  as  has  been 
noted  above,  and  the  text  which  has  come  down  to  us  is  a  modified 
form  of  that  in  which  it  originally  appeared.  It  is  uncertain  whether 
this  failure  was  due  to  its  unjust  treatment  of  the  great  Greek  philo- 
sopher or,  as  has  been  suggested,  to  mere  lack  of  interest  in  a  remote 


CONTEMPTUOUS    TREATMENT  OF  SOCRATES— ITS  CAUSE.      467 

theme  or  in  its  presentation.  The  first  suggestion  is  an  unlikely  one ; 
that  the  Athenian  public  should  have  been  sensitive  to  a  contemptuous 
treatment  of  Socrates,  when  it  laughed  at  a  much  more  violent  attack 
on  a  trusted  leader  like  Cleon,  appears  impossible.  There  is  no  good 
reason  to  suppose  that  Socrates  was  in  any  way  popular.  He  was, 
doubtless,  a  man  of  influence  among  a  chosen  band,  but  even  in  Athens, 
in  spite  of  the  exaggerations  of  its  modern  admirers,  a  man  so  full  of 
the  new  spirit  must  have  held  the  position  which  a  philosopher  always 
holds  in  a  community  that  is  vain  of  its  own  intelligence.  His  death 
was  but  the  natural  end  of  a  life  that  aroused  wrath  whenever  it 
emerged  from  total  obscurity.  No  play  of  Aristophanes  has  proved 
so  unfavorable  as  this  to  the  fame  of  its  author,  who  has  appeared  to 
posterity  as  the  wilful  calumniator  of  an  honorable  man.  It  was  in 
this  light,  too,  that  he  appeared  in  antiquity  to  the  friends  of  Socrates. 
Plato,  in  his  Apology,  states  that  the  fatal  accusation  that  was  brought 
against  Socrates  was  prepared  by  Aristophanes  twenty-four  years 
before.  Yet,  even  he  brings  Aristophanes  into  his  Symposium  among 
the  friends  of  Socrates,  with  whom  he  discusses  the  nature  of  love. 
Although  Plato  would  have  no  comic  writers  in  his  ideal  state,  he  seems 
to  have  been  able  to  endure  them  in  actual  life  and  to  see  in  Aris- 
tophanes something  more  than  the  calumniator  of  his  friend.  It  is 
said  of  Socrates  that  he  attended  the  performance  of  the  Clouds  and 
watched  with  anger  the  way  in  which  he  was  caricatured.  What 
these  statements  establish  is  the  intelligent  comprehension  that  these 
distinguished  men  had  of  the  nature  of  the  comedy,  as  well  as  their 
superiority  to  personal  malice.  There  can  be  but  little  doubt  that 
Aristophanes,  who  was  a  firm  conservative,  meant  to  make  a  violent 
attack  upon  Socrates,  and  that  he  regarded  the  philosopher  as  a  foe  to 
the  state.  We  must  not  forget  that  Socrates  was  not  surrounded  by 
that  atmosphere  of  sanctity  through  which  posterity  sees  him  ;  he  was 
to  Aristophanes  but  a  fellow-citizen,  and  a  dangerous  one,  and  there  is 
no  hatred  deeper  than  that  which  men  feel  for  those  of  their  con- 
temporaries whom  they  regard  as  bigoted  conservatives  or  fantastic 
radicals,  as  the  case  may  be. 

We  must  also  make  great  allowance  for  the  form  of  expression  which 
lay  ready  to  the  hand  of  Aristophanes.  What  appears  to  us  injustice 
and  virulence  was  part  of  the  game,  was  a  legitimate  and  generally 
understood  method  of  attack.  We  see  something  of  the  same  kind  in 
our  political  contests,  and,  to  a  much  slighter  extent,  in  the  current 
badinage  between  men,  which  is  always  incomprehensible  to  those 
people  who  are  accustomed  to  regard  even  jesting  as  a  deadly  insult. 
What  is  permissible  in  serious  or  humorous  reproach  is  always  a  matter 
of  convention,  and  probably  nowhere  has  there  been  greater  freedom 


468  THE    COMEDY. 

than  among  the  Greeks.  Even  with  all  allowance,  it  is  hard  to  argue 
from  our  habits  to  the  license  of  the  old  comedy  ;  we  are  so  accustomed 
to  the  rule  of  literary  decorum,  to  a  keen  sense  of  personal  dignity 
which  could  never  have  been  understood  by  an  ancient  Greek,  to  an 
artificial  etiquette,  that  the  difference  appears  insurmountable.  The 
heat  of  the  discussions  between  Milton  and  Salmasius,  or  between 
Bentley  and  his  foes,  is  nearly  beyond  our  comprehension,  how  much 
more  the  scorn  of  Aristophanes.  The  comedy  was  yet  near  its  begin- 
ning when  license  was  absolutely  unbridled  ;  the  utmost  extravagance 
was  its  conventional  language.  So  much  was,  perhaps,  clear  to  all  the 
men  of  that  time,  who  saw  and  regretted  that  Socrates  was  attacked, 
but  distinguished  between  that  fact  and  the  permissible  exaggeration 
of  the  comedian's  language. 

If  we  grant  that  Aristophanes  enjoyed  almost  perfect  freedom, 
we  must  in  justice  confess  that  he  did  not  abuse  it  in  this  play. 
That  it  gives  a  faithful  presentation  of  Socrates  can  not  be  affirmed. 
Yet  we  do  not  turn  to  modern  burlesques  for  photographic  likenesses 
of  men  who  are  caricatured  in  them.  The  well-known  Pinafore  can 
not  be  the  only  authority  consulted  by  the  future  historian  of  the  Eng- 
lish navy,  and  even  the  eccentricities  of  modern  society  are  exagger- 
ated in  Patience.  In  the  same  way,  to  compare  great  things  with 
small,  Aristophanes  has  misrepresented  Socrates.  The  plot  of  the 
Clouds  is  very  simple.  Strepsiades,  a  dull-witted  rustic,  has  a  son 
Pheidippides — a  name  that  suggests  the  greater  elegance  of  that  day, 
as  the  English  names  of  streets  and  apartment  houses  suggest  the  cur- 
rent Anglomania — who  has  nearly  ruined  his  father  by  his  extrava- 
gance. The  poor  old  man  determine^  to  visit  Socrates,  to  learn  from 
that  inventor  of  novelties  how  he  may  overreach  his  creditors,  for  Soc- 
rates was  famous  for  confounding  those  who  would  argue  with  him, 
and  bringing  forth  the  most  unexpected  results.  The  interest  which 
some  of  the  philosophers  took  in  the  study  of  physical  science  is  here 
inaccurately  ascribed  to  Socrates  and  turned  to  ridicule.  Socrates 
himself,  after  a  common  fashion  of  Aristophanes — that  of  representing 
figures  of  speech  by  concrete  images — is  represented  as  suspended  in 
a  basket  above  the  things  of  this  world,  and  the  companion  of  the 
Clouds,  who  form  the  chorus.  The  accusation  of  blasphemy  which 
inevitably  awaits  men  who  try  to  give  a  scientific  explanation  of  phe- 
nomena, is  brought  against  Socrates.  Strepsiades  asks  what  moves 
the  clouds.  Is  it  Zeus?  "  Not  at  all,"  answers  the  philosopher,  "  it 
is  ethereal  Vortex."  ''  Vortex?  "  says  Strepsiades.  "It  had  escaped 
my  notice  that  Zeus  did  not  exist  and  that  Vortex  now  ruled  in  his 
stead."  The  humor  here  is  certainly  not  gross,  and  inasmuch  as  in 
the  existing  parabasis  the  poet  apologizes   for  his  failure  to  win  the 


THE  DETERIORATION  OF  ATHENS.  469 

prize  when  the  play  was  brought  out,  and  makes  a  great  point  of  his 
superiority  in  refinement  to  other  writers  of  comedies,  it  is  not  impos- 
sible that  his  play  failed  from  a  very  different  cause  than  that  which 
occurs  to  modern  commentators,  and  that  his  jests  were  too  subtle 
and  too  free  from  extravagance  to  please  an  audience  that  delighted 
in  a  seasoning  of  rank  wantonness.  Even  Strepsiades  is  unable  to 
profit  from  the  teachings  of  Socrates,  so  he  sends  his  son  to  learn  the 
modern  arts.  Before  he  appears,  a  discussion,  not  unlike  that  in  a 
mediaeval  morality,  takes  place  between  the  unjust  and  the  just  cause, 
personifications  respectively  of  the  new  and  the  old  manners.  The 
young  man  proves  an  apt  pupil,  and  when  Strepsiades  drives  away 
his  creditors  with  blows  and  fanciful  arguments,  he  is  himself  beaten 
by  Pheidippides,  who  proves  conclusively  that  he  is  right,  inas- 
much as  Strepsiades  beat  him  when  a  child.  Strepsiades  suggests  that 
he  may  thrash  his  boy  if  he  should  ever  have  one  ;  "  but,"  says  Phei- 
dippides, "  if  I  should  not  have  one,  I  shall  have  wept  for  nothing,  and 
you  will  die  laughing  at  me."  The  end  of  the  business  is  that  Strep- 
siades burns  down  Socrates's  "  thinking-shop,"  and  nearly  kills  the 
philosopher. 

Throughout  the  play  much  humor  is  devoted  to  attacks  on  the  mod- 
ern thought.  Many  charges  are  unjustly  laid  on  Socrates  ;  his  teach- 
ing is  confounded  with  that  of  the  Sophists  whom  he  detested,  but  the 
accusations  of  word-splitting  and  logic-chopping  were  doubtless  not 
wholly  without  grounds.  It  is  a  very  old-fashioned  conservatism  that 
inspired  Aristophanes  with  the  contempt  that  appears  in  the  question 
of  Strepsiades  :  "  Do  you  think  that  Zeus  always  sends  us  new  rain, 
or  that  the  sun  is  always  drawing  the  same  water  up  again  ?  "  and  the 
answer  of  the  money-lender  that  he  neither  knows  nor  cares.  The 
allusions  of  Strepsiades  to  the  unholiness  of  interest  show  us  that  the 
reformers  of  two  thousand  years  ago  were  much  like  those  of  to-day. 
We  see,  too,  the  father's  preference  for  ^schylus,  and  his  scorn  for 
the  modern  taste  that  preferred  the  duhioiis  morality  of  Euripides  ; 
everywhere  Aristophanes  strove  to  check  the  current ;  he  saw  that  the 
real  grandeur  of  Athens  was  past,  and  that  the  condition  of  things  in 
his  own  days  was  almost  hopeless,  but  the  cure  that  he  advised  was 
simply  to  do  the  impossible  thing — to  go  back. 

V. 

The  Wasps,  422  B.C.,  is  a  bold  attack  upon  the  decay  of  civic  virtue 
among  the  author's  fellow-citizens.  The  especial  evil  that  Aristophanes 
denounced  was  one  of  growing  mischief,  namely,  the  way  in  which  the 
administration  of  justice  debauched  the  Athenians.     The  system  was 


470 


THE    COMEDY. 


a  peculiar  one  :  out  of  the  twenty  thousand,  more  or  less,  free  citizens, 
there  were  always  six  thousand  chosen  by  lot  to  form  the  ten  tribunals 
before  which  all  legal  questions  were  brought  for  settlement. 
When  Solon  established  this  custom  as  a  part  of  the  close 
connection  between  citizenship  and  civic  government,  the 
judges  or  jurymen — for  they  in  fact  united  both  functions — 
were  not  paid.  The  position  was  both  a  duty  and  a  privi- 
lege, and  was  often  neglected  in  order  to  prevent  the  inev- 
itable waste  of  time,  interruption  of  business,  etc.,  which 
likewise  in  these  later  days  seriously  modify  men's  opinions 
of  the  advantages  of  trial  by  jury  when  they  are  so  unfortu- 
nate as  to  be  drawn  to  listen  to  tedious  pleadings.  To  obviate  this 
reluctance,   the    jurymen    were    paid   first   one  obol,  then  two,    and 


OBOL   WITH 
HERA    HEAD. 


ATHENIAN    DEKADRACHMON. 


finally  three  a  day.     The  obol  was  a  little  more  than  a  cent,  and  the 
triobolus  consequently  less  than  four  cents,  but  this  sumi,  small  as  it 


AxriENIAN  TETRADRACHMON. 


sounds,  was  probably  equal  to  at  least  a  dollar  at  the  present  day  ;  it 
was  certainly  an  amount  that  satisfied  the  men  who  received  it.  It 
was,  to  be  sure,  not  enough  to  tempt  the  richer  citizens,  but  it  tempted 
the  lower  classes,  and  threw  the  administration  of  justice  into  their 
hands.     The  demagogues  who  disposed  of  this  sum  naturally  secured 


THE   WASPS— JURY  SYSTEM  OF  ATHENS.  47 1 

thereby  the  popular  favor  which  they  desired.  The  populace  was 
enabled  to  live  without  other  work  than  listening  to  the  arguments 
in  which  it  delighted,  and  its  welfare  depended  on  the  growth  of  liti- 
gation. The  play  shows  these  things  clearly,  and  adds  an  additional 
sting  by  charging  the  demagogues  who  pretended  to  spend  a  tenth 
part  of  the  revenues  of  the  state  in  paying  the  jurymen,  with  devoting 
only  three-quarters  of  the  sum  to  this  end  and  keeping  the  rest. 

By  the  Wasps  Aristophanes  means  these  jurymen  and  judges,  the 
dicasts,  with  their  stings  for  inscribing  their  verdicts  on  the  wax  tablets 
as  well  as  the  whole  populace,  buzzing  and  idle;  and  in  one  part  of  the 
play,  to  avoid  offense,  he  speaks  of  them  as  symbols  to  express  the 
bravery  and  patriotism  of  the  Athenians. 

The  leading  character  of  the  play  is  Philocleon,  or  friend  of  Cleon, 
the  familiar  demagogue  who  had  raised  the  pay  of  the  dicasts  to  three 
obols.  His  son  is  Bdelycleon,  or  foe  of  Cleon ;  his  right  to  this  name 
will  soon  be  made  clear.  The  play  opens  with  two  slaves,  Sosias  and 
Xanthias,  who  are  keeping  guard,  each  armed  with  a  spit,  over  the 
house  of  Philocleon,  by  order  of  his  son,  to  keep  the  father  from  going 
to  court.  Bdelycleon,  who  is  within,  soon  appears  at  a  window  and 
tells  them  that  the  old  gentleman  is  trying  to  crawl  through  the  hole 
of  the  kitchen  boiler.  In  a  moment  his  head  appears  there,  and  when 
they  ask  who's  there,  he  answers,  "  I  am  smoke  coming  out."  They 
stop  up  the  chimney  hole  and  lean  against  the  door.  Philocleon  in 
vain  appeals  to  them,  urging  that  a  certain  man  will  be  acquitted :  they 
are  obdurate.  Then  he  pretends  that  he  wants  to  get  out  in  order  to 
sell  his  ass,  but,  says  Bdelycleon,  "  Could  I  not  sell  it  as  well  ?  "  "  Not 
as  I  could,"  answers  the  father.  Bdelycleon  replies,  "  No  better," 
and  leads  the  ass  out.  The  ingenious  Philocleon  is,  however,  discov- 
ered concealing  himself  beneath  the  ass's  belly.  They  ask  him  who 
he  is ;  he  answers,  imitating  the  adventure  of  Odysseus,  "  Nobody," 
but  they  drag  him  forth  and  thrust  him  back  into  the  house.  In  a 
moment  he  is  on  the  roof,  and  again  they  have  to  drive  him  in  from 
there.  At  this  point  appears  the  chorus  of  waspish  dicasts,  trudging 
along  before  daybreak  to  their  sitting;  they  are  almost  all  old  men, 
the  younger  ones  being  employed  in  military  service.  They  are 
amazed  at  the  tardiness  of  Philocleon,  who  was  always  prompt  before 
this,and  they  propose  to  call  him  out  by  singing  in  front  of  his  door: 

"  Why  comes  he  not  forth  from  his  dwelling  ? 
Can  it  be  that  he's  had  the  misfortune  to  lose 

His  one  pair  of  shoes  ; 
Or,  striking  his  toe  in  the  dark,  by  the  grievous 
Contusion  is  lamed,  and  his  ankle  inflamed  ? 
Or, his  groin  has,  it  may  be,  a  swelling. 
He  of  all  of  us,  I  ween, 


472  THE    COMEDY. 

Was  evermore  the  austerest  and  most  keen. 
Alone  no  prayers  he  heeded  : 
Whene'er  for  grace  they  pleaded, 
He  bent  (like  this)  his  head, 
You  cook  a  stone,  he  said. 
Is  it  all  of  that  yesterday's  man  who  cajoled  us. 

And  slipped  through  our  hands,  the  deceiver. 
Pretending  a  lover  of  Athens  to  be, 

Pretending  that  he 
Was  the  first  of  the  Samian  rebellion  that  told  us  } 
Our  friend  may  be  sick  with  disgust  at  the  trick, 
And  be  now  lying  ill  of  a  fever." 

He  would  be  just  that  sort  of  man,  they  add. 

Philocleon  peeps  out  of  a  window  above,  however,  and  confesses 
that  he  has  been  pining  to  get  to  them  while  listening  through  a  crack, 
but  that  although  he  wishes  to  join  them  he  can  not  get  away ;  that 
his  son,  who  has  fallen  asleep  at  last,  keeps  him  in  confinement.  The 
leader  of  the  chorus  asks  if  there  is  no  hole  through  which  he  might 
escape,  disguised  in  rags,  like  Odysseus, — a  jest  at  Euripides.  There 
is  none,  and,  encouraged  by  the  chorus,  the  old  man  tries  to  let  himself 
•down  from  the  window  by  a  cord.  At  the  last  moment  Bdelycleon 
awakes  and  once  more  drives  his  father  back.  There  is  a  fight  between 
Bdelycleon  and  his  forces  and  the  chorus  of  dicasts,  in  which  the  wasps 
are  unsuccessful.  They  give  orders  that  Cleon  be  told,  and  accuse 
Bdelycleon  of  establishing  a  tyranny — the  customary  form  of  abuse. 
Bdelycleon  retorts :  Oh  yes,  everything  you  do  not  like  is  tyranny. 
Fifty  years  ago  we  never  heard  of  it,  but  now  it's  cheaper  than  salt- 
fish.  If  any  one  prefers  buying  anchovies  to  buying  sprats,  the  sprat- 
seller  says :  This  fellow  is  buying  sauce  for  his  tyranny ;  if  any  one 
asks  for  a  leek  to  eat  with  his  anchovies,  the  woman  who  sells  herbs 
asks  if  it  is  for  a  tyranny  ? 

This  passag-e  must  have  cut  into  the  spectators  of  the  play.  At  this 
point  follows  a  long  and  important  scene,  in  which  the  son  urges  his 
father  to  discontinue  his  work  as  a  dicast  and  to  live  in  comfort  at 
home.  He  proves  that  the  dicasts  receive  but  one  hundred  and  fifty 
out  of  two  hundred  talents,  and  that  the  rest  lines  the  pockets  of  the 
demagogues.  He  promises  his  father  to  let  him  exercise  his  judicial 
functions  in  his  own  household,  and,  the  chorus  itself  relenting, 
Philocleon  yields  to  his  son's  arguments.  A  grotesque  law-suit  at 
once  presents  itself:  The  dog  Labes  has  just  stolen  a  Sicilian  cheese, 
— a  thin  disguise  of  what  was  then  a  recent  incident  of  the  war,  namely, 
that  Laches,  the  commander  of  a  fleet  sent  to  Sicily,  had  embezzled  a 
large  sum  of  money, — and  the  trial  goes  on.  Labes  is  acquitted  by  a 
mistake,  and  the  unhappy  Philocleon  faints. 

In    the    parabasis  Aristophanes  recalls   the    old-time  glory  of    the 


THE    WASPS— ITS  INOFFENSIVE   SATIRE.  473 

Athenians  in  the  Persian  wars,  when  their  stings  were  deadly  weapons, 
"  so  that  even  now  among  the  barbarians  nothing  has  a  braver  name 
than  the  Athenian  wasp."  In  those  happy  days  things  were  very 
different : 

"  'Twas  not  then  our  manhood's  test, 
Who  can  make  a  fine  oration  ? 
Who  is  shrewd  in  litigation  ? 
It  was,  who  can  row  the  best  ?  " 

The  rest  of  the  play  is  made  up  with  a  representation  of  the  pleasures 
of  Philocleon,  now  that  he  has  retired  from  his  labors,  and  has  become 
a  fashionable  creature.  This  gives  Aristophanes  an  opportunity  to 
offer  the  spectators  the  sort  of  merry-making  and  highly-seasoned 
revelry  which  formed  an  important  part  of  the  old  comedy.  The 
absence  of  this  attraction  from  the  Clouds  may  have  contributed  to 
its  failure,  and  thus  the  author  may  have  learned  very  vividly  not  to 
deny  his  audience  the  entertainment  they  required.  The  play  ends 
with  the  most  extravagant  dancing.  This  termination  had  another 
advantage  in  softening  any  indignation  that  might  have  been  felt  with 
the  more  serious  part  of  the  comedy.  Everywhere  the  fault-finding  is 
enveloped  with  such  an  air  of  grotesqueness  and  good-humor  that 
indignation  would  have  been  difificult.  From  the  time  when  Philocleon 
says  that  he  is  the  smoke  trying  to  get  out  of  the  chimney,to  the  very 
end  of  the  play,  the  serious  motive  of  Aristophanes  is  enveloped  in 
farce  and  caricature  in  such  a  way  that  serious  opposition  would  have 
seemed  pedantic  and  absurd.  The  earnestness  and  the  facile  invention 
of  Aristophanes  are  most  prominent  in  the  play. 

VI. 

In  the  Peace,  as  its  title  shows,  the  author  returns  to  his  favorite 
subject,  the  mischief  wrought  by  the  Peloponnesian  War.  The  play 
was  brought  out  in  421  B.C.,  and  secured  only  the  second  prize,  Eupolis 
obtaining  the  first.  The  reader  will  readily  comprehend  the  compar- 
ative failure  of  the  play,  for  toward  the  end  there  appears  a  confusion 
which  can  be  accounted  for  only  on  the  supposition  that  we  have  in 
our  possession  a  later  version  of  the  play  which  leaves  many  things 
unexplained,  and  even  the  first  part,  amusing  as  it  is,  is  not  so  over- 
whelmingly rich  in  invention  as  the  best  of  the  work  of  Aristophanes ; 
it  is  the  difference  between  what  is  good  and  what  is  very  good.  It  is 
to  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  play  was  acted  just  before  a  truce  inter- 
rupted the  war,  and  that  it  expressed  the  longing  of  the  Athenians 
for  a  cessation  of  their  miseries.    Certainly  these  were  not  exaggerated 


474 


THE    COMEDY. 


by  the  dramatist.  The  play  opens  with  a  countryman  named  Trygaeus 
making  ready  to  ascend  to  heaven  on  a  dung-butte.  His  purpose  is 
to  learn  from  Zeus  himself  why  he  has  for  so  long  a  time  afflicted  the 
Athenians,  and  to  remonstrate  with  him  on  his  cruelty.  For  this  pur- 
pose he  gets  on  the  back  of  the  butte,  thus  caricaturing  the  tragedians, 
and  notably  Euripides,  who  in  his  Bellerophon  employed  a  somewhat 
similar  mechanical  device.  The  daughters  of  Trygaeus,  who  find 
him  in  mid-air,  in  vain  entreat  him  to  return  ;  he  spurs  on  his  Pegasus 
and  continues  his  ascent.  Almost  at  once  the  scene  changes,  and  he 
is  found  at  the  gates  of  heaven,  where  he  confronts  Hermes,  who  is  at 
first  disposed  to  harshness,  but  speedily  relents  on  being  bribed  with 
some  meat.     The  god,  being  thus  appeased,  readily  answers  the  ques- 


THE  SACRED   MYRTLE. 


LAUREL    DEDICATED   TO   ARTEMIS. 


EMBLEMS   OF   PEACE. 


tions  of  Trygaeus,  and  informs  him  that  the  gods,  in  their  wrath  at  the 
unwisdom  of  Greece,  have  moved  away  to  the  remotest  part  of  heaven 
and  have  left  him  there  in  charge  of  the  pots  and  pans  of  the  celes- 
tial housekeeping.  They  have  left  in  their  place  War,  to  harry  the 
Greeks  as  may  to  him  seem  good  ;  as  for  themselves,  they  want  to 
get  out  of  the  way  of  seeing  any  more  fighting  and  listening  to 
supplications.  This  is  not  all.  War  has  cast  Peace  into  a  deep 
cave  and  buried  her  beneath  a  huge  pile  of  stones,  and  has  further- 
more got  a  large  mortar  in  which  to  bray  the  Hellenic  cities.  All 
that  he  lacks  is  a  pestle,  and  he  calls  to  his  servant  Tumult  to  fetch 
him  one.  Tumult  hastens  after  one  to  Athens,  but  Cleon,  the  Athen- 
ian pestle,  is  dead — he  fell  at  the  battle  of  Amphipolis,  as  did  Brasi- 


THE  PEACE— ITS  BEAUTY  AND  FRESHNESS. 


475 


das,  the  Lacedaemonian — so  that 
Sparta  is  also  unable  to  supply 
one.  War  and  Tumult  then  go 
within  in  order  to  make  a  pestle, 
and  Trygaeus  takes  advantage  of 
their  absence  to  summon  the  cho- 
rus to  set  Peace  free.  He  fur- 
ther secures  the  silence  of  Her- 
mes by  giving  him  a  gold  cup, 
and  after  strenuous  exertions, 
Peace,  Oporia,  the  goddess  of 
fruits,  and  Theoria,  the  deity  of 
processions  and  festivities,  all  come 
out  from  the  cave,  bringing  with 
them  the  savors  of  autumn,  of  fes- 
tivals, fruits,  comedies,  strains  of 
Sophocles,  half-lines  of  Euripides, 
bleating  sheep,  and  all  the  bless- 
ings of  tranquillity.  The  makers 
of  weapons  are  in  despair,  but  all 
others  are  delighted.  Trygaeus, 
who  represents  the  countrymen 
whose  farms  had  been  every  year 
devastated  by  the  Spartans,  longs 
to  get  out  into  the  fields  again, 
and  to  break  up  the  ground  anew. 
He  appeals  to  the  chorus  to  re- 
member their  old  course  of  life, 
the  preserved  fruits,  the  figs,  the 
myrtles,  the  sweet  new  wine,  the 
violet  bed  by  the  side  of  the  well, 
and  the  olives  they  long  for.  It 
is  these  vivid  little  touches  in 
Aristophanes  that  with  their  eter- 
nal beauty  and  freshness  forever 
charm  the  reader,  as  they  must 
have  given  the  intensest  delight 
to  the  Athenians  themselves. 
Elsewhere  in  this  play  we  find  a 
similar  passage,  where  the  chorus 
expresses  its  joy  at  the  chance  to 
lay  aside  the  helmet  and  to  give  up 
cheese  and  onions.     "For  I  do  not 


476  THE    COMEDY. 

care  for  battles,  but  what  I  like  is  to  sit  at  the  fireside  and  drink  with  my 
companions,  after  lighting  the  dryest  of  last  season's  wood,  roasting 
pease  and  putting  acorns  on  the  fire,  at  the  same  time  kissing  the  Thracian 
maid  while  my  wife  is  washing.  And  when  the  seed  is  in  the  ground, 
and  the  rain  is  falling,  then  is  the  time  for  some  neighbors  to  look 
in  and  ask  what  we  shall  do.  *  I  have  a  mind  to  drink,'  he  proposes. 
'  Come,  wife,  roast  some  kidney  beans,  and  mix  some  wheat  with  them, 
and  bring  out  some  figs,  and  let  the  girl  call  in  Mauro  from  the  field, 
for  it's  too  wet  to-day  for  him  to  be  trimming  the  vines  or  grubbing  at 
the  roots.  And  I  want  some  one  to  fetch  from  my  house  a  thrush 
and  the  two  spinks.  And  there  was  some  beestings  there,  and  four 
pieces  of  hare,  unless  the  marten  (the  cat  of  antiquity)  carried  them  off 
last  evening — for  I  certainly  heard  something  racketing  about  there. 
Give  one  of  the  pieces  to  my  father  and  bring  us  the  other  three,  and 
ask  yEschinades  to  let  us  have  some  fruit-bearing  myrtles,  and  at  the 
same  time,  for  it's  just  on  the  way,  let  some  one  ask  Charinades  to 
come  and  drink  with  us,  while  the  weather  is  so  favorable  to  the 
crops."  In  a  similar  fashion  the  joys  of  a  warm,  bright  summer 
day  are  described,  and  are  set  in  contrast  to  the  odious  incidents 
of  war,  when  the  husbandman  sees  his  name  down  on  the  list  for 
to-morrow's  sally.  Nothing  is  more  noticeable  than  the  charm  of 
these  passages  except  their  rarity  in  all  literature.  The  play  ends  with 
Trygaeus  giving  himself  up  to  pleasure  with  Peace.  Aristophanes 
obeyed  the  unwritten  law  that  demanded  scenes  of  revelry,  though 
here  they  are  half-hearted  and  comparatively  cold.  The  best  part 
of  the  play  is  already  told.  The  lesson,  though  veiled  in  broad 
comedy,  had  been  given. 

VII. 

The  Birds,  which  won  the  second  prize  in  414  B.C.,  appeared,  it  will 
be  noticed,  after  a  long  interval,  concerning  which  we  have  no  informa- 
tion. At  the  time  it  was  brought  out,  the  affairs  of  the  Athenians  had 
only  gone  from  bad  to  worse,  but  their  hopes  were  now  centered  on 
the  expedition  to  Sicily,  which  they  trusted  would  restore  and  extend 
their  power.  In  this  fantastic  play  we  see  a  caricature  of  extravagant 
plans  and  hopes,  and  a  representation  of  the  inevitable  evils  that 
accompanied  the  Greek  civilization.  Yet  throughout  the  author  is 
good-humored  and  gentle ;  his  bitterness  is  in  perfect  control. 

The  play  opens  with  two  Athenian  citizens,  Peisthetairus  and  Euel- 
pides,  wandering  in  a  wild,  remote  region,  carrying  respectively  a  raven 
and  a  jackdaw,  the  motions  of  which  they  are  observing  as  directions 
of  their  steps.     Soon  both  the  birds  point  upward,  and  they  guess  that 


THE  BIRDS— SELECTIONS.  477 

they  have  arrived  at  the  place  where  they  wish  to  be  ;  consequently 
they  knock.  The  door  is  opened  by  Trochilus,  whose  appearance  star- 
tles them  very  much,  and  they  are  even  more  amazed  when  the  royal 
hoopoe  comes  forth  and  asks  their  business,  which  is  to  find  some 
country  where  the  cares  of  life  shall  lie  light  upon  them.  The  hoopoe 
suggests  various  places,  which,  however,  the  men  object  to,  when  sud- 
denly Euelpides  asks  how  life  is  among  the  birds. 

"  Pretty  fair ; 
Not  much  amiss.     Time  passes  smoothly  enough, 
And  money  is  out  of  the  question.     We  don't  use  it." 

It  at  once  occurs  to  Peisthetairus  that  it  would  be  an  excellent  plan 
for  them  to  build  a  city  in  mid-air.  They  can  intercept  the  offerings 
of  men  to  the  gods  from  the  commanding  position  :  in  short,  it  is  an 
excellent  plan.  The  hoopoe  determines  to  consult  the  other  birds  to 
learn  their  opinion,  and  for  this  purpose  he  retires  behind  the  scene, 
whence  this  song  to  the  nightingale  is  heard  to  issue : 

"  Awake  !  awake  ! 
Sleep  no  more,  my  gentle  mate  ! 
With  your  tiny  tawny  bill. 
Wake  the  tuneful  echo  shrill, 

On  vale  or  hill ; 
Or  in  her  airy  rocky  seat, 
Let  her  listen  and  repeat 
The  tender  ditty  that  you  tell. 
The  sad  lament, 
The  dire  event. 
To  luckless  Itys  that  befell. 
Thence  the  strain 
Shall  rise  again. 
And  soar  amain. 
Up  to  the  lofty  palace  gate. 
Where  mighty  Apollo  sits  in  state 
In  Jove's  abode,  with  his  ivory  lyre, 
Hymning  aloud  to  the  heavenly  quire ; 
While  all  the  gods  shall  join  with  thee 
In  a  celestial  symphony." 

This  is  followed  by  a  flute  solo  imitation  of  the  nightingale's  call, 
and  then  by  the  hoopoe's  summons  to  the  whole  feathered  tribe  to 
assemble : 

"  Hoop  !  hoop ! 
Come  in  a  troop. 
Come  at  a  call 
One  and  all, 
Birds  of  a  feather. 
All  together. 
Birds  of  a  humble  gentle  bill 
Smooth  and  shrill. 


478 


THE    COMEDY. 


§ 
1 
1 
Q 

§ 
Q 

1 
1 
1 
S 

1 
1 
Q 

§ 
1 

i 


Q 


Q 


il 


Dieted  on  seeds  and  grain, 
Rioting  on  the  furrow'd  plain, 

Pecking,  hopping, 

Picking,  popping. 
Among  the  barley  newly  sown,"  etc.,  etc. 

The  birds  gather  in  great  numbers, 
and  naturally,  when  they  see  the  two 
men,  imagine  themselves  entrapped  ; 
the  men  are  quite  as  much  alarmed, 
but  at  length  the  truth  is  made 
known,  and  Peisthetairus  expounds 
his  plan.  He  explains  to  them  with 
ready  ingenuity  that  the  birds  are 
the  earliest  beings  in  the  world,  older 
than  the  gods  themselves,  and  are 
powerful,  although  now  shamefully 
maltreated : 

"  Weak,  forlorn,  exposed  to  scorn, 
Distress'd,  oppress'd,  never  at  rest. 
Daily  pursued  with  outrage  rude. 
With  cries  and  noise  of  men  and  boys, 
Screaming,  hooting,  pelting,  shooting,"  etc. 

But  with  the  city  once  built,  they 
will  send  a  herald  to  Zeus  forbidding 
the  gods  to  pass  through  their  terri- 
tory, and  to  men  in  order  to  secure  a 
good  share  of  the  sacrifices.  They 
will  also  be  able  to  aid  the  human  race 
by  devouring  insects,  telling  secrets, 
which  even  in  these  later  days  are 
known  to  the  little  birds.  The  picture 
tempts  them  and  the  plan  is  swiftly 
carried  out.  The  name  of  Cloud- 
cuckooland  is  given  to  the  projected 
city,  and  at  once  a  mockery  of  impor- 
tant ceremonies  begins  ;  a  sacrifice  is 
caricatured ;  a  starving  poet  is  on 
hand  with  his  ready-made  congratula- 
tory odes ;  a  soothsayer  comes  with 
vague  oracles  that  might  mean  any 
thing,  although  they  close  with  an 
order  for  a  coat  and  shoes  for  the 
man   who  brings  them :    he    is   met. 


FERTILE  IMAGINATIVE  POWERS  OF  ARISTOPHANES.  479 

however,  by  opposition  oracles  that  command  that  he  shall  be  given  a 
drubbing  ;  a  ridiculous  astronomer  appears  to  make  fantastic  measure- 
ments ;  absurd  laws  are  proposed,  and  during  all  this  turmoil  the  com- 
pletion of  the  city  is  suddenly  announced.  Then  Iris  appears  on  her 
way  to  command  that  men  should  sacrifice  to  Zeus ;  she  is  turned 
back,  and  the  city  begins  its  municipal  life.  A  young  scapegrace  is 
the  first  to  appear,  who  is  disappointed  to  find  that  he  can  not  beat 
his  father  and  thus  lay  his  hands  on  his  expected  property ;  a  poet  is 
denied  a  pair  of  wings  with  which  to  soar ;  a  sycophant  is  dismissed ; 
the  gods  themselves,  who  are  starving,  now  that  the  sacrifices  that 
they  once  received  are,  as  it  were,  blockaded,  have  to  come  to  terms, 
and  the  play  ends  with  an  epithalamium  on  the  marriage  of  Peisthe- 
tairus  with  Basileia,  or  royalty,  who  manages  the  thunderbolts  of  Zeus, 
and  controls  every  form  of  good  government. 

The  copiousness  of  the  imagination  of  Aristophanes  is  certainly 
evident  even  in  this  cold  outline ;  quite  as  striking  is  the  movement 
of  the  play,  which  knows  no  modification  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end.  These  qualities  have  given  it  a  fame  in  modern  times  greater 
than  perhaps  any  other  of  this  writer's  comedies.  Yet,  possibly, 
although  it  is  full  of  allusions  that  carried  swift  and  clear  meaning  to 
the  Athenians,  its  artificial  and  fantastic  setting  has  given  it  a  higher 
place  in  modern  opinion  than  it  won  at  home.  We  are  so  accustomed 
to  having  our  literature  different  from  life  that  we  are  disposed  to 
admire  less  the  vividness  of  Aristophanes  and  his  pictures  of  every- 
day incidents  than  a  carefully  built-up  vision  of  impossibilities  such  as 
this  play  presents.  Yet,  what  the  Athenians  enjoyed  here  was  prob- 
ably the  vision  of  Athens  that  stood  out  even  in  cloudland.  Even 
when  most  fantastic  Aristophanes  was  true  to  life. 


J 


VIII. 


In  the  Lysistrata,  411  B.C.,  we  find  him  returning  to  his  old  subject, 
the  desirability  of  peace,  and  he  preaches  the  familiar  doctrine  in  the 
most  grotesque  fashion.  Lysistrata,  the  heroine,  is  disgusted  with  the 
unending  martial  zeal  of  the  men,  and  summons  the  women  together 
to  take  measures  to  bring  the  contestants  to  terms.  Delegates 
assemble  from  Attica,  Boeotia  and  the  Peloponnesus,  whom  she  per- 
suades to  swear  a  solemn  oath  that  they  will  live  apart  from  their 
lovers  and  husbands  until  they  consent  to  make  peace.  Meanwhile 
the  women  take  possession  of  the  Acropolis  and  lay  hands  on  the 
treasury  of  the  state,  so  that  the  men  may  be  the  sooner  brought  to 
terms.  The  chorus  of  aged  Athenian  men  assembles  with  all  sorts  of 
combustibles  in  order  to  burn  the  women  out  from  their  stronghold  ; 


48o 


THE    COMEDY. 


but  they  fail  completely.  All  sorts  of  ludicrous  and  indescribable 
scenes  follow  until  finally  the  men  yield  and  Lysistrata  is  enabled 
to  conclude  a  peace  amid  the  general  rejoicing  of  Spartans  and 
Athenians. 

In  the  Thesmophoriazusae,  or  the  Women  at  the  Festival  of  Demeter, 
Aristophanes  attacks  his  old  enemy,  Euripides,  with  as  much  venom 
as  he  had   shown  against  those  whom  he  had  regarded  as  the  open 

foes  of  the  state.  Whatever  the  rea- 
son, this  play  contains  no  allusion  to 
politics — although,  or  possibly  because, 
the  condition  of  Athens  was  then,  410 
B.C.,  most  unfortunate — it  is  a  liter- 
ary warfare  with  which  Aristophanes 
amused  his  fellow-citizens.  Yet  it  is 
not  without  a  serious  purpose  that  he 
chose  what  might  at  first  sight  appear 
to  be  a  trivial  subject,  for  in  his  eyes 
Euripides  was  the  exponent  of  the  new 
false  learning  which  cut  into  the  very 
heart  of  Athenian  life,  and,  farther  than 
this,  the  play  gave  him  an  opportunity 
to  draw  a  picture  of  the  condition  of 
women,  a  subject  always  attractive  to 
any  one  with  powers  of  invective. 

The  plot  of  the  play  is  ingenious.  At 
the  festival  in  celebration  of  the  two 
goddesses,  women  from  every  tribe  used 
to  assemble  to  perform  the  mysterious 
rites.  Men  were  carefully  excluded,  and 
the  performances  were  kept  a  profound 
secret,  but  the  poet  ventures  to  sug- 
gest that  they  at  least  on  this  occasion  are  busying  themselves  about 
how  they  shall  revenge  themselves  on  Euripides  for  speaking  ill  of  the 
sex  in  his  tragedies.  This  at  least  is  the  fear  that  inspires  Euripides 
to  try  to  persuade  his  colleague,  Agathon,  to  take  advantage  of  his 
effeminate  appearance  and  to  join  them  at  the  festival  where  he  may 
overcome  the  women's  arguments.  At  the  very  beginning  of  the  play 
Aristophanes  ridicules  Euripides  as  a  student  of  the  new  learning,  by 
representing  him  as  a  pedantic,  logic-chopping  sophist.  His  father-in- 
law,  Mnesilochus,  says,  "  You  tell  me  that  I  must  neither  hear  nor  see  "; 
to  which  Euripides  makes  answer,  "  The  nature  of  each  is  distinct,  of 
not  hearing,  and    of  not  seeing."       "How   so?"    asks   Mnesilochus, 


COLOSSAL   STATUE   OF   DEMETER. 


THE    WOMEN  AT   THE  FESTIVAL    OF  DEMETER.  4^1 

"  They  were  formerly  distinguished  in  this  way.  For  Ether,  when  it 
was  first  separated,  and  bore  moving  animals  in  itself,  first  contrived 
an  eye  for  what  should  see,  modeled  after  the  face  of  the  sun,  and 
bored  ears  like  a  funnel."  This  is  doubtless  meant  as  a  caricature  of 
the  new  gropings  after  a  scientific  explanation  of  things,  in  which 
Euripides  was  much  interested.  It  is  all  forgotten,  however,  as  the 
play  goes  on,  and  Agathon  first  comes  in  for  a  good  deal  of  contempt- 
uous treatment  for  his  effeminacy.  He  absolutely  declines  to  do  what 
Euripides  desires,  so  the  tragic  poet  turns  to  Mnesilochus  and  asks  him 
to  disguise  himself  as  a  woman  and  go  to  the  festival.  Euripides  has 
already  rejected  Agathon's  proposal  that  he  should  go  himself,  on  the 
grounds  that  he  is  well-known,  is  gray-haired,  and  wears  a  beard,  but 
he  has  no  mercy  for  Mnesilochus,  whom  he  compels  to  array  himself 
like  a  woman,  and  to  shave  himself ;  all  of  which  preparations  are  made 
with  abundant  farcicality  upon  the  stage.  Mnesilochus,  after  he  is 
made  ready,  consents  to  go,  after  he  has  secured  a  promise  of  aid  from 
Euripides  whenever  it  should  be  necessary. 

The  next  scene  is  at  the  temple  of  Demeter,  where  the  women  are 
assembled  and  soon  begin  to  discuss  the  misdeeds  of  Euripides.  He 
has  aroused  the  evil  suspicions  of  men,  so  that  they  are  prone  to  put 
the  worst  interpretation  on  the  most  trivial  circumstances ;  the  old 
men,  warned  by  one  of  his  lines,  no  longer  marry  young  girls ;  they 
all  put  seals  and  bolts  on  the  women's  apartments;  in  short,  he  has 
made  women's'lives  intolerable,  and  the  question  before  the  meeting 
is  what  shall  be  done  with  this  arch-enemy.  Other  women  have  their 
say ;  they  accuse  him  of  teaching  that  there  are  no  gods,  so  that  the 
business  of  making  myrtle-wreaths  is  ruined.  There  is  nothing  but 
denunciation  of  the  unhappy  poet  until  Mnesilochus  undertakes  his 
defense.  He  tells  a  long  story  which  is  cunningly  devised  to  point 
out  how  many  peccadilloes  had  escaped  the  notice  of  Euripides ;  in  a 
word,  how  much  worse  women  were  even  than  he  had  described  them, 
and  argues  that  they  have  no  reason  to  be  angry  with  the  poet,  since 
they  have  done  so  much  worse.  His  words  excite  a  great  deal  of  con- 
fusion, and  the  women  at  once  begin  to  suspect  some  treachery,  and 
that  he  is  a  man  in  disguise.  Mnesilochus,  when  he  is  once  started, 
pours  out  a  long  list  of  black  crimes,  how  the  women  give  their  lovers 
the  broken  victuals  and  say  the  cat  ate  them,  etc.  He  only  infuriates 
his  hearers,  and  when  Clisthenes,  who  is  permitted  to  be  present,  such 
is  his  effeminacy,  brings  them  the  news  that  Euripides  has  sent  his 
father-in-law  to  be  with  them,  they  are  beside  themselves  with  wrath. 
It  is  with  extreme  jollity  that  they  detect  the  trick  of  Mnesilochus, 
and  swear  vengeance.  They  determine  to  burn  him  alive,  and  in  order 
to  secure  a  hostage  against  ill-treatment,  he  seizes  a  child  that  one  of 


4^2  THE   COMEDY. 

the  women  is  carrying,  which  turns  out  to  be  a  wine-skin  dressed  up  to 
resemble  a  baby — an  unfortunate  discovery,  for  on  this  day  abstinence 
from  wine  was  enforced  upon  the  celebrants — and  drains  it  himself. 
He  is  at  their  mercy,  and  tries  to  devise  some  plan  of  escape  from  his 
recollection  of  similar  difficulties  in  the  plays  of  his  son-in-law.  In  the 
parabasis,  the  leader  of  the  chorus  of  women  praises  her  own  sex  at 
the  expense  of  the  men,  but  this  forms  but  a  brief  interruption. 
Mnesilochus  pretends  that  he  is  Helen  in  the  tragedy  of  Euripides 
already  discussed,  and  there  is  a  curious  jumble  of  lines  parodying  that 
play  ;  and  when  Euripides,  who  appears  as  Menelaus  in  the  Helen,  tries 
to  lead  his  father-in-law  off,  he  is  stopped  by  the  entrance  of  the  police- 
man who  comes  to  fasten  the  aged  offender  to  a  plank.  Then,  while 
Mnesilochus  is  secured  like  Andromeda,  Euripides  comes  in  disguised 
as  Perseus,  but  he  can  do  nothing,  and  he  tries  once  more  in  the  form 
of  Echo,  in  which  he  repeats  the  words  of  his  relative  and  of  the  police- 
man, who  is  much  baffled.  Finally,  the  poet  comes  back  as  an  old 
woman  in  company  with  a  dancing-girl,  who  by  her  wiles  distracts  the 
policeman,  so  that  Mnesilochus  can  be  freed  and  escape.  This  device 
also  serves  to  give  the  end  of  the  play  its  rollicking  sportiveness. 

A  more  absurd  play  was  never  written  ;  it  is  a  farce  from  beginning 
to  end,  and  one  abounding  with  the  happiest  invention  and  the  most 
remorseless  caricature.  As  political  references  became  dangerous,  and 
the  peril  of  Athens  muzzled  Aristophanes  and  prevented  him  from 
referring  to  the  rulers  and  their  misdeeds,  he  was  yet  free  to  attack 
the  modern  spirit  as  this  was  illustrated  by  Euripides.  In  his  hope- 
less struggle  to  make  time  stand  still,  he  saw  no  difference  between 
political  decay  and  the  general  movement  of  literature.  Certainly 
this  error,  if  it  was  an  error,  was  a  natural  one ;  the  confusion  of 
Athenian  politics,  the  lack  of  lofty  principles,  the  desperate  though 
hopeless  groping  for  any  means  to  attain  success,  were  certainly 
marks  of  degeneracy.  And  just  as  the  sublimity  of  the  tragedies  of 
-^schylus  was  the  literary  expression  of  the  old-time  hopefulness,  the 
more  complicated  interests  of  the  later  days  found  their  expression 
in  the  drama  of  Euripides,  who  developed  the  notion  of  individu- 
ality— which  was  the  disintegration  of  the  former  intellectual  and  social 
unity — and  represented  the  pathetic  incidents  of  the  old  myths  as  if 
the  simpler  statement  of  them  could  no  longer  interest  his  audience. 
His  devotion  to  the  humble  beginnings  of  science,  that  put  physical 
cause  and  effect  in  the  place  of  divine  control,  seemed  to  Aristophanes 
as  wrong  as  his  interest  in  the  new-fangled  rhetoric  which  succeeded 
the  former  majesty  and  directness.  Yet  what  we  can  see  in  the  per- 
spective of  more  than  two  thousand  years  was  invisible  to  Aristo- 
phanes, who  beheld  the  firm  ground  slipping  from  beneath  his  feet, 


EFFECT  OF  ARISTOPHANES'    SATIRE— THE  FROGS. 


483 


and  who  saw  no  other  hope  than  in  restoring,  or  trying  to  restore,  the 
old  convictions  that  had  made  Greece  great.  These  had  done  a  great 
work  ;  experiments  were  perilous.  In  fact,  however,  his  attempt  was 
the  most  hopeless  of  experiments,  and  his  endeavors  to  restore  the 
vanished  past  remain  as  the  most  tragically  sad  appeals  that  Greek 
literature  knows.  Wit,  pathos,  earnestness,  were  powerless  to  stop  the 
stream  of  time.  The  denunciations  of  Aristophanes,  though  power- 
less to  check  the  current  of  contemporary  thought,  at  least  besmirched 
the  reputation  of  Euripides  for  a  long  time.  Even  now,  or  at  any  rate 
until  very  recently,  his  shoulders  were  burdened  with  the  whole 
responsibihty  for  the  swift  decay  of  Hellenic  principles. 

IX. 

In  the  Frogs  we  find  Aristophanes  still  pursuing  the  same  foe  with 
relentless  energy.     Whereas  in  theThesmophoriazusae  he  had  attacked 


SCENE   FROM    THE   FROGS. 


him  with  all  the  revelry  of  a  farce,  here  he  constructs  a  comedy  with 
the  utmost  care  for  the  purpose,  not  of  merely  ridiculing  him,  but  of 
destroying  his  reputation.  It  is  a  serious  onslaught  that  he  makes 
with  the  aid  of  his  incomparable  humor. 

The  play  was  brought  out  in  405  B.C.,  shortly  after  the  death  of 
both  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  when  the  tragic  stage  had  lost  both 
the  writers  who  alone  formed  its  glory  ;  Dionysus  is  represented  as 
mourning  the  absence  of  deserving  competitors,  and  determined  to 
try  to  bring  back  from  the  lower  regions  a  poet  who  should  renew 
the  ancient  successes.     The  play  opens  with  Dionysus,  arrayed  like 


4^4  THE    COMEDY. 

Heracles,  in  company  with  his  slave  Xanthias  entering  before  the 
temple  of  Heracles,  and  exchanging  gentle  jokes  over  the  poor  jests 
of  the  other  writers  of  comedy.  When  they  have  called  forth  Her- 
acles, Dionysus  announces  his  intention  to  fetch  Euripides  from  the 
other  world,  and  asks  Heracles,  who  is  familiar  with  the  way,  which  is 
the  best  road  to  take ;  Heracles  recommends  hanging,  poison,  or  leap- 
ing from  a  high  place.  In  the  next  scene  they  are  on  the  banks  of  the 
Styx,  which  they  cross  with  an  accompaniment  of  ludicrous  adven- 
tures. Once  on  the  other  side  their  fate  is  even  more  absurd  ;  Diony- 
sus appears  as  a  coward  and  makes  Xanthias  put  on  the  lion's  robe  and 
take  the  club — both  formed  the  distinguishing  guise  of  Heracles — 
while  he  appears  as  a  slave ;  all  of  which  is  a  caricature  of  the  tragedies 
that  dealt  with  journeys  to  the  nether  regions,  besides  being  capital 
farce.  It  all  brings  them  to  the  abode  of  the  dead,  where  a  public  con- 
test is  to  decide  the  relative  superiority  of  ^schylus  and  Euripides. 
./Eschylus  had  held  the  position  which  was  now  disputed  by  Euripides, 
who  had  roused  the  interest  of  the  mob  in  his  behalf.  Sophocles  was 
content  with  a  seat  by  the  side  of  ^schylus.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
clapper-clawing  on  the  part  of  Euripides,  who  speaks  of  his  predeces- 
sor's frequent  habit  of  introducing  a  character  who  long  remained  silent, 
and  then,  after  long  songs  from  the  chorus,  would  utter  a  dozen  words 
as  big  as  bulls  wearing  bows  and  crests,  tremendous  fellows  of  terrific 
aspect,  wholly  unfamiliar  to  the  spectators  ;  he  then  boasts  the  supe- 
riority of  his  own  method,  when  he  used  to  let  some  character  explain 
everything  in  a  prologue,  and  employing  plain  language  so  that  any  one 
could  understand  him,  instead  of  using  monstrous  words.  ^Eschylus 
makes  a  comparison  between  the  Athenians  of  his  time  and  those 
whom  Euripides  had  left,  greatly  to  his  own  advantage,  and  claims  for 
himself  and  his  work  the  merit  of  forming  better  citizens:  in  his  Seven 
against  Thebes,  he  says, 

"  Inspired  each  spectator  with  martial  ambition, 
Courage,  and  ardor,  and  prowess,  and  pride." 

Now  Euripides  has  altered  all  this  : 

"  He  has  taught  every  soul  to  sophisticate  truth  ; 
And  debauched  all  the  bodies  and  minds  of  the  youth ; 
Leaving  them  morbid,  and  pallid,  and  spare  ; 
And  the  places  of  exercise  vacant  and  bare : 
The  disorder  has  spread  to  the  fleet  and  the  crew ; 
The  service  is  ruined,  and  ruined  by  you — 
With  prate  and  debate  in  a  mutinous  state ; 
Whereas,  in  my  day,  'twas  a  different  way ; 
Nothing  they  said,  nor  knew  nothing  to  say. 
But  to  call  for  their  porridge,  and  cry  '  Pull  away.'  " 


.    METHOD  AND  DESIGN  OF    THE  ATTACKS   ON  EURIPIDES.      485 

From  general  denunciations  they  soon  come  to  special  criticisms  o\ 
each  other's  work,     ^schylus  quotes  a  few  lines  of  his  own  work  : 

"  From  his  sepulchral  mound  I  call  my  father 
To  listen  and  hear " 

"  There's  a  tautology, 
'  To  listen  and  hear,'  " — 

cries  Euripides. 

Then  the  later  poet  brings  examples  of  his  own  superiority,  which 
yEschylus  criticises  in  his  turn.  Then  they  exchange  abuse  of  each 
other's  musical  powers.  Finally,  Dionysus  produces  a  huge  pair  of 
scales  to  weigh  the  sentences  of  the  two  combatants,  and  those  of 
^schylus  tip  the  scale,  so  that  Dionysus  decides  to  carry  ^schylus 
back  with  him  and  to  leave  Euripides  in  the  nether  world.  Thus  the 
inferiority  of  the  later  poet  is  distinctly  shown,  or  at  least  his  inferi- 
ority in  the  estimation  of  Aristophanes. 

The  care  which  the  author  has  shown  in  his  attack  on  Euripides  is 
certainly  interesting,  and  his  bitterness  in  carrying  on  his  warfare  after 
his  antagonist  had  died  has  been  much  blamed  in  modern  times.  It 
is  probable,  however,  that  this  objection  could  not  have  been  felt  so 
keenly  by  Aristophanes,  or  he  would  not  have  prejudiced  his  own 
cause  by  hounding  the  dead.  Just  as  he  enjoyed  unequaled  freedom 
in  abusing  the  living,  he  doubtless  was  at  liberty  to  speak  his  mind 
about  those  in  the  grave,  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  these  were 
not  supposed  to  be  lifted  above  discussion  by  removal  to  a  happier 
land.  However  this  may  be,  the  fact  that  Aristophanes  made  this 
deliberate  and  careful  onslaught  upon  Euripides,  and,  instead  of  con- 
tenting himself,  as  he  had  done  previously,  with  mere  farcical  ridicule, 
gave  his  reasons,  with  a  show  of  impartiality  letting  Euripides  defend 
his  work,  seems  to  show,  what  in  fact  we  know,  that  this  tragedian  held 
a  high  place  in  the  public  estimation  ;  possibly  his  recent  death  at  a 
foreign  court  had  reminded  the  Athenians  how  great  a  man  they  had 
lost,  and  had  given  them  a  vivid  sense  of  the  injustice  of  his  foes.  To 
counteract  this  feeling,  it  may  be  supposed,  Aristophanes  wrote  the 
Frogs,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  carefully  contrived  of  all  his  plays. 
Nowhere  else  is  the  main  design  of  the  comedy  less  entrusted  to  mere 
high  spirits  and  ridicule. 

The  chorus  of  frogs,  it  should  be  added,  were  not  seen  ;  the  proper 
chorus  consisted  of  the  votaries  of  Dionysus.  This  last-mentioned 
body  had  a  meaning  for  the  Greeks,  who  understood  allusions  to  the 
initiated  and  to  the  mysteries  that  are  obscure  to  us. 

It  is  to  be  noticed,  also,  that  Aristophanes  is  by  no  means  dis- 
posed   to    give    .^schylus    undiscriminating   praise ;    he    points    out 


486  THE   COMEDY. 

that  poet's  faults,  without  virulence,  but  with  a  manifest  desire  for 
impartiality. 

Scene. — EURIPIDES,  BACCHUS,  yESCHYLUS. 
Eu.  Don't  give  me  your  advice,  I  claim  the  seat 
As  being  a  better  and  superior  artist. 
B.   What,  ^schylus,  don't  you  speak?     You  hear  his  language, 
Eu.  He's  mustering  up  a  grand  commanding  visage 

—  A  silent  attitude  —  the  common  trick 
That  he  begins  with  in  his  tragedies. 

B.  Come,  have  a  care,  my  friend  —  You'll  say  too  much. 
Eu.   I  know  the  man  of  old  —  I've  scrutinized 

And  shewn  him  long  ago  for  what  he  is, 

A  rude  unbridled  tongue,  a  haughty  spirit; 

Proud,  arrogant,  and  insolently  pompous  ; 

Rough,  clownish,  boisterous  and  overbearing. 
.^S.   Say'st  thou  me  so  ?     Thou  bastard  of  the  earth, 

With  thy  patch'd  robes  and  rags  of  sentiment 

Raked  from  the  streets  and  stitch'd  and  tack'd  together ! 

Thou  mumping,  whining,  beggarly  hypocrite  ! 

But  you  shall  pay  for  it. 
B.  {in  addressing  JSschylus  attempts  to  speak  in  more  elevated  style').     There 
now,  JEschylus, 

You  grow  too  warm.     Restrain  your  ireful  mood. 
yEs.  Yes ;  but  I'll  seize  that  sturdy  beggar  first. 

And  search  and  strip  him  bare  of  his  pretensions. 
B.  Quick  !     Quick  !     A  sacrifice  to  the  winds  —  Make  ready ; 

The  storm  of  rage  is  gathering.     Bring  a  victim. 
yEs.  A  wretch  that  has  corrupted  every  thing ; 

Our  music  with  his  melodies  from  Crete  ; 

Our  morals  with  his  incestuous  tragedies. 
B.  Dear,  worthy  yEschylus,  contain  yourself, 

And  as  for  you,  Euripides,  move  off 

This  instant,  if  you're  wise  ;  I  give  you  warning. 

Or  else,  with  one  of  his  big  thumping  phrases. 

You'll  get  your  brains  dash'd  out,  and  all  your  notions 

And  sentiments  and  matter  mash'd  to  pieces. 

—  And  thee,  most  noble  ^schylus  {as  above),  I  beseech 
With  mild  demeanour,  calm  and  affable 

To  hear  and  answer. —  For  it  ill  beseems 

Illustrious  bards  to  scold  like  market-women. 

But  you  roar  out  and  bellow  like  a  furnace. 
Eu.  {in  the  tone  of  a  town  blackguard  working  himself  up  for  a  quarrel). 

I'm  up  to  it. —  I'm  resolved,  and  here  I  stand 

Ready  and  steady —  take  what  course  you  will ; 

Let  him  be  first  to  speak,  or  else  let  me. 

I'll  match  my  plots  and  characters  against  him  ; 

My  sentiments  and  language,  and  what  not : 

Ay !  and  my  music  too,  my  Meleager, 

My  ^olus  and  my  Telephus  and  all. 
B.  Well,  .(Eschylus, —  determine.     What  say  you  ? 
.^S.  {speaks  in  a  tone  of  grave  manly  despondency). 

I  wish  the  place  of  trial  had  been  elsewhere, 

I  stand  at  disadvantage  here. 
B.  As  how.? 

iEs.  Because  my  poems  live  on  earth  above. 

And  his  died  with  him,  and  descended  here, 

And  are  at  hand  as  ready  witnesses ; 

But  you  decide  the  matter:  I  submit. 


EXTRACT  FROM    THE  FROGS.  4^7 

B.  (with  official pertness  and  importance). 

Come  —  let  them  bring  me  fire  and  frankincense, 

That  I  may  offer  vows  and  make  oblations 

For  an  ingenious  critical  conclusion 

To  this  same  elegant  and  clever  trial  — 

(  To  the  Chorus?) 

And  you  too, —  sing  me  a  hymn  there. — To  the  Muses. 

Chorus. 
To  the  Heavenly  Nine  we  petition, 
Ye,  that  on  earth  or  in  air  are  for  ever  kindly  protecting  the  vagaries  of  learned 

ambition. 
And  at  your  ease  from  above  our  sense  and  folly  directing,  (or  poetical  contests 

inspecting. 
Deign  to  behold  for  a  while  as  a  scene  of  amusing  attention,  all  the  struggles  of  style 

and  invention,) 
Aid,  and   assist,  and   attend,  and  afford  to  the  furious  authors  your  refined  and 

enlighten 'd  suggestions ; 
Grant  them    ability  —  force   and  agility,  quick  recollections,  and  address   in  their 

answers  and  questions. 
Pithy  replies,  with  a  word  to  the  wise,  and  pulling  and  hauling,  with  inordinate  uproar 

and  bawling, 
Driving  and  drawing,  like  carpenters  sawing,  their  dramas  asunder  : 
With  suspended  sense  and  wonder. 
All  are  waiting  and  attending 
On  the  conflict  now  depending ! 

B.  Come,  say  your  prayers,  you  two  before  the  trial. 

{/Eschylus  offers  incense. 
^S.  O  Ceres,  nourisher  of  my  soul,  maintain  me 
A  worthy  follower  of  thy  mysteries. 
B.  {to  Euripides?)     There,  you  there,  make  your  offering. 
Eu.  Well,  I  will ; 

But  I  direct  myself  to  other  deities. 
B.  Heh,  what  ?     Your  own  .-'     Some  new  ones? 
Eu.  Most  assuredly ! 

B.  Well !     Pray  away,  then  —  to  your  own  new  deities. 

{^Euripides  offers  incense. 
Eu.  Thou  foodful  Air,  the  nurse  of  all  my  notions; 
And  ye,  the  organic  powers  of  sense  and  speech, 
And  keen  refined  olfactory  discernment. 
Assist  my  present  search  for  faults  and  errors. 

Chorus. 
Here  beside  you,  here  are  we. 
Eager  all  to  hear  and  see 
This  abstruse  and  mighty  battle 
Of  profound  and  learned  prattle 
—  But,  as  it  appears  to  me. 
Thus  the  course  of  it  will  be ; 
He,  the  junior  and  appellant, 
Will  advance  as  the  assailant, 
Aiming  shrewd  satyric  darts 
At  his  rival's  noble  parts  ; 
And  with  sallies  sharp  and  keen 
Try  to  wound  him  in  the  spleen, 
While  the  veteran  rends  and  raises 
Rifted,  rough,  uprooted  phrases, 
Wielded  like  a  threshing  staff 
Scattering  the  dust  and  chaff. 


THE    COMEDY. 


B.  Come,  now,  begin,  dispute  away,  but  first  I  give  you  notice 
That  every  phrase  in  your  discourse  must  be  refined,  avoiding 
Vulgar  absurd  comparisons,  and  awkward  silly  joking. 
Eu.  At  the  first  outset,  I  forbear  to  state  my  own  pretensions ; 

Hereafter  I  shall  mention  them,  when 

his  have  been  refuted  ; 
After  I   shall  have  fairly  shown   how 

he  befool 'd  and  cheated 
The   rustic   audience   that    he   found, 

which    Phrynichus    bequeathed 

him. 
He  planted  first  upon  the  stage  a  figure 

veil'd  and  mufifled. 
An  Achilles   or   a    Niobe,  that  never 

show'd  their  faces ; 
But  kept  a  tragic  attitude,  without  a 

word  to  utter. 
No  more  they  did;  'tis  very  true. 

—  In  the  meanwhile  the  Chorus 
Strung  on  ten  strophes  right-on-end, 

but  they  remain'd  in  silence. 
I  liked  that   silence   well    enough,  as 

well,  perhaps,  or  better 
Than  those  new  talking  characters  — 

That's  from  your  want  of  judg- 
ment. 


SERVANT   MASK. 


B. 

Eu. 


B. 


Eu. 


Eu. 


yEs. 

B. 
Eu. 

B. 
Eu. 


Believe  me. 
B.  Why,  perhaps  it  is  ;  but  what  was  his  intention  } 
Eu.  Why,  mere  conceit  and  insolence  :  to  keep  the  people  waiting 

Till  Niobe  should  deign  to  speak,  to  drive  his  drama  forward. 
B.  O  what  a  rascal !     Now  I  see  the  tricks  he  used  to  play  me. 
[  To  yEschylus,  who  is  showing  signs  of  indigttafion  by  various  contortions. 

— What  makes  you  writhe  and  wince  about  ? — 

Because  he  feels  my  censures. 

— Then  having  dragg'd  and  drawl'd  along,  half-way  to  the  conclusion, 

He  foisted  in  a  dozen  words  of  noisy  boisterous  accent. 

With  lofty  plumes  and  shaggy  brows,  mere  bugbears  of  the  language, 

That  no  man  ever  heard  before. — 

Alas !  alas ! 

{to  ALschylus').  Have  done  there  ! 

He  never  used  a  simple  word. 

{to  ^schylus).  Don't  grind  your  teeth  so  strangely. 

But  "  Bulwarks  and  Scamanders  "  and  "  Hippogrifs  and  Gorgons." 

"  On  burnish'd  shields  emboss'd  in  brass  ;  "  bloody,  remorseless  phrases 

Which  nobody  could  understand. 

Well,  I  confess,  for  my  part, 

I  used  to  keep  awake  at  night,  with  guesses  and  conjectures 

To  think  what  kind  of  foreign  bird  he  meant  by  griffin-horses. 

A  figure  on  the  heads  of  ships;  you  goose,  you  must  have  seen  them. 

Well,  from  the  likeness,  I  declare,  I  took  it  for  Eruxis. 

So  !     Figures  from  the  heads  of  ships  are  fit  for  tragic  diction. 

Well  then — thou  paltry  wretch,  explain.     What  were  your  own  devices  7 
Eu.  Not  stories  about  flying-stags,  like  yours,  and  griffin-horses  ; 

Nor  terms  nor  images  derived  from  tapestry  Persian  hangings. 

When  I  received  the  Muse  from  you  I  found  her  puff'd  and  pamper'd 

With  pompous  sentences  and  terms,  a  cumbrous  huge  virago. 

My  first  attention  was  applied  to  make  her  look  genteelly  ; 

And  bring  her  to  a  slighter  shape  by  dint  of  lighter  diet : 

I  fed  her  with  plain  household  phrase,  and  cool  familiar  salad. 

With  water-gruel  episode,  with  sentimental  jelly, 


B. 


B. 
Eu. 


EXTRACT  FROM    THE  FROGS.  489 

With  moral  mincemeat ;  till  at  length  I  brought  her  into  compass  ; 

Cephisophon,  who  was  my  cook,  contrived  to  make  them  relish. 

I  kept  my  plots  distinct  and  clear,  and,  to  prevent  confusion. 

My  leading  characters  rehearsed  their  pedigrees  for  prologues. 
.^S.  'Twas  well,  at  least,  that  you  forbore  to  quote  your  own  extraction. 
Eu.  From  the  first  opening  of  the  scene,  all  persons  were  in  action  ; 

The  master  spoke,  the  slave  replied,  the  women,  young  and  old  ones, 

All  had  their  equal  share  of  talk — 
^S.  Come,  then,  stand  forth  and  tell  us, 

What  forfeit  less  than  death  is  due  for  such  an  innovation  ? 
Eu.  I  did  it  upon  principle,  from  democratic  motives. 

B.  Take  care,  my  friend — upon  that  ground  your  footing  is  but  ticklish. 
Eu.  I  taught  these  youths  to  speechify, 
its.  I  say  so  too.     Moreover 

I  say  that — for  the  public  good — you  ought  to  have  been  hang'd  first. 
Eu.  The  rules  and  forms  of  rhetoric, — the  laws  of  composition, 

To  prate — to  state — and  in  debate  to  meet  a  question  fairly : 

At  a  dead  lift  to  turn  and  shift — to  make  a  nice  distinction. 
.^S.  I  grant  it  all — I  make  it  all — my  grounds  of  accusation. 
Eu.  The  whole  in  cases  and  concerns  occurring  and  recurring 

At  every  turn  and  every  day  domestic  and  familiar. 

So  that  the  audience,  one  and  all,  from  personal  experience. 

Were  competent  to  judge  the  piece,  and  form  a  fair  opinion 

Whether  my  scenes  and  sentiments  agreed  with  truth  and  nature. 

I  never  took  them  by  surprise  to  storm  their  understandings. 

With  Memnons  and  Tydides's  and  idle  rattle-trappings 

Of  battle-steeds  and  clattering  shields  to  scare  them  from  their  senses  ; 

But  for  a  test  (perhaps  the  best)  our  pupils  and  adherents 

May  be  distinguish'd  instantly  by  person  and  behaviour ; 

His  are  Phormisius  the  rough,  Meganetes  the  gloomy. 

Hobgoblin-headed,  trumpet-mouth'd,  grim-visaged,  ugly-bearded  ; 

But  mine  are  Cleitophon  the  smooth, — Theramenes  the  gentle. 
B.  Theramenes — ^.  clever  hand,  a  universal  genius, 

I  never  found  him  at  a  loss  in  all  the  turns  of  party 

To  change  his  watch-word  at  a  word  or  at  a  moment's  warning. 
Eu.  Thus  it  was  that  I  began. 

With  a  nicer,  neater  plan  ; 

Teaching  men  to  look  about. 

Both  within  doors  and  without ; 

To  direct  their  own  affairs. 

And  their  house  and  household  wares  ; 

Marking  every  thing  amiss — 

"  Where  is  that  ?"  and — "  What  is  this.?" 

"  This  is  broken — that  is  gone," 

'Tis  the  modern  style  and  tone. 
B.  Yes,  by  Jove — and  at  their  homes 

Nowadays  each  master  comes. 

Of  a  sudden  bolting  in 

With  an  uproar  and  a  din  ; 

Rating  all  the  servants  round, 

"  If  it's  lost,  it  must  be  found. 

Why  was  all  the  garlic  wasted  .-* 

There,  that  honey  has  been  tasted  : 

And  these  olives  pilfer'd  here. 

Where's  the  pot  we  bought  last  year  ? 

What's  become  of  all  the  fish  ? 

Which  of  3'ou  has  broke  the  dish  ?  " 

Thus  it  is,  but  heretofore. 

The  moment  that  they  cross'd  the  door. 

They  sat  them  down  to  doze  and  snore. 


49°  THE    COMEDY. 

Chorus 
"  Noble  Achilles  !     You  see  the  disaster, 
The  shame  and  affront,  and  an  enemy  nigh  !" 
Oh,  bethink  thee,  mighty  master, 
Think  betimes  of  your  reply  ; 
Yet  beware,  lest  anger  force 
Your  hasty  chariot  from  the  course  ; 
Grievous  charges  have  been  heard. 
With  many  a  sharp  and  bitter  word. 
Notwithstanding,  mighty  chief, 
Let  Prudence  fold  her  cautious  reef 
In  your  anger's  swelling  sail  ; 
By  degrees  you  may  prevail, 
But  beware  of  your  behaviour 
Till  the  wind  is  in  your  favour  : 
Now  for  your  answer,  illustrious  architect. 
Founder  of  lofty  theatrical  lays  ! 
Patron  in  chief  of  our  tragical  trumperies  ! 
Open  the  floodgate  of  figure  and  phrase  ! 

^S.  My  spirit  is  kindled  with  anger  and  shame. 
To  so  base  a  competitor  forced  to  reply. 
But  I  needs  must  retort,  or  the  wretch  will  report 
That  he  left  me  refuted  and  foil'd  in  debate  ; 
Tell  me  then.  What  are  the  principal  merits 
Entitling  a  poet  to  praise  and  renown  ? 

Eu.  The  improvement  of  morals,  the  progress  of  mind. 
When  a  poet,  by  skill  and  invention. 
Can  render  his  audience  virtuous  and  wise. 

iEs.  But  if  you,  by  neglect  or  intention, 

Have  done  the  reverse,  and  from  brave  honest  spirits 
Depraved,  and  have  left  them  degraded  and  base. 
Tell  me,  what  punishment  ought  you  to  suffer  ? 
B.  Death,  to  be  sure  ! —  Take  that  answer  from  me. 

^S.  Observe  then,  and  mark,  what  our  citizens  were. 
When  first  from  my  care  they  were  trusted  to  you  ; 
Not  scoundrel  informers,  or  paltry  buffoons, 
Evading  the  services  due  to  the  state  ; 
But  with  hearts  all  on  fire,  for  adventure  and  war, 
Distinguish'd  for  hardiness,  stature,  and  strength. 
Breathing  forth  nothing  but  lances  and  darts. 
Arms  and  equipment,  and  battle  array. 
Bucklers,  and  shields,  and  habergeons,  and  hauberks, 
Helmets,  and  plumes,  and  heroic  attire. 
B.  There  he  goes,  hammering  on  with  his  helmets, 
He'll  be  the  death  of  me, —  one  of  these  days. 

Eu.    But  how  did  you  manage  to  make  'em  so  manly. 
What  was  the  method,  the  means  that  you  took  ? 
B.  Speak,  ^schylus,  speak  and  behave  yourself  better. 
And  don't  in  your  rage  stand  so  silent  and  stern. 

.<Es.  A  drama,  brimful  with  heroical  spirit. 

Eu.  What  did  you  call  it  ? 

-<Cs.  "  The  Chiefs  against  Thebes," 

«^  That  inspired  each  spectator  with  martial  ambition, 

Courage,  and  ardour,  and  prowess,  and  pride. 
B.  But  you  did  very  wrong  to  encourage  the  Thebans. 
Indeed,  you  deserve  to  be  punish'd.you  do. 
For  the  Thebans  are  grown  to  be  capital  soldiers, 
You've  done  us  a  mischief  by  that  very  thing. 

yEs.  The  fault  was  your  own,  if  you  took  other  courses ; 
The  lesson  I  taught  was  directed  to  you  : 


EXTRACT  FROM    THE  FROGS.  49 1 

Then  I  gave  you  the  glorious  theme  of  "  the  Persians," 

Replete  with  sublime  patriotical  strains, 

The  record  and  example  of  noble  achievement, 

The  delight  of  the  city,  the  pride  of  the  stage. 
B.  I  rejoiced,  1  confess,  when  the  tidings  were  carried 

To  old  King  Darius,  so  long  dead  and  buried. 

And  the  chorus  in  concert  kept  wringing  their  hands, 

Weeping  and  wailing,  and  crying,  Alas  ! 
iEs.  Such  is  the  duty,  the  task  of  a  poet, 

Fulfilling  in  honor  his  office  and  trust. 

Look  to  traditional  history — look 

To  antiquity,  primitive,  early,  remote  : 

See  there,  what  a  blessing  illustrious  poets 

Conferr'd  on  mankind  in  the  centuries  past, 

Orpheus  instructed  mankind  in  religion, 

Reclaim'd  them  from  bloodshed  and  barbarous  rites  ; 

Musaeus  deliver'd  the  doctrine  of  medicine. 

And  warnings  prophetic  for  ages  to  come ; 

Next  came  old  Hesiod,  teaching  us  husbandry. 

Ploughing,  and  sowing,  and  rural  affairs. 

Rural  economy,  rural  astronomy. 

Homely  morality,  labour  and  thrift ; 

Homer  himself,  our  adorable  Homer, 

What  was  his  title  to  praise  and  renown  } 

What,  but  the  worth  of  the  lessons  he  taught  us. 

Discipline,  arms,  and  equipment  of  war  } 
B.  Yes,  but  Pantacles  was  never  the  wiser ; 

For  in  the  procession  he  ought  to  have  led. 

When  his  helmet  was  tied,  he  kept  puzzling,  and  tried 

To  fasten  the  crest  on  the  crown  of  his  head. 
yES.  But  other  brave  warriors  and  noble  commanders 

Were  train 'd  in  his  lessons  to  valour  and  skill ; 

Such  was  the  noble  heroical  Lamachus ; 

Others  besides  were  instructed  by  him  ; 

And  I,  from  his  fragments  ordaining  a  banquet, 

Furnish'd  and  deck'd  with  majestical  phrase. 

Brought  forward  the  models  of  ancient  achievement, 

Teucer,  Patroclus,  and  chiefs  of  antiquity ; 

Raising  and  rousing  Athenian  hearts. 

When  the  signal  of  onset  was  blown  in  their  ear,  , 

With  a  similar  ardour  to  dare  and  to  do ; 

But  I  never  allow'd  of  your  lewd  Sthenoboeas, 

Or  filthy,  detestable  Phasdras  —  not  I — 

Indeed,  I  should  doubt  if  my  drama  throughout 

Exhibit  an  instance  of  woman  in  love. 
Eu.  No,  you  were  too  stern  for  an  amorous  turn, 

For  Venus  and  Cupid  too  stern  and  too  stupid, 
^s.  May  they  leave  me  at  rest,  and  with  peace  in  my  breast. 

And  infest  and  pursue  your  kindred  and  you. 

With  the  very  same  blow  that  despatch'd  you  below. 
B.  That  was  well  enough  said  ;  with  the  life  that  he  led, 

He  himself  in  the  end  got  a  wound  from  a  friend. 
Eu.  But  what,  after  all,  is  the  horrible  mischief  ? 

My  poor  Sthenoboeas,  what  harm  have  they  done  ? 
^S.  The  example  is  follow'd,  the  practice  has  gain'd. 

And  women  of  family,  fortune,  and  worth, 

Bewilder'd  with  shame  in  a  passionate  fury. 

Have  poison'd  themselves  for  Bellerophon's  sake. 
Eu.  But  at  least  you'll  allow  that  I  never  invented  it, 

Phaedra's  affair  was  a  matter  of  fact. 


492  THE    COMEDY. 

M'S,.  A  fact  with  a  vengeance !  but  horrible  facts 

Should  be  buried  in  silence,  not  bruited  abroaa, 

Nor  brought  forth  on  the  stage,  nor  emblazon'd  in  poetry. 

Children  and  boys  have  a  teacher  assign 'd  them  — 

The  bard  is  a  master  for  manhood  and  youth. 

Bound  to  instruct  them  in  virtue  and  truth, 

Beholden  and  bound. 

Eu.  But  is  virtue  a  sound  ? 

Can  any  mysterious  virtue  be  found 
In  bombastical,  huge,  hyperbolical  phrase? 

^S.  Thou  dirty,  calamitous  wretch,  recollect 
That  exalted  ideas  of  fancy  require 
To  be  clothed  in  a  suitable  vesture  of  phrase  ; 
And  that  heroes  and  gods  may  be  fairly  supposed 
Discoursing  in  words  of  a  mightier  import, 
More  lofty  by  far  than  the  children  of  man  ; 
As  the  pomp  of  apparel  assign'd  to  their  persons, 
Produced  on  the  stage  and  presented  to  view, 
Surpasses  in  dignity,  splendour,  and  lustre 
Our  popular  garb  and  domestic  attire, 
A  practice  which  nature  and  reason  allow. 
But  which  you  disannuU'd  and  rejected. 

Eu.  As  how? 

yEs.  When  you  brought  forth  your  kings,  in  a  villanous  fashion, 
In  patches  and  rags,  as  a  claim  for  compassion. 

Eu.  And  this  is  a  grave  misdemeanour,  forsooth  ! 

.(Es.  It  has  taught  an  example  of  sordid  untruth  ; 
For  the  rich  of  the  city,  that  ought  to  equip, 
And  to  serve  with,  a  ship,  are  appealing  to  pity. 
Pretending  distress  —  with  an  overworn  dress. 
B.  By  Jove,  so  they  do  ;  with  a  waistcoat  brand  new. 
Worn  closely  within,  warm  and  new  for  the  skin ; 
And  if  they  escape  in  this  beggarly  shape. 
You'll  meet  'em  at  market,  I  warrant  'em  all. 
Buying  the  best  at  the  fishmonger's  stall. 

.^S.  He  has  taught  every  soul  to  sophisticate  truth  ; 

And  debauch'd  all  the  bodies  and  minds  of  the  youth ; 
Leaving  them  morbid,  and  pallid,  and  spare ; 
And  the  places  of  exercise  vacant  and  bare  : — 
The  disorder  has  spread  to  the  fleet  and  the  crew  ; 
The  service  is  ruin'd,  and  ruin'd  by  you  — 
With  prate  and  debate  in  a  mutinous  state  ; 
Whereas,  in  my  day,  'twas  a  different  way  ; 
Nothing  they  said,  nor  knew  nothing  to  say, 
But  to  call  for  their  porridge  and  cry,  '  Pull  away.' 
****** 

u^s.  Can  the  reprobate  mark,  in  the  course  he  has  run, 
One  crime  unattempted,  a  mischief  undone  ? 
With  his  horrible  passions,  of  sisters  and  brothers. 
And  sons-in-law  tempted  by  villanous  mothers, 
And  temples  defiled  with  a  bastardly  birth. 
And  women,  divested  of  honour  or  worth. 
That  talk  about  life  as  "  a  death  upon  earth  ;" 
And  sophistical  frauds  and  rhetorical  bawds ; 
Till  now  the  whole  state  is  infested  with  tribes 
Of  scriveners  and  scribblers,  and  rascally  scribes — 
All  practice  of  masculine  vigour  and  pride, 
Our  wrestling  and  running,  are  all  laid  aside, 
And  we  see  that  the  city  can  hardly  provide 
For  the  Feast  of  the  Founder,  a  racer  of  force 
To  carry  the  torch  and  accomplish  a  course." 


CHANGES  IN  SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  CONDITIONS.  493 


X. 

The  Ecclesiazusae,  which  was  brought  out  about  392  B.C.,  is  a  bold 
caricature  of  the  socialistic  plans  that  were  long  talked  about  before 
they  were  finally  stated  with  the  perfection  of  literary  art  by  Plato  in 
his  Republic.  The  women  have  determined  to  capture  the  public 
assembly  in  order  to  pass  a  law  placing  the  control  of  the  state  in  their 
hands.  They  consequently  get  up  early,  array  themselves  in  their  hus- 
bands' clothes,  fasten  on  false  beards,  and  before  the  men  can  find 
proper  garments  the  women  have  voted  to  oust  them  from  the  govern- 
ment. This  first  part  of  the  play  is  full  of  amusing,  if  coarse,  comedy  ; 
in  the  second  half  the  women  exhibit  a  delightful  wildness.  No 
sooner  have  they  obtained  command  than  they  become  wildly  lawless, 
and  Aristophanes  points  out,  with  great  plainness,  the  disturbing  effect 
of  practical  socialism.  To  the  end,  it  will  be  noticed,  the  poet  remains 
a  sturdy  and  militant  conservative,  who  pathetically  struggles  against 
the  tendencies  of  his  time,  against  the  weakening  virtue  and  the  failing 
forces  of  Athens. 
I  In  the  last  play,  the  Plutus,  which  had  been  brought  out  earlier,  in 
408  B.C.,  and  in  its  present  form  twenty  years  later,  in  388  B.C.,  we  see  the 
effects  of  the  peace  and  the  oligarchy  in  behalf  of  which  Aristophanes 
had  fought  all  his  life.  Among  the  changes  that  they  produce  is  the 
suppression  of  the  ancient  comedy.  It  had  shown  itself  a  tremendous 
means  of  attack.  The  license  that  it  had  required  from  the  Dionysiac 
fertivals  had  proved  a  dangerous,  if  ineffectual,  weapon,  that  left  deep 
wounds  even  if  it  did  not  kill.  After  the  melancholy  end  of  the  war, 
and  the  capture  of  Athens  by  Lysander,  in  404  B.C.,  the  government  of 
the  Thirty  forbade  the  parabasis,  and  reference  to  contemporary  events 
or  to  living  persons  by  name.  This  law  put  an  end  to  the  old  comedy, 
and  in  its  place  arose  what  is  called  the  middle  comedy,  which  in  time 
developed  into  the  new  comedy, which  concerned  itself  with  private 
life  and  domestic  scenes  and  characters.  In  other  words,  comedy 
ceased  to  be  a  part  of  Greek  life  in  which  public  matters  were  dis- 
cussed and  denounced  ;  it  became  a  literary  work,  a  work  of  art.  This 
is  an  enormous  step,  although  it  is  one  that  the  conventional  form  of 
most  of  our  modern  literature  disables  us  from  judging  as  it  deserves. 
We  are  so  accustomed  to  literature  that  for  centuries  has  grown  up  as 
an  art  that  any  form  that  has  served  to  portray  life  as  it  is  and  the 
emotions  that  do  not  have  to  be  acquired  out  of  books  is  almost 
incomprehensible. 

Other  things  led  to  the  change.     The  material  ruin  diminished  the 
amount  that  could  be  spent   on   the  chorus,   and   from   that   time  the 


494  THE    COMEDY. 

comedy  changed  materially.  What  the  middle  comedy  was  may  be 
conjectured  from  the  only  example  of  it  that  has  reached  us,  the  Plutus 
of  Aristophanes.  Here  at  once  we  are  confronted  with  abstract  per- 
sonification. There  are  no  more  of  the  cutting  vilifications  of  living 
men,  although  it  is  yet  Aristophanes  who  writes,  and  there  must  have 
been  many  who  detested  the  keenness  of  his  satire,  which  is  scarcely 
less  effective  for  abusing  whole  classes  of  citizens. 

The  play  opens  with  Chremylus  on  the  stage  and  his  slave  Carion, 
who  explain  that  the  master,  being  puzzled  by  the  prosperity  of  the 
vicious  and  the  low  state  of  the  virtuous,  has  been  to  consult  the  oracle 
of  Apollo  as  to  whether  it  would  not  be  advisable  for  him  to  bring  up 
his  son  as  a  rascal  if  he  wishes  to  fit  him  well  for  this  life.  The  god 
in  answer  has  bidden  him  to  follow  the  first  person  whom  he  meets  on 
leaving  the  temple.  This  person  is  the  god  of  wealth,  Plutus.  He  is 
blind,  having  been  robbed  of  his  sight  by  Zeus,  out  of  ill  will  toward 
mankind,  "  For  when  I  was  young,"  he  explains,  "  I  threatened  to 
go  only  to  the  just,  wise,  and  well-behaved  ;  so  he  blinded  me  that  I 
might  not  be  able  to  distinguish  any  of  these."  He  further  says  in 
answer  to  questioning,  that  if  he  should  recover  his  sight  he  would  once 
more  shun  the  wicked  and  seek  the  good,  for  it's  a  long  time  since  I 
have  seen  these  last.  "  That's  not  surprising,"  says  Chremylus,  "  for 
neither  have  I,  and  my  sight  is  good."  Chremylus  promises  to  restore 
the  blind  god's  vision,  although  the  deity  fears  the  wrath  of  Zeus  ;  he 
is  consoled,  however,  when  the  infinite  power  of  riches  is  explained  to 
him.  For  money  rules  the  world  ;  men  grow  weary  of  love,  bread, 
m.usic,  sweetmeats,  honor,  cheese-cakes,  valor,  dried  figs,  ambition, 
barley-cake,  military  command,  lentil  soup,  but  never  of  money.  "  If 
a  man  has  accumulated  thirteen  talents,  he  is  only  the  more  anxious 
to  get  sixteen.  And  when  he  has  done  this  he  yearns  for  forty,  or  he 
says  that  life  is  not  worth  living."  Astute  observers  have  seen  some- 
thing of  the  same  kind  in  modern  times. 

All  of  these  things  are  brought  out  in  a  brilliant,  swift,  conversational 
exchange  of  question  and  answer  which  foreboded  the  pure  dialogues 
of  the  younger  men. 

Plutus  consents  to  remain  with  Chremylus,  who  summons  his  neigh- 
bors to  take  part  in  his  good  fortune.  These  men  are  the  chorus.  In 
order  to  perform  his  part  of  the  engagement,  Chremylus  is  anxious  to 
have  Plutus  pass  a  night  in  the  temple  of  yEsculapius,  but  they  are 
prevented  by  a  woman  who  turns  out  to  be  Poverty,  and  we  are  in  the 
full  stream  of  allegory.  This  familiar  deity  proves  that,  by  encouraging 
toil,  she  it  is  who  really  does  the  world  good  ;  when  men  are  poor,  they 
are  free  from  vices ;  poor  orators  are  just,  it  is  only  when  they  have 
become  rich  that  they  are  vicious,  but  Chremylus  refuses  to  be  con- 


THE  MIDDLE    COMEDY.  495 

vinced,  even  if  she  convince  him,  and  he  drives  her  away.  She  says 
that  some  day  or  other  he  will  be  sending  for  her.  "  Then  you  will 
come  fast  enough,"  is  his  reply.     Meanwhile  he  will  enjoy  his  wealth. 

The  god  is  freed  from  his  blindness,  the  account  which  Chremylus 
gives  his  wife  of  the  cure  serving  as  an  excellent  opportunity  for  ridi- 
cule of  those  butts  of  comic  writers,  the  physicians.  Plutus  and 
Chremylus  at  once  become  very  popular,  now  that  everything  goes 
well. 

Then  follow  a  succession  of  scenes  to  represent  the  altered  con- 
dition of  things,  after  the  usual  method  of  Aristophanes.  A  just  man 
seeks  to  have  his  coffers,  emptied  by  his  generosity,  once  more  filled. 
The  informer  comes  to  grief.  The  rich  old  woman  is  shamed.  Finally 
Hermes  appears,  having  abandoned  Zeus,  to  take  service  with  Plutus 
and  Chremylus.  He  thinks  that  he  will  fare  better  in  his  new  place, 
and  he  is  devoured  by  hunger,  now  that  men  have  ceased  to  worship 
anything  but  wealth.  A  priest  of  Zeus  also  comes  in  to  aid,  offers  ms 
services  to  the  new  religionr^nd  with  this  final  victory  the  play  ends. 
V  Of  the  other  plays  of  Aristophanes  only  a  few  fragments  are  left ;  it 
is  from  the  eleven  pieces  just  briefly  described  that  an  opinion  of  the 
old  Athenian  comedy  must  be  formed.  Even  the  best  translations 
suffer  from  the  evaporation  of  his  brilliant  style,  and  of  his  wit  which 
covers  all  forms  from  the  pun  to  the  most  extravagant  invention.  The 
fact  that  he  was  absolutely  out-spoken  distinguishes  him  from  all  other 
writers  of  comedy.  There  was  nothing  that  he  could  not  say  ;  ribaldry 
had  no  terrors  for  him,  and  this  frankness  of  speech  was  but  part  of 
the  absolute  freedom  which  he  enjoyed.  No  subject  was  too  sacred  ; 
the  men  in  power,  the  follies  of  the  Athenians,  their  fickleness  and 
weaknesses  were  legitimate  objects  of  his  wit.  The  comedy  was,  in 
fact,  an  important  constituent  of  the  Athenian  state,  not  a  literary 
luxury,  as  it  has  too  often  been  in  modern  times.  It  represented,  one 
might  almost  say,  the  public  conscience,  and  as  a  man's  conscience 
freely  discusses  all  his  deeds  without  fear  or  favor,  so  the  wit  of  Aris- 
tophanes played  over  the  whole  state,  correcting,  purging,  deriding, 
and  guiding.  This  coherence  of  the  comic  theatre  with  the  national 
life  explains  what  later  generations  have  blamed  in  the  pieces  of  Aris- 
tophanes ;  for  only  when  literature  becomes  conventional  may  it 
artificially  be  adapted  to  suit  the  requirements  of  taste.  So  long  as 
it  is  living,  conventions  have  no  power  over  it. 

Extracts  and  descriptions  do  no  sufficient  justice  to  the  personal 
quality  of  the  poet's  style.  Much  of  his  wit,  many  of  his  allusions  to 
contemporary  circumstances,  are  lost  to  us  through  our  meagre  knowl- 
edge of  the  affairs  concerned,  but  enough  is  left  to  delight  us.  The 
terrible  keenness  of  the  wit  of  Aristophanes  is  most  striking  ;  nothing. 


496 


THE    COMEDY. 


for  instance,  could  exceed  the  force  of  letting  Cleisthenes,  in  the 
Thesmophoriazusae,  appear  among  the  women  assembled  for  sacred 
rites,  when  all  the  men  were  rigidly  excluded.  He  was  so  notoriously 
effeminate  that  he  was  not  accounted  a  man.  The  treatment  of  Cleon 
is  a  notorious  example  of  the  same  bitterness.  As  to  the  fun,  nothing 
more  need  be  said.  The  mechanical  presentation  of  the  jokes  is  an 
important  element.  This  is  exemplified  by  the  appearance  of  Socrates 
in  a  basket  "  among  the  clouds,"  and  in  the  Peace  by  the  way  in  which 
that  goddess  is  hauled  out  of  the  pit  by  the  different  nations.  First, 
the  Bceotians  will  not  pull,  then  the  Argives  are  sullen,  then  the 
Megarians ;  it  is  not  until  the  rustics  get  hold  that  the  goddess  stirs. 
When  it  is  remembered  that  these  drastic,  vivid  images  were  accom- 


CONVENTIONAL  COMEDY    FIGURES, 


panied  with  a  dialogue  and  with  a  wealth  of  lyric  verse,  one  may 
faintly  imagine  the  vividness  of  the  pictures  presented  to  the  delighted 
Athenians.  The  thousand-sidedness  of  the  poet,  the  manifold  applic- 
ability of  his  wit,  place  him  among  the  eternals, 

But  all  these  piecemeal  definitions  of  his  qualities,  and  the  skeletons 
of  his  plays  with  a  few  stray  shreds  hanging  on  them,  desiccated  in 
translation,  fail  to  give  a  sufficient  impression  of  the  vast  importance 
of  this  great  man.  The  dissection  of  his  character  into  separate 
characteristics,  the  examination  and  classification  of  the  subdivisions 
of  his  boundless  wit  and  enthusiasm  fail  to  represent  his  bulk  and 
prominence,  just  as  the  words  in  a  dictionary  fail  to  convey  an  adequate 
notion  of  the  style  of  a  good  writer.     It  was  the  cumulative  force  of 


7^HE  DISTmGUISHING   CHARACTERISTICS  OF  ARISTOPHANES.    497 

these  manifold  powers  that  made  Aristophanes  so  imposing  a  per- 
sonage. He  represents  not  wit  or  satire,  but  half  of  the  divided  spirit 
of  Athens,  and  to  speak  of  him  merely  as  a  great  writer  is  to  do  him 
but  scant  justice.  In  fact,  eminent  as  were  his  literary  achievements 
and  those  of  his  illustrious  contemporaries,  the  age  of  literature  had 
not  begun ;  that  came  later,  when  the  significance  of  writers  as  men 
sank  beneath  the  importance  of  their  style  or  grace,  or  good  taste. 
Wherein  Aristophanes  is  great  is  as  the  personification  of  an  important 
part  of  the  Athenian  people :  his  hatred  of  the  destructive  war,  his 
detestation  of  the  new  intellectual  ferment,  his  love  of  iEschylus  and 
the  former  grandeur  of  Athens,  his  abhorrence  of  the  democracy,  are 
beyond  and  outside  of  his  personal  feelings  ;  they  count  as  the  expres- 
sion of  a  large  part  of  an  eager  people,  just  as  truly  as  the  sublimity 
of  ^schylus  is  the  direct  resultant  of  the  lofty  confidence  of  the 
successful  city,  and  the  vividness  of  Euripides  is  Athens  ripened  by 
disaster. 

While  nothing  is  more  marked  than  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  of 
which  he  was  the  mouthpiece,  nothing  is  more  tragic  than  the  apparent 
failure  of  this  comedian's  earnest  effort  to  put  back  the  hands  of  the 
clock.  Everything  that  wit  and  intellectual  force  could  supply  was 
brought  to  bear  against  the  irresistible  force  of  events,  but  without 
other  result  than  to  slacken  somewhat  the  speed  of  their  movement. 
The  aim  that  Aristophanes  represented  was  a  hopeless  one ;  and  its 
only  effect  may  be  seen  in  the  satisfaction  with  which  the  later 
Athenians  regarded  their  past ;  and  the  brilliancy  of  the  hopeless 
contest  that  he  waged  is  the  measure  of  the  opposition,  as  we  see  in 
Euripides  a  good  part  of  the  feeling  against  which  it  contended.  With 
its  wisdom  we  have  nothing  to  do,  but  we  might  as  well  expect  to  be 
able  to  overlook  the  force  of  inertia  in  physics  as  not  to  find  con- 
servatism in  human  affairs. 

To  be  sure  conservatism  does  not  always  have  an  Aristophanes 
fighting  for  it,  nor  is  it  always  opposed  by  a  Euripides,  although  some 
such  contest  is  always  going  on.  Here  it  is  its  intensity  that  is  most 
striking.  We  are  all  so  accustomed  to  finding  some  of  the  qualities 
of  the  Golden  Age  ascribed  to  this  period,  that  insensibly  there  has 
grown  up  a  tolerably  distinct  impression  of  the  Athenians  as  a  number 
of  literary  and  artistic  enthusiasts  who  knew  no  guile,  and  no  blacker 
feeling  than  such  as  enlivened  a  vigorous  competition  in  intellectual 
work.  Yet,  Aristophanes  shows  very  clearly  how  much  humanity 
there  was  in  human  nature  at  this  time,  and  how  widespread  the 
turmoil  and  confusion  that  one  might  imagine  to  have  been  delicious 
sympathy  and  smoothness.  The  mistake  very  naturally  results  from 
the  easy  exaggeration  of  the  merits  everywhere  conspicuous  in  Greek 


49^  THE    COMEDY. 

work,  or  at  least  through  a  very  easy  transition  from  its  merits  to 
the  virtues  of  those  who  did  the  work,  and  have  been  readily  raised 
to  the  rank  of  demi-gods.  This  exaggeration  has  been  much  aided  by 
the  fact  that  the  knowledge  of  Greek  has  been  a  privilege  of,  one 
might  almost  say,  a  caste  that  has  never  been  averse  to  magnifying 
the  importance  of  its  acquirements,  and  so  readily  falls  into  over- 
enthusiasm.  The  glory  of  the  Greeks  throws  a  brilliant  light  on  those 
who  are  familiar  with  what  they  did,  and  separates  them  from  the 
common  herd,  and  they  have  readily  assigned  to  the  ancient  Greeks 
qualities  which  they  imagined  that  they  themselves  possessed,  and 
first  among  these  was  immunity  from  the  ordinary  weaknesses  of 
human  nature. 

In  fact,  however,  there  is  no  time  of  ideal  perfection  ;  always  and 
everywhere  good  work  connotes  hot  opposition,  and  here  the  conflict 
raged  between  two  parties  of  something  like  equal  ability.  In  Aris- 
tophanes we  see  the  beginning  of  the  end,  with  his  abhorrence  of  the 
present  and  his  adoration  of  the  irrevocable  past.  All  that  was  new 
he  detested,  and  he  struggled  against  every  change,  continually  utter, 
ing  the  advice  which  seemed  simple  enough,  though  it  was  impossible : 
to  repeat  what  had  been  done  in  the  awakening  after  the  Persian  wars. 
He  held  himself  aloof  from  what  he  regarded  as  new  heresies,  yet  he 
could  not  escape  the  influence  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  Its  spirit 
was  in  the  very  air  he  breathed  as  well  as  Euripides,  and  in  spite  of  all 
his  efl'orts  he  too  paid  his  tribute  to  the  interests  of  his  time.  We  see 
this  illustrated  by  the  appearance  in  his  comedies  of  individual  char- 
acters alongside  of  such  allegorical  abstractions  as  Peace,  Tumult, 
Demos,  and  Dicaeopolis,  or  Bdelycleon  ;  and  it  is  even  more  visible  in 
the  acknowledgment  of  the  existence  of  a  new  spirit  that  animates  his 
denunciation  of  its  perils.  Whereas  Euripides  was  contented  with  the 
opportunity  that  its  presence  gave  him  for  independent  thought,  Aris- 
tophanes saw  how  ill  it  agreed  with  the  former  supremacy  of  Athens. 
He  foresaw  that  the  old  limits  could  not  contain  what  really  required 
the  making  over  of  the  whole  civilized  world  before  it  should  find  its 
proper  home,  and  consequently  he  despaired.  It  is  this  despair  which 
gives  his  wit  the  poignant  sadness  of  a  jest  uttered  on  a  deathbed.  It 
is  as  pathetic  as  the  powerless  eloquence  of  Demosthenes  or  the  wise 
folly  of  Plato.  Nor  is  it  sad  only  in  the  light  of  subsequent  history  ; 
his  note  is  that  of  one  who  has  undertaken  an  impossible  and  hopeless 
task. 

In  the  Plutus,  as  has  been  said,  there  is  a  change ;  not  only  in  the 
characters  who  are  distinguished  by  the  possession  of  proper  names, 
vague  creations,  but  in  the  Informer,  the  Old  Woman,  etc.,  we  find 
types,   not  persons,  and  it  may   not    be  unfair  to  suppose  that  the 


DECADENCE  OF  THE  POLITICAL  DRAMA— THE  MIDDLE  COMEDY.  499 

authority  of  Aristophanes  has  in  the  past  furnished  encouragement 
to  that  unvivid  form  of  composition.  Before  the  end  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  war,  the  comedy,  as  a  part  of  the  functions  of  the  state,  had  a 
great  political  value ;  after  that  time  it  gradually  shrivelled  into 
a  means  of  amusement.  Yet  the  Greeks  remained  Greeks,  even 
when  Hellas  ceased  to  be  Hellas.  Their  literary  taste  did  not  die  with 
their  political  supremacy.  The  great  animating  principle  vanished, 
but  the  comedy  became  something  that  we  can  admire,  although  it 
survives  only  in  fragments  and  imitations  ;  these  possess  the  charm 
of  perfect  work,  from  which  we  can  guess  the  original  beauty,  just 
as  we  find  the  traces  of  artistic  wonder  in  the  scanty  ruins  of  a  Greek 
city.  They  all  bear  the  touch  of  the  artist :  a  single  word  uttered 
by  a  beautiful  voice  tells  us  what  the  voice  is. 

XI. 

The  middle  comedy,  to  adopt  an  old  but  possibly  pedantic  distinc- 
tion, was  an  adaptation  of  the  comedy  to  its  new  conditions.  From 
the  discussion  of  affairs  of  state  it  turned  to  the  subjects  that  alone 
interested  a  defeated  people,  to  personal  jests,  to  ridicule  of  the  cur- 
rent philosophy,  to  portraying  manners  and  forms  of  thought.  Par- 
ody became  a  popular  form.  The  names  of  forty  writers  have  come 
down  to  us,  but  of  their  work  we  have  to  judge  from  the  titles  and  a 
handful  of  fragments.  From  these  we  may  gather  that  with  the  ex- 
tinction of  the  political  and  wider  ethical  tendencies  of  the  comedy 
there  survived  what  is  but  a  subordinate  part  of  the  plays  of  Aris- 
tophanes, namely,  the  amusing  representation  of  familiar  types.  Thus, 
parasites  and  tradespeople  were  continually  derided.  Authors  were 
caricatured,  not  as  in  the  Frogs,  with  reference  to  their  influence  on 
the  state,  but  merely  with  regard  to  their  literary  skill.  The  philos- 
ophers were  laughed  at,  but  merely  for  their  personal  eccentricities, 
not  for  their  perilous  teachings. 

Gradually  the  middle  comedy  developed  into  the  new  comedy,  which 
abandoned  the  treatment  of  general  vague  types,  those  of  the  street 
and  market-place,  as  we  may  call  them,  for  the  domestic  comedy  which 
dealt  with  complications  of  family  life,  thus  establishing  the  laws  of 
comedy  down  to  the  present  time.  This  change  in  the  purview  of 
comedy  from  the  criticism  of  large  questions  of  politics  and  social 
ethics  to  the  discussion  of  the  affairs  of  private  life,  was  one  that 
belongs  strictly  to  the  inevitable  processes  of  literature.  We  saw  a 
similar  modification  of  the  tragedy,  from  the  grand  elemental  sim- 
plicity of  yEschylus,  with  his  lofty  ethical  purpose,  through  the  more 
human    rendering  of  Sophocles,  to  the  complicated  manipulation  of 


-t 


SOO  THE   COMEDY. 

Euripides,  who  seeks  to  express  the  infinite  variety  of  the  nature  of 
men  and  women,  and  his  perversion  of  the  old  myths.  The  uni- 
form tendency  of  both  tragedy  and  comedy  was  from  the  apphcation 
of  general  principles  to  the  study  of  individual  interests  and  com- 
plications. The  analogy  between  the  development  of  the  tragedy 
and  that  of  the  modern  novel  has  been  already  spoken  of ;  when 
for  the  tragedy  we  substitute  the  comedy,  the  change  becomes  even 
clearer.  From  the  vague  teachings  of  honor  and  chivalry  in  the 
old  romances  to  the  modern  study  of  individuals  the  path  is  clear 
and  straight,  and  in  the  development  of  the  treatment  of  the  indi- 
vidual during  the  last  century  we  may  see  the  same  process  going  on 
with  ever  greater  thoroughness. 

The  most  celebrated  writers  of  the  new  comedy,  which  lasted  from 
about  340  B.C.  to  260  B.C.,  were  Philemon  and  Menander,  whose  works 
are  unfortunately  lost,  so  that  it  is  necessary  to  judge  of  them  from 
the  extracts  and  from  the  Roman  imitations  made  by  Plautus  and 
Terence.  As  to  the  fragments,  it  is  as  if  posterity  were  to  form  an 
opinion  of  the  English  dramatists  from  the  illustrative  extracts  in 
Johnson's  and  Richardson's  dictionaries.  A  manuscript  of  Menander's 
plays  is  said  to  have  existed  in  Italy  shortly  before  the  invention  of 
printing,  but  if  this  statement  is  true,  the  manuscript  is  lost  and  proba- 
bly for  ever.  This  author  was  born  in  Athens  in  the  year  342  B.C.,  the 
year  in  which  Epicurus  was  born,  and  he  flourished  in  the  period  that 
followed  the  death  of  Alexander  the  Great.  He  died  in  291  B.C.  Phil- 
emon was  a  contemporary  of  his,  and  lived  nearly  a  century.  While 
Philemon  secured  more  praise  from  his  contemporaries  than  did  his 
rival,  it  is  to  the  more  refined  wit  of  Menander  that  posterity  turned 
with  the  greater  admiration.  Curiously  enough,  it  was  not  his  repu- 
tation as  a  wit  that  inspired  the  collection  of  extracts  that  were  made 
by  his  admirers,  so  much  as  a  respect  for  the  wisdom  of  his  wise  moral 
sayings.  The  compactness  and  literary  refinement  of  these  were  great. 
Yet  as  a  comedian  he  delighted  every  one.  His  plays  were  vivid  rep- 
resentations of  the  decaying  society  of  his  time.  The  subordinate  posi- 
tion of  reputable  women  kept  them  out  of  the  plays  as  out  of  public 
view,  just  as  unmarried  girls  are  not  the  subject  of  modern  French 
novels,  and  assert  their  prominence  in  American  fiction  as  they  do  in 
American  life.  Menander's  dramatis  per soncB  consisted  of  courtesans, 
slaves,  market-men,  youths  and  their  fathers,  the  familiar  figures  of 
every-day  life  in  that  city  that  had  lost  its  political  importance,  while 
the  keen  intelligence  of  the  Athenians  still  survived  with  no  sufificient 
aim  to  inspire  or  direct  it.  The  mere  enjoyment  of  life  had  taken  the 
place  of  a  willing  or  enforced  political  energy  ;  the  men  simply  lived, 
devoted  to  pleasure,  and  to  an  elegant  dilettantism.      What  in  mod- 


ENERVATED  LIFE    OF    THE  ATHENIANS. 


501 


ern  life  we  see  common  to  a  small  number  of  idle  and  aimless  rich 
men,  was  there  the  rule.  The  vast  body  of  slaves  supported  the  free 
population  in  comparative  luxury,  affording  them,  at  the  best,  leisure 
for  the  indulgence  of  intellectual  tastes.     Hence    nothing  was  more 


MENANDER. 

(Statue   in  the    Vatican.) 


popular  than  this  new  comedy,  with  its  marvellous  literary  brilliancy, 
its  refinement  and  ingenuity,  as  well  as  its  constant  allusion,  not  so 
much  to  the  facts  of  life  as  to  the  possibilities  of  the   current  life  of 


502  THE    COMEDY. 

the  time.  This  literary  quality  is  one  that  must  be  continually 
borne  in  mind.  Absolute  realism  demands  in  the  writer,  and  con- 
sequently in  the  society  in  which  he  lives,  firm  belief  in  the  people 
and  scenes  described.  The  cynical  and  wearied  public  to  which 
Menander  belonged,  and  for  which  he  wrote,  believed  only  in  the 
necessity  of  amusement  ;  they  would  have  cared  as  little  to  have 
the  unrelenting  grimness  of  life  represented  in  a  play  as  to  find  it 
disturbing  their  selfish,  pleasure-loving  existence  ;  what  they  demanded 
was  everything  that  observation  and  ingenuity  could  devise  for  puz- 
zling their  keen  wits,  while  flattering  and  entertaining  them.  They 
knew  no  real  interests,  no  hot  enthusiasms,  and  any  presentation  of 
them  would  have  been  as  much  out  of  place  as  would  a  court-suit  at 
a  modern  political  caucus.  The  bluntness  of  Aristophanes  revolted 
them  ;  the  love  of  polish  and  refinement  held  them  in  as  firm  a  grip 
as  the  force  of  etiquette  holds  conventional  people — indeed,  the  two 
are  twin  brothers ;  and  the  intellectual  astuteness  that  developed  the 
possible  intricacies  of  an  ingenious  plot  alone  delighted  them.  They 
praised  Menander's  truth  to  nature,  and  justly,  but  it  was  the  nature 
that  they  alone  knew.  The  influence  of  this  inspired  the  Roman 
comedians,  as  has  been  said,  and  thus  formed  the  most  important 
model  for  the  reviving  comedy  of  the  Renaissance,  and  we  may  see  in 
much  modern  comedy  how  well  ingenuity  of  invention  has  thrived 
when  higher  interests  were  silent.  Indeed,  just  as  the  melodrama  of 
the  romantic  movement  exaggerated  the  emotions  and  aspirations  of 
that  period,  so  the  new  comedy  represented  with  corresponding  inex- 
actness the  wit  and  intellectual  curiosity  of  the  age  of  Menander. 

Not  only  does  its  contrast  with  the  comedy  of  Aristophanes  make 
vivid  the  difference  between  a  period  when  literature  is  the  utterance 
of  people  living  and  one  when  the  political  feeling  is  extinct,  it  also 
marks  the  opening  of  a  new  epoch  when  literature  became  literary. 
That  it  should  ever  be  anything  else  may  seem  at  first  sight  the  height 
of  paradox,  especially  when  for  centuries  the  aim  of  all  cultivation  has 
been  to  produce  something  that  should  be  true  to  abstract  principles 
of  art,  and  hence  as  remote  from  life  as  everything  intentionally  unreal 
must  always  be.  Still,  these  false  ideals  have  shown  signs  of  disappear- 
ance, and  it  has  become  evident  that  even  artificial  flowers  may  fade, 
long-lived  as  they  have  proved  to  be.  In  other  words,  in  this  comedy 
we  have  the  beginning  of  a  period  when  literature  showed  itself  as  an 
art,  a  device  for  entertainment,  instead  of  an  expression  of  the  people 
thinking,  and  for  more  than  two  thousand  years  its  main  excellence 
has  been  held  to  lie  in  this  accidental  quality.  The  one  test  that  has 
been  continually  applied  has  been  the  accordance  of  the  method  of 
saying  things  with  rules  drawn  from  the  examples  of  other  utterances  ; 


FALSE    VIEWS  OF  LITERATURE —ARTIFICIALITY . 


503 


their  direct  excellence  has  been  infinitely  less  regarded.  It  has  been 
supposed  that  outside  of  the  relation  of  things  there  existed  an  inhe- 
rent quality  in  the  words  themselves  and  in  their  arrangement  which, 
when  properly  supervised,  made  literature.  Hence  have  arisen  such 
familiar  notions  as  poetic  diction,  poetic  license,  and  the  countless  pet- 
rifactions that  are  catalogued  in  books  on  rhetoric.  The  rules  of  good 
taste  have  been  established  by  literary  legislators,  as  if  what  is  called 


CHARACTER  MASKS  IN  THE  NEW  GREEK  COMEDV. 


good  taste  were  anything  but  the  raw  edge,  the  vanishing  line,  of  our 
sympathies,  and  only  what  lies  inside  this  limit  has  been  adjudged  to 
be  the  proper  domain  of  literature.  The  early  Greeks  knew  no  such 
boundaries ;  with  them  literature  was,  as  it  should  be,  as  broad  as  life 
itself  ;  belief  and  doubt,  joy  and  sorrow,  enthusiasm  and  contempt,  all 


504  THE    COMEDY. 

found  natural  expression  without  reference  to  a  literary  code.  Con- 
sider for  a  moment  the  intellectual  fertility  of  Aristophanes,  with  what 
freedom  from  trammels  he  praises  and  denounces,  how  unfettered  his 
choice,  whether  he  speaks  of  private  or  public  wrong,  caricatures  Euri- 
pides or  the  whole  people  of  Athens,  and  sings  the  glories  of  the  past. 
Every  man  had  the  same  choice  ;  nothing  was  too  high  or  too  low  for 
the  Greek  to  mention ;  it  was  only  necessary  that  anything  should 
have  existed  as  fact  or  thought,  to  have  its  literary  expression 
justified. 

In  the  middle  ages  we  see  something  very  like  the  same  exemption 
from  a  priori  limitations,  combined,  however,  with  a  crudity  which  the 
Greeks  never  knew.  Yet,  even  this  race,  obviously,  felt  the  tendency 
of  excellent  work  to  acquire  authority  over  later  men ;  but  while  the 
general  current  moved  in  certain  set  forms,  intellectual  freedom 
existed  as  long  as  its  twin-brother,  political  freedom,  lasted.  It  is  only 
in  strict  obedience  to  natural  causes  that  the  fewer,  because  earlier, 
intellectual  interests  of  the  Greeks  should  have  left  an  insufificient 
number  of  models  for  future  copying.  The  complications  of  modern 
life  have  augmented  the  demand  for  outlets  of  expression,  in  exactly 
the  same  way  that  the  fine  arts  have  developed  in  directions  unsus- 
pected by  Greek  sculptors,  and  that  modern  politics  has  to  grapple  with 
problems  undreamed  of  by  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  that  philosophy 
and  science  have  snapped  their  old  bonds ;  every  change  has  required 
an  enlargement  of  the  old  outlets.  Yet  it  is  notorious  that  a  strong 
tendency  has  always  existed  to  force  men  to  keep  to  the  former 
methods,  and  that  now  the  man  who  says  that  properly  literature  is  as 
great  as  life  speaks  heresy,  for  it  is  thought  that  literature  can  only 
exist  in  or  near  what  for  the  Greeks,  to  be  sure,  was  freedom,  but  is  a 
narrow  field  for  modern  men. 

Nevertheless,  to  say  that  these  men  who  seek  to  limit  the  methods 
of  expression  are  actuated  by  the  best  principles  is  unnecessary;  they 
have  the  good  of  letters  near  at  heart.  They  fervently  believe  that 
salvation  lies  only  in  listening  to  them,  and  they  have  behind  them 
centuries  of  progress  at  which  they  can  and  do  "  point  with  pride." 
To  say  that  their  opinions  have  had  a  long  life  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  they  are  or  have  been  serviceable  and  inevitable,  but  it 
would  be  hasty  to  affirm  that  literature  can  always  be  controlled  by 
the  rules  drawn  from  the  study  of  the  works  of  the  past.  The  last 
century  undermined  general  principles  that  had  been  commonly 
accepted  ;  the  present  one  is  turning  its  nefarious  attention  to  axioms 
in  geometry,  metaphysics,  and  science,  and  universally  we  may  observe 
the  tendency  of  scientific  thought  to  outrun  its  limits  and  to  make  its 
way  into  every  department  of  intellectual  activity,  so  that  the  notion 


LIMITING  LITERA  TURE—ESTIMA  TE   OF  ARISTOPHANES.  So5 

that  literature  must  concern  itself  only  with  things  of  apparent  beauty 
meets  many  foes  who  ask  annoying  questions  about  what  beauty  is, 
where  one  must  stand  to  determine  it,  whether  agreement  can  be 
found  about  it,  and,  finally,  whether  what  is  called  beauty  is  in  fact 
any  thing  more  than  the  expression  of  the  limitations  of  any  man's 
comprehension.  It  may  in  time  be  seen  that  the  only  test  to  be 
applied  is  that  of  the  truth  of  the  delineation,  and  that  arbitrary 
exclusion  is  as  impossible  for  literature  as  it  is  for  thought. 

Certainly,  those  who  are  most  ready  to  deny  these  suggestions  will 
agree  that  Aristophanes  is  the  first  of  comedians.  The  very  corner- 
stone of  their  views  is  the  enormous  superiority  of  the  Greeks,  whom 
we  are  bidden  ever  to  imitate  ;  yet,  to  take  that  writer  alone,  his  plays 
abound  with  matter  that  completely  contradicts  their  notions  of  good 
taste.  Of  that  quality  he  took  no  account ;  even  the  name  did  not 
then  exist ;  it  was  the  life  of  his  time  that  inspired  him,  with  all  its 
thousand  interests,  pettinesses,  weaknesses,  and  enthusiasms,  not  a 
code  of  laws.  It  was  Menander  who  stands  as  the  best  representative 
of  the  graciousness  of  the  tamer  methods.  To  call  him  the  first, 
however,  would  be  inexact,  because,  in  fact,  so  gradual  are  the  pro- 
cesses of  growth  that  no  one  man  is  ever  really  the  first  to  do  any- 
thing ;  already  in  Euripides  we  may  perceive  the  paraphernalia  of 
tragedy  lying  heavy  upon  his  brisk  treatment  of  contemporary  men 
and  women,  just  as  in  Shakspere's  As  You  Like  It,  the  conventional 
dramatic  form  is  at  times  an  awkward  encumbrance  for  the  lightness 
of  the  comedy,  as  when  (act  ii.,  scene  iii.)  Adam  offers  his  services 
to  Orlando  : 

"  I  have  five  hundred  crowns, 
The  thrifty  hire  I  saved  under  your  father, 
Which  I  did  store  to  be  my  foster-nurse 
When  service  should  in  my  old  limbs  lie  lame 
And  unregarded  age  in  corners  thrown  : 
Take  that,  and  He  that  doth  the  ravens  feed, 
Yea,  providently  caters  for  the  sparrow, 
Be  comfort  to  my  age  !     Here  is  the  gold  ; 
All  this  I  give  you.     Let  me  be  your  servant : "  etc.,  etc., 

when  the  speech  wears  a  heavy  load  of  conventional  rhetoric. 

Menander  freed  himself  of  what  was  cumbersome  for  Euripides,  and 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  his  grace  and  lightness  could  not  fail  to  delight 
his  contemporaries  and  successors.  Wit  and  wisdom  were  the  indis- 
tinguishable qualities  of  his  plays,  for  they  were  combined  in  a  most 
attractive  clearness  that  well  represented  the  alert  thought  and  lucid 
expression  of  the  Athenians.  And  at  once  the  vivid  pictures  of 
society,  the  infallible  touch  which  he  laid  on  human  weaknesses,  the 
graceful  allusions  that  praised  or  blamed,  with  infinite  tact,  acquired 
that  charm  which  exquisite  work  always  exercises  on  sensitive  souls. 


5o6  THE    COMEDY. 

By  its  side  the  tremendous,  untiring  greatness  of  Aristophanes  seemed 
a  coarse  natural  power  without  fascination.  We  all  know  the  contrast. 
The  bane  of  literature  has  long  been  that  it  has  blinded  its  admirers 
to  the  world,  which  by  its  side  appears  rank  and  vulgar. 

At  the  moment  when  Menander  was  writing,  the  active  life  of 
Hellas  had  come  to  an  end,  and  instead  of  its  past  glory  there  existed 
a  pride  in  one  form  of  intellectual  activity,  in  literary  excellence, 
which  at  once  acquired  authority  over  every  existing  and  following 
civilization.  This  is  not  to  be  wondered  at ;  yet  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  it  was  the  literary  literature,  so  to  speak,  that  held  this 
position  rather  than  that  which  was  the  direct  expression  of  life.  It 
was  that  to  which  Rome  succumbed,  and  that  has  come  into  the 
control  of  modern  tastes. 

Euripides,  as  we  have  seen,  was  Menander's  intellectual  father ;  it 
was  from  him  that  he  inherited  his  literary  style  and  a  tireless  interest 
in  contemporary  life.  The  laws  of  tragedy  limited  the  older  poet  to 
the  field  of  venerable  myths,  but  they  could  not  restrain  him  from 
treating  these  in  a  familiar  way.  The  prominence  that  he  gave  to 
women  in  his  plays,  and  the  great  weight  that  he  laid  on  human 
passion,  paved  the  way  for  Menander.  Thus,  what  could  be  further 
from  the  old  tragedy  than  Medea's  wail  over  the  miserable  lot  of 
women  who  have  to  buy  a  husband  with  a  large  dowry  ?  If  the  marriage 
is  an  unhappy  one,  she  goes  on,  the  wife  must  pine  away  at  home, 
while  the  husband  is  free  to  seek  distraction  without.  In  the  Andro- 
mache, again,  Hermione  warns  husbands  against  th^  danger  of  letting 
other  women  visit  freely  his  wife,  whom  they  will  fill  with  pernicious 
ideas.  It  was  modern  Athens,  and  no  land  of  heroes  and  heroines,  that 
he  had  in  mind.  Although  tragedy  thus  ventured  on  the  territory  of 
comedy,  comedy  left  untouched  the  nobler  side  of  human  nature,  and 
treated  only  the  vices  and  weaknesses  of  society.  Its  first  duty  was  to 
amuse,  and  the  correction  of  faults  was  carefully  hidden  beneath  the 
effort  to  entertain.  The  plots  were  simple  :  the  young  man  of  fortune 
would  be  hopelessly  in  love  with  some  unworthy  woman  who  would 
turn  out  to  be  the  daughter  of  some  free-born  citizen,. and  the  demands 
of  respectability  would  be  at  once  appeased.  The  discovery,  too, 
would  be  made  by  the  advent  of  some  stranger  who  took  the  place  of 
the  dens  ex  machina  who  was  let  down  from  heaven  to  unravel  the 
plots  of  Euripides.  Some  such  little  surprise  the  spectator  knew 
beforehand  that  he  would  find  in  the  play,  just  as  the  inveterate 
reader  of  French  novels  knows  that  he  will  find  some  complications 
between  man,  wife,  and  lover  in  the  yellow-covered  story  that  is  sure 
to  present  the  old  plot  in  a  slightly  different  light.  In  both  cases  the 
artificiality  is  hidden  by  intellectual  cleverness. 


MENANDER. 


507 


In  Menander,  too,  we  find,  as  his  statue  promises,  a  man  of  the 
world — seeing  and  judging  with  decorous  sadness  what  goes  on  before 
him.  He  is  wholly  without  the  illusions  that  alone  inspire  the  trage- 
dian whose  work  has  merit  only  when  faith  in  principles  survives  the 
defeat  of  human  agents.  He  who  writes  comedies  of  society  can  best 
record  the  smallness  of  men.  It  is  when  the  world  is  most  hopeful 
that  the  grandest  tragedies  are  written,  and  when  men  have  lost  all 
confidence  in  themselves  that  they  are  disposed  to  describe  and  smile 
at  their  own  pettinesses.  In  this  way  the  new  comedy  of  Athens 
reflects  the  decaying  glories  of  the  state,  just  as  the  full  vigor  of  the 
Aristophanic  comedy  represents  a  period  of  intense  zeal  and  enthu- 
siasm not  yet  crushed  by  defeat. 


THEATRE     CHECK. 


BOOK   IV.— THE  HISTORIANS. 
CHAPTER  I.— HERODOTUS. 

I. — The  Origin  of  Prose — The  Predecessors  of  Herodotus.  II. — Herodotus,  his 
Life,  his  Travels — His  Methods,  his  Object — The  Criticisms  of  his  Work — His 
Stories — His  Authorities.     III. — Extracts. 


I. 

It  is  not  merely  convenience  that  causes  this  long  delay  in  speaking 
of  the  prose  writings  of  the  Greeks.     With  them,  as  with   every  race, 

poetical  composition  long  prece- 
ded that  in  the  more  difficult 
prose ;  the  earliest  expressions 
are  constantly  rhythmical  ones. 
The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek. 
Darwin,  in  his  "  Expression  of 
the  Emotions,"  says  that  he 
believes  that  "  the  habit  of 
uttering  musical  sounds  was 
first  developed  as  a  means 
of  courtship  in  the  early  pro- 
genitors of  man,  and  thus  be- 
came associated  with  the  strong- 
est emotions  of  which  they  are 
capable — namely,  ardent  love,  ri- 
valry and  triumph,"  and  he  in- 
fers "  that  the  progenitors  of 
man  probably  uttered  musical 
tones  before  they  had  acquired 
articulate  speech,  and  that  con- 
sequently, when  the  voice  is 
used  under  any  strong  emotion, 
it  tends  to  assume,  through   the 

CLIO,    A   MUSE   OF   HISTORY.  •  •      T  r  •     4.'  "I 

prmciple  of  association,  a  musical 
character."    Thus  the  earliest  utterances,  being  those  of  a  martial,  ama- 


POETRY   THE  FIRST  FORM  OF  COMPOSITION. 


509 


tory,  or  religious  kind,  at  any  rate  being  inspired  by  a  strong  emotion, 
would  naturally  find  a  rhythmical  expression.  We  may  notice  the  pecu- 
liar chanting  with  which  any  uncultivated  person  will  make  a  state- 
ment when  under  great  excitement,  and  the  natural  tendency  of 
religious  enthusiasm  to  make  use  of  the  same  forms.  Consequently 
we  everywhere  find  some  form  of  verse  preceding  prose.  The  first 
expressions  of  early  men  are  produced  in  excitement  and  assume  a 
rhythmical  form  ;  it  is  only  later  that  prose,  the  first  breath  of  science, 
we  may  call  it,  is  produced.  Moreover,  the  infinite  difficulty  of  writing 
in  prose  is  most  baffling  to  men  who  are  borne  along  on  the  swing  of 
a  rhythmical  line  as  is  the  swimmer  by  a  wave  ;  writers  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  the  aid  that  is  given  by  the  ornament  that  verse  employs  as 
its  right,  are  powerless  when  left  face  to  face  with  the  raw  facts,  just 
as  a  shy  person  may  dance  boldly  in  a  ball-room  across  which  he 
would  dread  to  walk. 

While  every  race  has  gone  through  at  least  some  part  of  the  same 
experience,  even  now  prose  remains  an  almost  unattained  art  in  Ger- 
man and  English,  and  the  story  of  its  growth  in  Greece  will  illus- 
trate the  awkwardness  of  its  beginning  and  the  difficulty  with  which 
this  is  dispelled.     Naturally  enough,  it  was  first  employed  with  the 


THREE  STILUSES,    BOX,    ROLL. 


WOODEN   TABLET   AND    BOX   OF    ROLLS 
WITH    HORN    ENDS. 


acquisition  of  the  art  of  writing ;  before  words  could  be  recorded  in 
some  lasting  way,  every  hymn,  every  chronicle,  every  story  depended 
on  its  hold  upon  the  memory  for  its  existence,  and  the  best  chance  of 
survival  lay  in  adaptability  to  the  memory.  Here  poetry  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  prose,  and  we  may  not  be  astray  in  regarding  the  impor- 
tance of  poetry,  or  at  least  much  of  its  traditional  authority,  as  simply 
the  result  of  convenience.  It  was  originally  in  good  part  a  mnemonic 
device.  Just  when  the  Greeks  learned  the  art  of  writing  is  uncertain, 
but  it  is  sure  that  it  cannot  be  until  a  late  date,  until  the  time  of  Peis- 
istratus,   that    it    became  common,   when  a    cheap    and    convenient 


5IO  HERODOTUS. 

material  for  receiving  marks  was  found  in  papyrus.  Before  this  was 
introduced  from  Egypt,  the  necessity  of  employing  a  sheep's  skin  ren- 
dered composition  an  unwieldy  process,  and  to  the  absence  of  a  con- 
venient medium  and  to  the  necessity  of  securing  the  portability  of 
literature  by  aid  of  its  form  we  may  ascribe  the  long  prevalence  of 
verse.  Prose,  it  has  often  been  said,  arose  late  in  Greece  ;  the  reason 
we  have  seen  in  the  lack  of  material  for  writing ;  one  result  we  may 
take  to  be  the  importance  of  poetry  in  modern  times.  What  was 
once  a  useful  device  has  become  by  association  a  legitimate  means 
of  expression  that  rests  on  the  authority  of  the  early  conditions  of 
Greek  civilization.  All  modern  literature  for  centuries  made  over 
that  of  Rome,  just  as  the  Roman  made  over  that  of  Greece,  and  the 
first  models  have  triumphed  in  two  separate  civilizations. 

The  first  prose  was  naturally  very  simple.  The  fables  and  proverbs, 
which  are  to  be  found  in  every  early  civilization,  resembled  the  com- 
mon talk  of  the  people.  Here  compression  and  epigram  facilitated 
the  mepiory,  and  their  existence  alongside  of  poetry  repeats  itself  in 
modern  times  in,  for  example,  the  metrical  rules  for  playing  whist 
and  the  compressed  directions  which  are  enforced  upon  every  begin- 
ner. The  abundant  use  of  proverbial  phrases  among  races  of  moderate 
civilization,  as  the  Spanish,  discloses  a  similar  condition  of  things. 

The  art  of  writing  first  took  root  apparently  among  the  lonians 
in  Asia  Minor.  Miletus  was  the  most  important  of  the  cities  estab- 
lished in  a  remote  antiquity  by  Ionic  emigration  from  Hellas  to  the 
fertile  region  where  touch  was  had  with  older  and  riper  civilization, 
and  where  apparently  the  arts  of  peace  attained  early  development  in 
the  absence  of  a  disturbing  struggle  for  the  solution  of  political  prob- 
lems. There  in  the  absence  of  these  distractions  which  tend  to  call 
away  the  energy  of  the  people  from  intellectual  matters,  just  as  the 
money-making  of  this  country  lessens  the  amount  of  time  and  interest 
that  can  be  given  to  unlucrative  study,  a  high  degree  of  maturity  and 
refinement  began  to  appear  at  a  very  early  date,  when  the  mother 
country  was  still  in  the  process  of  emerging  from  rude  obscurity. 
Possibly  the  general  swift  development  of  the  Grecian  colonies  may 
be  ascribed  in  good  measure  to  their  total  rupture  with  the  antiquated 
conditions  out  of  which  the  original  states  had  to  grow  slowly  and 
painfully,  just  as  now  the  English  colonies  have  naturally  acquired 
a  freedom  from  the  old  hereditary  forms  that  still  embarrass  the 
more  slowly  moving  mother  country.  However  this  may  be,  it  was 
through  Miletus  and  the  other  scarcely  less  famous  Ionic  cities  that 
many  advances  in  progress  made  their  way  into  Greece.  The  power 
of  Miletus  was  great  :  it  had  commercial  relations  with  the  countries 
bordering  on  the  Mediterranean  and   the   Euxine,  and  it  established 


THE  FIRST  GREEK  CHRONICLERS.— IONIAN    WRITERS.  511 

numerous  colonies.  With  their  earlier  maturity,  these  Ionic  offshoots 
contributed  largely  to  the  intellectual  development  of  Hellas,  and  the 
influence  of  Miletus  appears  to  have  been  especially  important.  This 
city  at  last  paid  dearly  for  its  proximity  to  the  Asiatic  civilizations, 
in  wars  and  its  capture  by  the  Persians  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth 
century,  an  event  which  Phrynichus  celebrated  in  a  tragedy  that  so 
wrought  upon  the  Athenians  that  they  fined  the  dramatists  and  for- 
bade the  further  mention  on  the  tragic  stage  of  contemporary  inci- 
dents. F'rom  that  time  Milesian  influence  over  Greek  literature 
ceased.  The  lost  tales  of  Miletus  belonged  to  a  much  later  and  less 
glorious  age.  It  was  here  and  in  the  neighboring  Ionian  cities  that 
the  early  philosophers  found  leisure  for  their  speculations,  some 
doubtless  employing  prose,  and  others  verse,  which  was  by  far  the 
commonest  form  of  conveying  instruction.  These  men  will  be  dis- 
cussed later  ;  of  the  historians,  Hecataeus,  a  Milesian,  was  the  most 
important  in  the  influence  that  he  had  on  Herodotus.  He  appears 
to  have  been  a  man  of  note,  for  we  are  told  that  he  once  served  as 
an  ambassador  to  the  Persians,  and  was  a  member  of  an  assembly  of 
notables  to  discuss  public  affairs.  His  date  is  uncertain,  but  this  last 
event  took  place  about  the  year  595  B.C.  At  some  part  of  his  life  he 
travelled  extensively,  and  what  he  himself  saw,  as  well  as  what  he 
could  learn  from  others,  he  recorded  in  a  book  called  the  Circuit  of 
the  Earth,  of  which  but  mere  scraps  have  reached  us.  Even  this  first 
man  (and  nothing  is  firmly  settled  about  him)  had  many  predecessors. 
The  abundant  mythology  attracted  many  writers,  who  recorded  the 
various  legends  that  had  arisen  in  earlier  times,  for  history  and  myth 
were  connected  by  numberless  indistinguishable  threads.  Later,  the 
wide  experience  of  the  lonians  demanded  to  be  chronicled.  They 
were  an  active  race  ;  their  merchant  vessels  visited  every  port  in  the 
Mediterranean,  and  the  more  venturesome  even  made  their  way  along 
almost  the  whole  coast  of  Europe.  Others  visited  the  great  mon- 
archies of  the  East  ;  the  brother  of  the  poet  Alcaeus,  for  example, 
served  in  the  army  of  the  Babylonian  Nebuchadnezzar;  many  more 
belonged  to  the  Egyptian  forces;  and  when  the  art  of  writing  was 
acquired,  these  men  naturally  related  what  they  had  seen  and  done  to 
those  who  stayed  at  home.  Yet  only  very  little  of  their  work  survives. 
Cadmus  of  Miletus,  about  576  B.C.,  is  reputed  to  be  one  of  the  earliest  ; 
he  is  said  to  have  written  a  history  of  his  native  town  and  of  the  neigh- 
boring places.  Bion  of  Proconnesus,  a  younger  contemporary,  wrote 
about  the  early  history  of  Ionia.  Acusilaus  of  Argos,  whose  date  is 
also  uncertain,  was  one  of  the  first  Greeks  who  followed  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  lonians.  He  is  said  to  have  composed  a  collection  of  old 
myths  in  prose.     Hecataeus  is  said  to  have  combined   these  two  func- 


512 


HERODOTUS. 


tions  of  a  historian,  the  narration  of  myths,  and  the  record  of  facts, 
but  naturally  it  was  only  the  latter  that  served  as  an  authority  to  Her- 
odotus. Egypt  he  described  with  considerable  fullness,  and  indeed 
the  later  and  more  famous  historian  has  been  accused  of  simply  copy- 
ing from  his  predecessor,  but  the  charge  is  only  brought  at  a  late 
period  and  by  a  weak  authority.  Among  those  to  whom  Herodotus 
may  possibly  have  been  indebted  is  Dionysius  of  Miletus,  who  wrote  a 
history  of  Persia.  Certain  other  contemporaries  traverse  somewhat 
the  same  ground  as  himself,  but  their  misty  names  only  show  that  his- 
tory was  well  written  by  him  when  many  were  at  work  in  the  same 
direction,  and  do  but  confirm  the  obvious  statement  that  he  who  suc- 
ceeds has  obscure  predecessors  and  rivals. 
In  fact,  nothing  can  exceed  the  obscurity 
that  covers  these  dim  names. 

Thus  Herodotus  formed  the  habit  of 
travelling  and  describing  his  travels,  of 
making  researches  in  geography  and  his- 
tory already  formed,  just  as  he  found  the 
Ionic  dialect  in  current  use  among  these 
writers  at  whose  head  he  at  once  placed 
himself  by  his  delightful  book.  What 
contributed  to  the  greatness  of  the  change 
from  what  might  almost  be  called  the  local 
histories  of  the  earlier  men  to  this, impor- 
tant contribution  to  the  science  of  history 
was  the  vastness  of  his  subject,  the  ac- 
count, namely,  of  the  wars  between  Greece 
and  the  East.  We  have  seen  the  enor- 
mous influence  that  this  conflict  had 
upon  the  political  constitution  of  Hellas 
and,  more  vividly,  the  expression  of  this 
change  in  the  dramatic  literature  ;  in  the 
importance  of  the  work  of  Herodotus 
we  may  perceive  another  instance  of  it.  Yet,  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered, we  find  in  his  history  the  utterance  not  of  an  Athenian,  but  of 
an  Asiatic  Greek,  who  to  be  sure  saw  the  momentous  struggle  between 
the  west  and  the  east,  but  without  deriving  from  the  spectacle  the  in- 
spiration that  belonged  only  to  those  who  had  taken  part  in  the  fray. 
Herodotus  was  a  provincial,  and  a  spectator,  not  one  of  those  who  had 
gone  into  the  arena  and  ventured  an  almost  hopeless  battle,  in  which 
they  had  won  an  unexpected  success.  His  literary  inspiration  came 
from  the  past ;  the  wide  difference  between  his  work  and  that  of 
Thucydides  marks  not  merely  the  difference    between    two    genera- 


HERODOTUS. 


THE  LIFE  OF  HERODOTUS.  513 

tions,  one  of  which  has  reached  maturity,  while  the  other  represents 
only  promising  adolescence  ;  it  is  far  more  than  this  that  one  perceives 
— it  is  the  distinction  between  the  Greek  with  all  his  attractive  qualities 
possible,  and  the  Greek  who  by  proving  them  has  made  his  place  in 
the  world's  history.  A  sketch  of  the  life  of  Herodotus  will  help  to 
illustrate  this.  A  sketch  is  in  fact  all  that  is  possible,  in  view  of  the 
paucity  of  incidents  that  can  be  affirmed  with  anything  like  posi- 
tiveness. 

II. 

He  was  born  apparently  a  few  years  before  the  Persian  Wars,  pro- 
bably at  Halicarnassus,  in  Asia  Minor.  The  date  that  is  usually  set 
is  484  B.C.  His  history  abounds  with  mannerisms  and  inferences  that 
indicate  the  extent  of  his  early  education.  Homer,  we  know,  was  the 
foundation  of  a  Greek's  studies,  and  Herodotus  shows  thorough 
familiarity  with  the  old  poet,  whose  works  long  remained  the  great 
authority  in  literary  composition,  until  the  rhetoricians  taught  new 
and  more  artificial  methods.  The  other  poets,  too,  he  knew  well,  for 
he  often  quotes  or  refers  to  Hesiod,  Musaius,  Archilochus,  the  later 
epic  writers,  Alcaeus,  Sappho,  Solon,  Simonides  of  Ceos,  Phrynichus, 
yEschylus  and  Pindar.  He  shows  also  similar  familiarity  with  the 
prose  writers,  especially  with  Hecataeus,  whom  he  often  corrects.  As 
his  accomplished  translator  and  commentator,  George  Rawlinson,  says 
of  him,  "  it  may  be  questioned  whether  there  was  a  single  work  of 
importance  in  the  whole  range  of  Greek  literature  accessible  to  him, 
with  the  contents  of  which  he  was  not  fairly  acquainted."  His  travels 
were  no  less  extensive.  He  apparently  visited  Babylon,  Ardericia, 
near  Susa,  remote  parts  of  Egypt,  Scythia,  Colchis,  Thrace,  Cyrene, 
Zante,  Dodona,  and  Magna  Graecia;  thus  covering,  to  quote  again 
from  the  same  authority,  "  a  space  of  thirty-one  degrees  of  longitude 
(above  170D  miles)  from  east  to  west,  and  of  twenty-four  of  latitude 
(1660  miles)  from  north  to  south."  More  than  this :  he  studied  care- 
fully the  regions  that  he  traveled  over;  not  that  he  knew  all  equally 
well ;  thus,  he  did  not  go  far  into  Thrace,  Syria,  and  Phoenicia,  but 
where  he  pretended  to  have  examined  carefully  he  undoubtedly  did 
so.  Thus,  in  Egypt  his  explorations  were  very  thorough.  It  is  sup- 
posed that  he  made  most  of  his  journeys  before  he  was  forty  years 
old,  when  he  was  a  citizen  of  Halicarnassus,  and  started  from  the  city 
for  his  various  tours.  About  447  B.C.,  Halicarnassus  joined  the  Athenian 
confederacy,  and  towards  that  time  Herodotus  visited  Athens,  which 
was  then  the  leading  city  in  Greece.  Here  he  speedily  became  famous  ; 
we  are  told  that  he  read  his  history  aloud  to  the  Athenians,  though 


514  HERODOTUS. 

how  and  when  is  not  recorded.  It  is  said,  too,  it  will  be  remembered, 
that  he  gave  a  public  reading  at  the  Olympic  games,  when  Thucydides 
was  a  listener  and  was  much  moved.  This  report,  however,  is  doubted, 
and  it  appears  too  much  like  the  many  vivid  anecdotes  that  adorn  the 
literary  history  of  Greece,  in  which  anything  likely  to  be  impres- 
sive is  narrated  as  a  fact.  That  Thucydides  might  well  have  met 
Herodotus  at  Athens  is  extremely  probable,  and  it  is  very  likely  that 
Sophocles  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  stranger  from  Halicarnassus, 
and  various  coincidences  have  been  noted  between  the  utterances  of 
these  two  men  ;  some,  doubtless,  are  such  as  may  be  best  explained 
more  simply  as  due  merely  to  the  fact  that  they  were  contemporaries, 
who  found  similar  answers  awaiting  the  same  questions,  but  others 
seem  to  justify  the  inference  of  intimacy  between  the  two  men.  Thus 
Herodotus  (iii.  119)  represents  Intaphernes  apologizing  for  asking  the 
life  of  her  brother,  rather  than  of  her  husband  and  children,  with  these 
words:  "God  willing,  I  might  yet  find,  O  king,  another  husband  and 
other  children,  should  I  lose  these,  but  now  that  my  father  and  mother 
have  died  I  can  never  have  another  brother."  A  statement  that 
reminds  one  of  the  king  of  England,  who  had  to  choose  between  saving 
the  life  of  his  wife  and  of  his  child,  and  urged  that  the  child  be  saved, 
because  he  was  sure  that  he  could  at  any  time  get  another  wife.  In 
the  Antigone,  11.  909-912,  we  find  : 

"  And  dost  thou  ask  what  law  constrained  me  thus  ? 
I  answer.  Had  I  lost  a  husband  dear, 
I  might  have  had  another ;  other  sons 
By  other  spouse,  if  one  were  lost  to  me ; 
But  when  my  father  and  my  mother  sleep 
In  Hades,  then  no  brother  more  can  come." 

In  the  CEd.  Col.,  337,  Sophocles  refers  to  a  custom  of  Egypt,  men- 
tioned by  Herodotus,  according  to  which  the  men  sat  weaving  at  home 
while  the  women  earned  their  bread  abroad.  In  the  CEd.  Rex,  1227, 
the  poet  speaks  of  Phasis  and  lotros,  rivers  running  into  the  Euxine, 
which  Herodotus  had  seen.  Elsewhere  we  find  similarities  of  opinion 
on  questions  of  morals  and  ethics.  Obviously,  it  is  only  the  accumu- 
lation of  coincidences  that  can  establish  anything  like  conviction  of 
anything  more  than  a  natural  agreement  in  the  thought  of  their  time. 
In  view  of  the  evidence,  we  are,  perhaps,  justified  in  supposing  an 
intimate  personal  relation  between  the  two  men,  especially  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  nothing  would  be  more  likely,  and  that  Sophocles  wrote 
a  poem  in  honor  of  Herodotus,  of  which  Plutarch  has  preserved  the 
opening  words  ;  it  is  of  course  possible  that  the  elegy  referred  to  some 
other  person  of  the  same  name.  Later,  in  the  year  443  B.C.,  Herodotus 
made  his  way  to  Thurium,  as  one  of  the  colonists  whom  Pericles  sent 


SIMPLICITY  OF  HERODOTUS'    STYLE.  $1$ 

thither.  Here,  apparently,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  completion  and 
improvement  of  his  work.  This  process  seems  to  have  gone  on  until 
the  author's  death.  When  this  last  event  occurred  is  uncertain  ;  the 
dates  suggested  vary  between  430  and  394.  The  place  is  equally  a 
matter  of  conjecture  and  consequent  dispute. 

One  of  the  first  things  that  the  student  notices  in  reading  Herodotus 
is  the  simplicity  of  his  style.  It  is  like  talk,  not  like  literary  com- 
position, reminding  one  more  of  the  simple,  unaffected  prose  of  Join- 
ville  and  Sir  John  Mandeville  than  of  anything  else.  While  poetry 
had  grown  up  through  a  period  of  artificiality,  in  which  its  first  function 
as  a  bit  of  religious  ceremony  had  survived,  so  that  directness  would 
have  seemed  like  irreverence,  prose  began,  where  it  is  destined  to  end, 
with  a  likeness  to  simple  oral  narration.  The  end  of  the  middle  ages 
can  alone  show  us  a  similar  result ;  for  all  our  modern  prose,  from  the 
days  of  Boccaccio  to  those  of  the  most  complicated  German  book,  is 
tainted  with  an  effort  to  copy  the  artificial  construction  of  a  Latin 
sentence.  While  English  prose  has  in  a  good  measure  lost  the  most 
marked  traces  of  this  literary  origin,  enough  remains  to  make  its 
genealogy  clear.  Later,  as  we  shall  notice,  Attic  prose  was  poisoned 
by  the  conventionalities  of  the  rhetoricians,  who  made  the  usual  error 
of  confounding  obscurity  with  wisdom.  Yet,  even  in  them  we  find 
perhaps  scarcely  anything  but  a  more  conventional  treatment  of  the 
method  already  employed  in  Herodotus,  which  arose  from  his  imitation 
of  the  Homeric  poems.  The  habit  of  letting  history  tell  itself  dram- 
atically, as  it  were,  through  speeches  placed  in  the  mouths  of  the 
actors  concerned,  is  the  most  vivid  example  of  this  tendency.  In 
Herodotus  this  device  retains  all  its  primeval  simplicity ;  later  it 
became  as  artificial  as  is  the  use  of  the  hexameter  in  modern  poetry. 
It  makes  itself  manifest  more  especially  in  the  episodes  with  which 
the  history  is  continuously  lightened.  Continually,  too,  the  movement 
of  the  sentences  and  the  words  employed  remind  one  of  the  epic 
poems.  In  the  matter  of  style  Herodotus  is  far  superior  to  his  pre- 
decessors and  contemporaries,  who  wrote  with  a  simplicity  that  is 
extraordinarily  graceless. 

Of  course  Herodotus  has  not  held  his  high  position  without  receiving 
abundant  criticism  ;  he  has  been  continually  blamed  for  not  being 
some  one  else,  and  for  the  unsatisfactoriness  with  which  he  meets  the 
questions  suggested  by  modern  science.  His  belief  in  divine  inter- 
ference, however,  which  is  sometimes  objected  to,  proves  nothing  more 
than  that  he  lived  in  a  time  when  scepticism  had  not  destroyed  faith 
in  the  oracles.  Even  in  books  written  at  the  present  day  we  con- 
tinually find  the  statement  that  such  or  such  events,  generally  those 
in  the  remote  past,  were  divinely  arranged  for  the  furtherance  of  certain 


5l6  HERODOTUS. 

objects,  and  Herodotus  is  less  disposed  to  explain  recent  events  by 
such  a  hypothesis.  Elsewhere,  too,  he  prefers  to  account  for  things 
that  have  happened  by  a  rationalistic  explanation,  as  in  the  seventh 
book,  §  191,  he  ascribes  the  cessation  of  a  storm,  not  to  the  sacrifices 
of  the  Magi,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  tempest  had  spent  itself.  Still 
it  is  easy  to  deny  the  efficacy  of  strange  deities,  and  it  is  undeniably 
true  that  Herodotus  shared  the  beliefs  of  his  time  and  country  which 
are  called  superstitions  when  they  are  outgrown.  His  notion  of  a 
blind  but  remorseless  Nemesis,  that  looked  upon  human  success  as 
simply  a  growth  that  demanded  reproof  and  punishment,  is  one  that 
yet  survives  in  the  familiar  phrase,  "  tempting  Providence,"  and  was 
continually  referred  to  by  early  and  late  Greek  and  Roman  poets  and 
prose-writers.  The  strangeness  of  the  defeat  of  the  Persians  not 
unnaturally  inspired  the  Greeks  with  the  thought  that  they  had  been 
aided  by  the  gods,  and  if  Herodotus  carried  this  view  further  than  his 
raaturer  Athenian  companions,  we  must  remember  that  he  was  dis- 
tinctly a  provincial.  It  is  urged  that  to  make  facts  go  on  all  fours 
with  this  explanation  he  is  apt  to  ascribe  great  events  to  minute  and 
trifling  causes,  to  the  conduct  of  individual  men  ;  this  is  doubtless 
true.  He  does  explain  vaster  movements  as  the  result  of  some  per- 
sonal feeling,  but  how  about  our  contemporaries  in  this  respect  ?  Are 
not  those  who  affirm  any  other  cause  for  human  progress  charged  with 
injustice  to  individuality?  What  is  the  lesson  of  Carlyle's  view  of 
history?  Mr.  Froude,  it  will  be  remembered,  ascribes  the  growth  of 
ritualism  in  the  Church  of  England  to  a  whim  of  Cardinal  Newman's, 
forgetting  the  general  mediaeval  revival  of  the  time  in  architecture, 
painting,  and  literature;  and  Sainte-Beuve  lays  exaggerated  weight  on 
the  fact  that  the  mother  of  Andr^  Ch^nier  was  a  Greek  woman  when 
he  explains  the  way  in  which  that  poet  partook  of  the  revival  of  Greek 
studies  at  the  end  of  the  last  century. 

That  Herodotus  should  have  taught  historical  lessons  by  means  of 
personal  anecdotes  is  natural  enough  in  view  of  the  popularity  of 
fables  as  a  means  of  conveying  moral  instruction.  The  authority  of 
the  epic  poems  also  encouraged  that  way  of  regarding  history,  and  the 
isolation  of  the  Greek  cities  helped  to  establish  it.  It  was  only  through 
the  united  effort  that  was  enforced  by  the  Persian  attack  that  the 
Greeks  learned  how  much  power  lay  in  great  principles,  and  that  a 
wider  view  of  history  became  possible.  Herodotus  made  a  step  in 
advance  of  his  predecessors  when  he  conceived  the  story  of  the  great 
war  as  a  possible  subject  beyond  the  mere  aggregation  of  more  or  less 
accurate  statistics.  These  statistics  have  been  most  severely  criticised, 
and  it  has  been  maintained  in  antiquity  as  well  as  in  modern  times  that 
Herodotus,  while  a  credible  witness  concerning  things  that  had  come 


THE    CREDIBILITY  OF  HERODOTUS— HIS  METHOD.  517 

under  his  own  eyes,  was  a  mere  retailer  of  idle  gossip  concerning  the 
eastern  nations,  and  that  he  enormously  exaggerated  the  extent  of  his 
travels.  The  discoveries  of  the  last  few  years  in  Egyptian  and  Asiatic 
history,  it  is  alleged,  prove  his  incompetence,  if  not  his  dishonesty.  It 
is  well  to  remember,  however,  that  scientific  exactness  is  a  thing  of 
very  slow  growth,  and  that  one  of  the  lessons  it  enforces  is  tolerance 
of  even  crude  gropings  towards  historical  precision.  History,  as 
Herodotus  uses  the  word,  means  research,  and  he  says  himself  (vii.  152) 
that  he  is  bound  to  relate  what  is  said,  though  he  is  not  bound  to 
believe  everything,  and  that  this  remark  may  apply  to  the  whole  history. 
With  this  in  mind,  one  will  be  prepared  to  find  a  great  deal  recorded 
that  fell  from  idle  and  irresponsible  lips.  It  is  all  narrated,  however, 
in  a  charming  style.  This  simplicity,  humor,  and  pathos  lend  an  irre- 
sistible charm  to  his  history  or  romance,  as  the  reader  may  decide  to 
call  it. 

As  has  been  said,  his  aim  was  to  write  an  account  of  the  great  war 
between  the  Greeks  and  the  barbarians.  To  do  this  he  went  to  work 
to  describe  the  foreign  nations  that  took  part  in  it.  The  history  of 
Lydia  is  of  importance  with  regard  to  the  beginning  of  the  struggle 
and  from  its  connection  with  the  rise  of  the  Persian  power.  Babylonia 
or  Assyria,  Egypt  and  Scythia  were  all,  in  their  way,  divisions  of  the 
general  subject ;  and,  inasmuch  as  he  had  seen  these  regions,  he  intro- 
duced much  matter  that  threw  light  on  the  general  condition  of  the 
countries  under  discussion.  The  part  that  describes  the  war  has  been 
less  criticised.  Like  all  the  rest,  it  is  narrated  with  extreme  simplicity. 
The  rest  of  the  section  from  which  a  quotation  was  just  made  (vii.  152) 
will  illustrate  this : 

"  Now  whether  Xerxes  sent  a  herald  to  Argos  with  such  a  message,  and 
whether  ambassadors  of  the  Argives,  having  gone  up  to  Susa,  asked 
Artaxerxes  about  the  alliance,  I  cannot  affirm  with  certainty  ;  nor  do  I 
declare  any  other  opinion  on  the  subject  than  what  the  Argives  themselves 
say  ;  but  this  much  I  know,  that  if  all  men  were  to  bring  together  their  own 
faults  into  one  place,  for  the  purpose  of  making  an  exchange  with  their 
neighbors,  when  they  had  looked  closely  into  their  neighbors'  faults,  they 
would  all  gladly  take  back  what  they  brought  with  them.  Thus  the  conduct 
of  the  Argives  was  not  the  most  base  .  .  .  .  ;  for  even  this  is  reported, 
that  the  Argives  were  the  people  who  invited  the  Persian  to  invade  Greece, 
because  their  war  with  the  Lacedaemonians  was  going  on  badly,  wishing 
that  anything  might  happen  to  them  rather  than  continue  in  their  present 
troubles.     This  is  enough  about  the  Argives." 

This  conversational  turn  is  extremely  common  ;  he  continually  ends 
his  statements  with  some  such  phrase,  "so  they  say,"  "such  is  the 


5l8  HERODOTUS. 

account  they  give,"  etc.,  assertions  that  give  the  history  an  air  of 
amusing  gossip.  Yet,  this  can  not  remain  a  final  judgment.  He 
admired  the  Athenians,  but  he  is  able  to  mention  their  faults ;  he 
detested  the  Persians,  but  he  does  justice  to  their  bravery  and  honesty. 
Certainly  this  fair-mindedness  is  not  too  common  at  any  period.  He 
makes  it  very  plain  in  what  respects  Greece  is  inferior  to  other  lands, 
and  shows  remarkable  generosity  to  the  barbarians.  This  quality 
certainly  outweighs  extravagant  credulity  about  omens,  dreams,  and 
prodigies.  His  notion  of  Nemesis,  too,  is  perhaps  in  itself  as  defen- 
sible as  the  modern  habit  of  writing  Greek  history  with  the  occult 
purpose  of  assaulting  or  defending  democracy.  Even  when  modern 
science  shall  have  destroyed  his  claims  as  an  authority  regarding 
Oriental  matters,  enough  will  remain  that  was  inspired  by  an  effort  to 
tell  his  story,  to  illustrate  a  remote  epoch.  We  must  always,  too,  avoid 
the  temptation  of  confounding  the  general  credulity  of  a  period  and 
the  absence  of  scientific  method  with  personal  dishonesty.  When 
Herodotus  (vii.  129),  speaking  of  Thessaly,  says  that  in  old  times  there 
was  a  lake,  but  that  the  mountains  were  cast  down  by  an  earthquake 
and  the  waters  thus  set  free,  he  adds  that  the  Thessalians  aflfirm  that 
Poseidon  made  the  pass  through  which  the  Peneus  flows. 

"  This  story  is  probable,"  he  goes  on,  "  for  whoever  thinks  that  Poseidon 
shakes  the  earth,  and  that  rents  produced  by  earthquakes  are  the  work  of 
this  god,  on  seeing  this  would  say  that  Poseidon  formed  it,  for  it  seems  clear 
to  me  that  the  separation  of  the  mountains  was  the  effect  of  an  earthquake." 

Here  we  are  between  the  antiquity  that  explained  every  event  as 
the  direct  result  of  divine  action,  and  the  modern  spirit  that  explains 
things  by  natural  causes,  and  statements  like  these,  perhaps,  illustrate 
more  clearly  current  notions  than  personal  characteristics. 

Indeed,  we  may  say  that  the  fate  of  Herodotus  well  illustrates  the 
difficulty  of  putting  ourselves,  with  our  very  different  notions  of  the 
functions  of  history,  in  the  place  of  that  chronicler,  who  apparently 
endeavored  to  compose  a  prose  epic.  At  least,  if  this  plan  was  not 
definitely  formed  by  him,  it  seems  very  possible  that  he  was  influ- 
enced by  that  poetical  ideal  in  drawing  the  picture  that  he  made  of 
the  next  great  conflict  between  Greek  and  barbarian.  Not  only  do 
we  observe  throughout  the  whole  study  of  literature  a  constant  rela- 
tion between  every  form  of  expression  and  the  current  thought  of  the 
time,  so  that,  to  take  the  last  fifty  or  sixty  years  alone,  we  may  easily 
detect  the  picturesqueness  of  the  Romantic  revival  in  Thiers,  the  con- 
temporary adoration  of  magnificent  heroes  in  Carlyle's  Cromwell  and 
Frederick,  and  the  new  scientific  impulse  in  Ranke  and  his  followers, 
and  something  similar  may  explain   the  tendency,  which  is  strcJng  in 


520  HERODOTUS. 

Herodotus,  to  let  anecdotes  portray  national  feelings,  with  scarcely 
more  care  for  their  exactitude  than  Homer  felt.  It  was  enough  for 
him  to  listen  to  the  chatter  of  dragomen  who  doubtless  recounted  the 
ready  gossip  of  men  who  were  still  almost  in  the  condition  of  myth- 
makers,  and  what  he  heard  he  set  down  as  in  duty  bound.  Weighing 
evidence  was  as  far  from  his  thoughts  as  the  application  of  chemical 
tests  to  their  gold  and  silver  coins.  He  transmitted  to  us  the  various 
accounts  that  reached  him,  with  all  their  inaccuracies  and  inconsis- 
tencies, with  an  eye  to  the  general  impression  that  they  should  make 
rather  than  to  satisfying  the  demands  of  modern  scholars.  It  is  not 
easy  for  us,  trained  as  we  are  to  admire  Homer,  to  sympathize  fully 
with  its  authority  among  the  Greeks  as  a  historical  text-book.  The 
poetical  excellence  and  its  prominence  as  the  sole  piece  of  testimony 
floated  an  enormous  amount  of  miscellaneous  statement  the  real  value 
of  which  could  not  be  conjectured,  much  less  determined;  and  natu- 
rally enough  its  methods,  which  are  those  of  all  early  races,  conveyed 
enormous  authority. 

Doubtless  both  Homer  and  Herodotus  would  have  conferred  an 
inestimable  benefit  upon  us  moderns,  if  they  could  have  foreseen  the 
sort  of  questions  which  we  should  ask,  but  they  would  not  have  been 
Homer  or  Herodotus  if  they  had  done  so.  We  must  be  contented 
with  what  we  have  left,  bearing  in  mind  that  this  early  historian  was 
animated  by  some  such  feeling  as  that  which  we  see  in  Shakspere's 
chronicle-plays,  and  that  authenticity  is  a  remote  and  late-growing 
thing.  Certainly,  the  delight  that  Herodotus  has  given  to  generations 
of  readers  might  well  serve  to  outweigh  the  indignation  of  his  critics 
over  the  fact  that  he  lived  when  he  did  and  was  most  distinctly  a  man 
of  his  time  and  of  his  country.  Anger  over  his  shortcomings  as  little 
suits  us  as  modern  science  would  have  been  natural  for  him. 

It  is  possible  to  agree  that  the  stories  with  which  Herodotus  fills  a 
good  part  of  his  history  are  a  mere  accumulation  of  folk-lore  which  he 
picked  up  from  irresponsible  sources,  and  yet  to  be  averse  to  calling 
him  dishonest.  The  anecdote  about  Arion's  preservation  by  a  dolphin 
can  not  properly  find  a  credible  place  in  a  natural  or  a  literary  history. 
The  reports  about  Croesus,  Solon's  visit,  etc.,  bear  unmistakable 
marks  of  being  anecdotes  rather  than  facts  ;  yet  their  collection  shows 
what  a  vast  number  of  his  contemporaries  mistook  for  a  satisfactory 
explanation  of  events  the  way  in  which  history  was  told  orally  before 
it  was  ever  written  down,  just  as  the  absurd  stories  about  animals  that 
found  many  unsuspicious  chroniclers  and  readers  for  many  thousand 
years  indicate  from  what  it  was  that  the  study  of  animals  grew.  Pliny 
the  elder  reports  many  statements  about  beasts  and  snakes  that  have 
actually  no  foundation,  but  it  was  by  collecting  and  correcting  these 


SOURCES  OF  HERODOTUS'  NARRATION— CRITICISMS  OF  CTESIAS.    521 

Statements  that  zoology  became  a  science.  In  the  same  way  by 
amassing  idle  reports  Herodotus  laid  the  foundations  of  historical 
science.  He  did  in  prose  for  the  past  what  the  poets  had  long  been 
doing  with  mythology  and  the  legends  of  heroic  times  ;  exactly  as 
the  fate  of  Troy  had  depended  on  the  mood  of  Achilles,  this  later 
war  seemed  satisfactorily  explained  by  the  rigmarole  that  Herodotus 
found  told  everywhere  about  him,  and  which  he  told  again  in  his  turn. 
The  swift  development  of  the  Athenian  intellect  that  followed  the  Per- 
sian wars  left  him  hopelessly  remote  and  old-fashioned,  like  the  wooden 
war-ships  of  the  present  day.  With  the  new  light  there  appeared  a 
great  contempt  for  the  historian,  but  after  a  brief  eclipse  his  fame 
shone  forth  again,  and  he  received  the  admiration  that  he  deserved, 
until  recent  scholars  once  more  assaulted  him  as  an  impostor. 

This  fault-finding  began  about  4(X>  B.C.  with  a  book  written  by 
Ctesias,  a  physician  at  the  Persian  court,  who  remained  for  seventeen 
years  in  that  country.  He  appears  to  have  expressed  great  contempt 
for  the  assertions  of  Herodotus,  who  had  made  but  a  brief  stay  in  Per- 
sia, whereas  he  himself  was  familiar  with  the  language,  had  access  to 
the  royal  archives,  and  hence  was  able  to  correct  his  rival's  errors.  It 
has  been  maintained  by  some  that  Ctesias  merely  substituted  mis- 
statements of  his  own  for  those  of  Herodotus,  but  although  direct  tes- 
timony is  unfortunately  lacking,  it  seems  more  likely  that  his  fuller 
opportunities  could  not  have  failed  to  have  lent  his  book  much  greater 
authority.  The  loss  of  his  book  is  consequently  much  to  be  lamented  ; 
the  rare  scraps  that  have  reached  us  in  no  way  enable  us  to  determine 
his  accuracy  with  anything  like  certainty.  Ctesias  furthermore  wrote 
about  the  other  Oriental  monarchies,  and  in  a  separate  book  he 
described  India,  thus  giving  to  the  Greeks  their  earliest  information 
about  that  country. 

It  should  be  said,  however,  that  the  information  that  Ctesias  gave 
would  not  now  pass  muster  with  any  one.  Whatever  his  accuracy 
about  Persian  affairs,  his  report  concerning  East  India  would  shatter 
the  most  venerable  reputation,  although  his  experience  was  that  which 
has  often  repeated  itself  with  the  first  travelers  in  new  countries :  thus> 
he  saw  the  men  with  dogs'  heads  that  Mandeville  describes,  who  dwell 
in  the  mountains  (possibly  they  are  Buddhist  adepts),  the  pigmies, 
who  may  have  belonged  to  some  early  race,  as  well  as  the  one-legged 
people  ;  and  the  Sciopodce,  who  used  their  large  feet  as  sunshades, 

"  and  men  whose  heads 
Do  grow  beneath  their  shoulders," 

all  of  whom  have  acquired  literary  rather  than  scientific  standing, 
probably  by  exercise  of  the  habit,  not   unknown  even  to  students  of 


522  HERODOTUS. 

science,  of  indiscriminate  copying  from  one's  predecessors,  so  that  in 
reading  Mandeville  we  have  the  ghosts  of  the  lies  of  Ctesias,  almost 
sanctified  by  the  authority  of  Pliny,  who  quoted  them  and  thereby 
made  them  a  part  of  mediaeval  folk-lore — and  from  folk-lore,  probably, 
they  took  their  remote  start.  Yet  while  Ctesias  fathered  a  mass  of 
inexactness  about  the  distant  and  almost  fabulous  Indians,  what  he 
had  to  say  about  things  Persian  carried  more  weight;  and  the  report 
of  Herodotus,  in  spite  of  the  charm  of  his  style,  a  most  powerful  sup- 
port, was  often  doubted  by  the  ancients. 

Although  his  attack  on  Herodotus  damaged  that  historian's  reputa- 
tion, his  own  accounts  were  doubted  by  Aristotle  and  Plutarch.  An- 
other writer,  the  Pseudo-Plutarch,  accused  Herodotus  of  malignity 
and  gross  inaccuracy,  but  he  merely  injured  his  own  fame  and  convicted 
himself  of  those  faults.  What  probably  was  a  sufificient  cause  for  the 
subsequent  neglect  of  Herodotus  was  the  swift  growth  of  the  new 
spirit  that  found  no  charm  in  his  simple  narrative  and  greatly  de- 
spised his  ready  credulity.  No  one  is  so  sure  to  be  disliked  as  the 
man  whose  faults  are  those  that  any  given  generation  or  period  has 
just  outgrown.  Real  antiquity  can  be  appreciated  at  its  proper  worth 
and  be  admired  without  rancor,  but  belated  antiquity  has  no  mercy 
shown  it.  A  generation  that  has  thrown  off  the  authority  of  its  im- 
mediate predecessors  cannot  judge  these  with  anything  like  fairness. 
We  see  examples  of  this  in  the  feeling  about  Pope  when  modern 
poetry  began  to  be  written,  and  in  the  feeling  of  Pope's  contempo- 
raries for  the  writers  of  conceits.  The  days  of  the  Ionic  prose  were 
gone  when  the  rhetorical  prose  of  Athens  began  to  flourish. 

Among  the  other  historians  of  whom  but  little  or  nothing  has  sur- 
vived, was  Hellanicus  of  Mitylene,  whose  work  is  frequently  men- 
tioned by  Greek  writers.  He  appears  to  have  written  histories  of  the 
separate  Greek  states  and  of  the  establishment  of  the  colonies.  Frag- 
ments are  left  of  the  memoirs  of  Stesimbrotus  and  of  sketches  of 
travel  and  of  persons  by  Ion  of  Chios,  who  is  better  known  for  his 
tragedies.      In  general,  however,  these  literary  ruins  are  mere  dust. 

HERODOTUS.     Book  VII —Chapters  100-105. 

Ch.  100. — Now  when  the  numbering  and  marshalling  of  the  host  was 
ended,  Xerxes  conceived  a  wish  to  go  himself  throughout  the  forces,  and 
with  his  own  eyes  behold  everything.  Accordingly  he  traversed  the  ranks 
seated  in  his  chariot,  and,  going  from  nation  to  nation,  made  manifold  in- 
quiries, while  his  scribes  wrote  down  the  answers  ;  till  at  last  he  had 
passed  from  end  to  end  of  the  whole  land,  among  both  the  horsemen  and 
likewise  the  foot.  This  done,  he  exchanged  his  chariot  for  a  Sidonian 
galley,  and,  seated  beneath  a  golden  awning,  sailed  along  the  prows  of  all 
his  vessels  (the  vessels  having  now  been  hauled  down  and  launched  into  the 


XERXES  PREPARES    TO  ATTACK   THE   GREEKS. 


523 


sea),  while  he  made  inquiries  again,  as  he  had  done  when  he  reviewed  the 
land-forces,  and  caused  the  answers  to  be  recorded  by  his  scribes.  The 
captains  took  their  ships  to  the  distance  of  about  four  hundred  feet  from 
the  shore,  and  there  lay  to,  with   their  vessels  in   a  single  row,  the  prows 


ASIATIC  WARRIOR  IN  CHARIOT. 


facing  the  land,  and  with  the  fighting-men  upon  the  decks  accoutred  as  if 
for  war,  while  the  king  sailed  along  in  the  open  space  between  the  ships 
and  the  shore,  and  so  reviewed  the  fleet. 


BOAT   WITH    AWNING. 


Ch.  ioi. — Now  after  Xerxes  had  sailed  down  the  whole  line  and  was  gone 
ashore,  he  sent  for  Demaratus  the  son  of  Ariston,  who  had  accompanied  him 
in  his  march  upon  Greece,  and  bespake  him  thus  : 

''  Demaratus,  it  is  my  pleasure  at  this  time  to  ask  thee  certain  things  which 


524  HERODOTUS. 

I  wish  to  know.  Thou  art  a  Greek,  and,  as  I  hear  from  the  other  Greeks 
with  whom  I  converse,  no  less  than  from  thine  own  lips,  thou  art  a  native  of 
a  city  which  is  not  the  meanest  or  the  weakest  in  their  land.  Tell  me,  there- 
fore, what  thinkest  thou  ?  Will  the  Greeks  lift  a  hand  against  us  ?  Mine 
own  judgment  is  that,  even  if  all  the  Greeks  and  all  the  barbarians  of  the 
West  were  gathered  together  in  one  place,  they  would  not  be  able  to  abide 
my  onset,  not  being  really  of  one  mind.  But  I  would  fain  know  what  thou 
thinkest  hereon." 

Thus  Xerxes  questioned  ;  and  the  other  replied  in  his  turn, — "  O  king,  is 
it  thy  will  that  I  give  thee  a  true  answer,  or  dost  thou  wish  for  a  pleasant 
one  ? " 

Then  the  king  bade  him  speak  the  plain  truth,  and  promised  that  he 
would  not  on  that  account  hold  him  in  less  favour  than  heretofore. 

Ch.  I02. — So  Demaratus,  when  he  heard  the  promise,  spake  as  follows: — 
"  O  king  !  since  thou  biddest  me  at  all  risks  speak  the  truth,  and  not  say 
what  will  one  day  prove  me  to  have  lied  to  thee,  thus  I  answer.  Want  has 
at  all  times  been  a  fellow-dweller  with  us  in  our  land,  while  Valor  is  an  ally 
whom  we  have  gained  by  dint  of  wisdom  and  strict  laws.  Herald  enables  us 
to  drive  out  want  and  escape  thraldom.  Brave  are  all  the  Greeks  who  dwell 
in  any  Dorian  land,  but  what  I  am  about  to  say  does  not  concern  all,  but 
only  the  Lacedaemonians.  First  then,  come  what  may,  they  will  never 
accept  thy  terms,  which  would  reduce  Greece  to  slavery  ;  and  further,  they 
are  sure  to  join  battle  with  thee,  though  all  the  rest  of  the  Greeks  should 
submit  to  thy  will.  As  for  their  numbers,  do  not  ask  how  many  they  are, 
that  their  resistance  should  be  a  possible  thing  ;  for  if  a  thousand  of  them 
should  take  the  field,  they  will  meet  thee  in  battle,  and  so  will  any  number, 
be  it  less  than  this,  or  be  it  more." 

Ch.  103. — When  Xerxes  heard  this  answer  of  Demaratus,  he  laughed  and 
answered, — 

''  What  wild  words,  Demaratus  !  A  thousand  men  join  battle  with  such 
an  army  as  this  !  Come  then,  wilt  thou  —  who  wert  once,  as  thou  sayest, 
their  king  —  engage  to  fight  this  very  day  with  ten  men  ?  I  trow  not.  And 
yet,  if  all  thy  fellow-citizens  be  indeed  such  as  thou  sayest  they  are,  thou 
oughtest,  as  their  king,  by  thine  own  country's  usages,  to  be  ready  to  fight 
with  twice  the  number.  If  then  each  one  of  them  be  a  match  for  ten  of  my 
soldiers,  I  may  well  call  upon  thee  to  be  a  match  for  twenty.  So  wouldest 
thou  assure  the  truth  of  what  thou  hast  now  said.  If,  however,  you  Greeks, 
who  vaunt  yourselves  so  much,  are  of  a  truth  men  like  those  whom  I  have  seen 
about  my  court,  as  thyself,  Demaratus,  and  the  others  with  whom  I  am  wont 
to  converse, —  if,  I  say,  you  are  really  men  of  this  sort  and  size,  how  is  the 
speech  that  thou  hast  uttered  more  than  a  mere  empty  boast  ?  For,  to  go  to 
the  very  verge  of  likelihood, —  how  could  a  thousand  men,  or  ten  thousand,  or 
even  fifty  thousand,  particularly  if  they  were  all  alike  free,  and  not  under 
one  lord, —  how  could  such  a  force,  I  say,  stand  against  an  army  like  mine? 
Let  them  be  five  thousand,  and  we  shall  have  more  than  a  thousand  men  to 
each  one  of  theirs.  If,  indeed,  like  our  troops,  they  had  a  single  master  ; 
their  fear  of  him  might  make  them  courageous  beyond  their  natural  bent, 
or  they  might  be  urged  by  lashes  against  an  enemy  which  far  outnumbered 
them.  But  left  to  their  own  free  choice,  assuredly  they  will  act  differently. 
For  mine  own  part,  I  believe  that  if  the  Greeks  had  to  contend  with  the 


THE  BATTLE    OF   THERMOPYL^.  525 

Persians  only,  and  the  numbers  were  equal  on  both  sides,  the  Greeks  would 
find  it  hard  to  stand  their  ground.  We  too  have  among  us  such  men  as  those 
of  whom  thou  spakest — not  many  indeed,  but  still  we  possess  a  few.  For 
instance,  some  of  my  body-guard  would  be  willing  to  engage  singly  with 
three  Greeks.  But  this  thou  didst  not  know  ;  and  therefore  it  was  thou 
talkedst  so  foolishly." 

Ch.  104. — Demaratus  answered  him, — 

"  I  knew,  O  king  !  at  the  outset,  that  if  I  told  thee  the  truth,  my  speech 
would  displease  thine  ears.  But  as  thou  didst  require  me  to  answer  thee 
with  all  possible  truthfulness,  I  informed  thee  what  the  Spartans  will  do. 
And  in  this  I  speak  not  from  any  love  that  I  bear  them  —  for  none  knows 
better  than  thou  what  my  love  towards  them  is  likely  to  be  at  the  present 
time,  when  they  have  robbed  me  of  my  rank  and  my  ancestral  honours,  and 
made  me  a  homeless  exile,  whom  thy  father  did  receive,  bestowing  on  me 
both  shelter  and  sustenance.  What  likelihood  is  there  that  a  man  of  under- 
standing should  be  unthankful  for  kindness  shown  him,  and  not  cherish  it 
in  his  heart  ?  For  mine  own  self,  I  pretend  not  to  cope  with  ten  men,  or 
with  two, —  nay,  had  I  the  choice,  I  would  rather  not  fight  even  with  one. 
But,  if  need  appeared,  or  if  there  were  any  great  cause  urging  me  on,  I 
would  contend  with  right  good  will  against  one  of  those  persons  who  boast 
themselves  a  match  for  any  three  Greeks.  So  likewise  the  Lacedaemonians, 
when  they  fight  singly,  are  as  good  men  as  any  in  the  world,  and  when  they 
fight  in  a  body,  are  the  bravest  of  all.  For  though  they  be  free  men,  they 
are  not  in  all  respects  free  ;  Law  is  the  master  whom  they  own  ;  and  this 
master  they  fear  more  than  thy  subjects  fear  thee.  Whatever  he  commands, 
they  do  ;  and  his  commandment  is  always  the  same  :  it  forbids  them  to  flee 
in  battle,  whatever  the  number  of  their  foes,  and  requires  them  to  stand 
firm,  and  either  to  conquer  or  die.  If  in  these  words,  O  king  !  I  seem  to 
thee  to  speak  foolishly,  I  am  content  from  this  time  forward  evermore  to 
hold  my  peace.  I  had  not  now  spoken  unless  compelled  by  thee.  Certes, 
I  pray  that  all  may  turn  out  according  to  thy  wishes." 

Ch.  105. — Such  was  the  answer  of  Demaratus,  and  Xerxes  was  not  angry 
with  him  at  all,  but  only  laughed,  and  sent  him  away  with  words  of  kindness. 


HERODOTUS.     The  Battle  of  Thermopyl^.— Book  VIL 

Chapter  207. — The  Greek  forces  at  Thermopylae,  when  the  Persian  army 
drew  near  to  the  entrance  of  the  pass,  were  seized  with  fear,  and  a  council 
was  held  to  consider  about  a  retreat.  It  was  the  wish  of  the  Peloponnesians 
generally  that  the  army  should  fall  back  upon  the  Peloponnese,  and  there 
guard  the  Isthmus.  But  Leonidas,  who  saw  with  what  indignation  the 
Phocians  and  Locrians  heard  of  this  plan,  gave  his  voice  for  remaining 
where  they  were,  while  they  sent  envoys  to  the  several  cities  to  ask  for  help, 
since  they  were  too  few  to  make  a  stand  against  an  army  like  that  of  the 
Medes. 

Ch.  208. — While  this  debate  was  going  on,  Xerxes  sent  a  mounted  spy  to  ob- 
serve the  Greeks,  and  note  how  many  they  were  and  see  what  they  were  doing. 
He  had  heard,  before  he  came  out  of  Thessaly,  that  a  few  men  were  assembled 
at  this  place,  and  that  at  their  head  were  certain  Lacedaemonians,   under 


THE   GREEKS  REPEL    THE  MEDES.  527 

Leonidas,  a  descendant  of  Hercules.  The  horseman  rode  up  to  the  camp, 
and  looked  about  him,  but  did  not  see  the  whole  army;  for  such  as  were  on 
the  further  side  of  the  wall  (which  had  been  rebuilt  and  was  now  carefully 
guarded)  it  was  not  possible  for  him  to  behold;  but  he  observed  those  on 
the  outside,  who  were  encamped  in  front  of  the  rampart.  It  chanced  that  at 
this  time  the  Lacedaemonians  held  the  outer  guard,  and  were  seen  by  the 
spy,  some  of  them  engaged  in  gymnastic  exercises,  others  combing  their 
long  hair.  At  this  the  spy  greatly  marvelled,  but  he  counted  their  number, 
and  when  he  had  taken  accurate  note  of  everything,  he  rode  back  quietly ; 
for  no  one  pursued  after  him,  or  paid  any  heed  to  his  visit.  So  he  returned, 
and  told  Xerxes  all  that  he  had  seen. 

Ch.  209. — Upon  this,  Xerxes,  who  had  no  means  of  surmising  the  truth — 
namely,  that  the  Spartans  were  preparing  to  do  or  die  manfully — but  thought 
it  laughable  that  they  should  be  engaged  in  such  employments,  sent  and 
called  to  his  presence  Demaratus  the  son  of  Ariston,  who  still  remained 
with  the  army.  When  he  appeared,  Xerxes  told  him  all  that  he  had  heard, 
and  questioned  him  concerning  the  news,  since  he  was  anxious  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  such  behaviour  on  the  part  of  the  Spartans.  Then  Demaratus 
said — 

"  I  spake  to  thee,  O  king,  concerning  these  men  long  since,  when  we  had 
but  just  begun  our  march  upon  Greece  ;  thou,  however,  didst  only  laugh  at 
my  words,  when  I  told  thee  of  all  this,  which  I  saw  would  come  to  pass. 
Earnestly  do  I  struggle  at  all  times  to  speak  truth  to  thee,  sire;  and  now 
listen  to  it  once  more.  These  men  have  come  to  dispute  the  pass  with  us, 
and  it  is  for  this  that  they  are  now  making  ready.  'Tis  their  custom,  when 
they  are  about  to  hazard  their  lives,  to  adorn  their  heads  with  care.  Be 
assured,  however,  that  if  thou  canst  subdue  the  men  who  are  here  and 
the  Lacedaemonians  who  remain  in  Sparta,  there  is  no  other  nation  in  all  the 
world  which  will  venture  to  lift  a  hand  in  their  defense.  Thou  hast  now  to 
deal  with  the  first  kingdom  and  town  in  Greece,  and  with  the  bravest  men." 

Then  Xerxes,  to  whom  what  Demaratus  said  seemed  altogether  to  pass 
belief,  asked  further,  "  how  it  was  possible  for  so  small  an  army  to  contend 
with  his  ? " 

"  O  king  ! "  Demaratus  answered,  "  let  me  be  treated  as  a  liar,  if  matters 
fall  not  out  as  I  say." 

Ch.  210. — But  Xerxes  was  not  persuaded  any  the  more.  Four  whole  days 
he  suffered  to  go  by,  expecting  that  the  Greeks  would  run  away.  When, 
however,  he  found  on  the  fifth  that  they  were  not  gone,  thinking  that  their 
firm  stand  was  mere  impudence  and  recklessness,  he  grew  wroth,  and  sent 
against  them  the  Medes  and  Cissians,  with  orders  to  take  them  alive  and 
bring  them  into  his  presence.  Then  the  Medes  rushed  forward  and  charged 
the  Greeks,  but  fell  in  vast  numbers.  Others  however  took  the  places  of 
the  slain,  and  would  not  be  beaten  off,  though  they  suffered  terrible  losses. 
In  this  way  it  became  clear  to  all,  and  especially  to  the  king,  that  though  he 
had  plenty  of  combatants,  he  had  but  very  few  warriors.  The  struggle, 
however,  continued  during  the  whole  day. 

Ch.  211. — Then  the  Medes,  having  met  so  rough  a  reception,  withdrew 
from  the  fight  ;  and  their  place  was  taken  by  the  band  of  Persians  under 
Hydarnes,  whom  the  king  called  his  "immortals":    they,   it  was  thought, 


528 


HERODOTUS. 


would   soon   finish  the  business.     But  when  they  joined   battle    with  the 
Greeks,  'twas  with  no  better  success  than  the   Median  detachment — things 

went  much  as  before  —  the  two  armies  fighting 
in  a  narrow  space,  and  the  barbarians  using 
shorter  spears  than  the  Greeks,  and  having  no 
advantage  from  their  numbers.  The  Lacedaemo- 
nians fought  in  a  way  worthy  of  note,  and  showed 
themselves  far  more  skilful  in  fight  than  their 
adversaries,  often  turning  their  backs,  and  making 
as  though  they  were  all  flying  away,  on  which  the 
barbarians  would  rush  after  them  with  much  noise 
and  shouting,  when  the  Spartans  at  their  approach 
would  wheel  round  and  face  their  pursuers,  in 
this  way  destroying  vast  numbers  of  the  enemy. 
Some  Spartans  likewise  fell  in  these  encounters, 
but  only  a  very  few.  At  last  the  Persians,  finding 
that  all  their  efforts  to  gain  the  pass  availed 
nothing,  and  that  whether  they  attacked  by  divis- 
ions or  in  any  other  way,  it  was  to  no  purpose, 
withdrew  to  their  own  quarters. 

Ch.  2  12. — During  these  assaults,  it  is  said  that 
Xerxes,  who  was  watching  the  battle,  thrice  leaped 
from  the  throne  on  which  he  sate,  in  terror  for 
his  army. 

Next  day  the  combat  was  renewed,  but  with  no 
better  success  on  the  part  of  the  barbarians.  The 
Greeks  were  so  few  that  the  barbarians  hoped  to 
find  them  disabled,  by  reason  of  their  wounds,  from  offering  any  further 
resistance  ;  and  so  they  once  more  attacked  them.  But  the  Greeks  were 
drawn  up  in  detachments  according 
to  their  cities,  and  bore  the  brunt  of 
the  battle  in  turns, —  all  except  the 
Phocians,  who  had  been  stationed  on 
the  mountain  to  guard  the  pathway. 
So  when  the  Persians  found  no  differ- 
ence between  that  day  and  the  prece- 
ding, they  again  retired  to  their 
quarters. 

Ch.  213. — Now,  as  the  king  was  in 
a  great  strait,  and  knew  not  how  he 
should  deal  with  the  emergency,  Ephi- 
altes,  the  son  of  Eurydemus,  a  man 
of  Malis,  came  to  him  and  was  ad- 
mitted to  a  conference.  Stirred  by 
the  hope  of  receiving  a  rich  reward 
at  the  king's  hands,  he  had  come  to 
tell  him  of  the  pathway  which  led 
across  the  mountain  to  Thermopylae  ; 
by  which  disclosure  he  brought  de- 
struction on  the  band  of  Greeks  who  had  there  withstood  the  barbarians. 


A    PERSIAN   WARRIOR. 


PERSIAN    SOLDIERS. 


THE  PERSIANS  SURPRISE    THE  PHOCIANS.  529 

This  Ephialtes  afterward,  from  fear  of  the  Lacedaemonians,  fled  into 
Thessaly;  and  during  his  exile,  in  an  assembly  of  the  Amphictyons  held  at 
Pylae,  a  price  was  set  upon  his  head  by  the  Pylagorae.  When  some 
time  had  gone  by,  he  returned  from  exile,  and  went  to  Anticyra,  where  he 
was  slain  by  Athenades,  a  native  of  Trachis.  Athenades  did  not  slay  him  for 
his  treachery,  but  for  another  reason,  which  I  shall  mention  in  a  later  part 
of  my  history  :  yet  still  the  Lacedaemonians  honored  him  none  the  less. 
Thus  then  did  Ephialtes  perish  a  long  time  afterwards. 

Ch.  214. — Besides  this  there  is  another  story  told,  which  I  do  not  at  all 
believe  —  to  wit,  that  Onetas  the  son  of  Phanagoras,  a  native  of  Carystus, 
and  Corydallus,  a  man  of  Anticyra,  were  the  persons  who  spoke  on  this 
matter  to  the  king,  and  took  the  Persians  across  the  mountain.  One  may 
guess  which  story  is  true,  from  the  fact  that  the  deputies  of  the  Greeks,  tVie 
Pylagorae,  who  must  have  had  the  best  means  of  ascertaining  the  truth,  did 
not  offer  the  reward  for  the  heads  of  Onetas  and  Corydallus,  but  for  that  of 
Ephialtes  of  Trachis;  and  again  from  the  flight  of  Ephialtes,  which  we  know 
to  have  been  on  this  account.  Onetas,  I  allow,  although  he  was  not  a 
Malian,  might  have  been  acquainted  with  the  path,  if  he  had  lived  much 
in  that  part  of  the  country  ;  but  as  Ephialtes  was  the  person  who  actually 
led  the  Persians  round  the  mountain  by  the  pathway,  I  leave  his  name  oft 
record  as  that  of  the  man  who  did  the  deed. 

Ch.  215. — Great  was  the  joy  of  Xerxes  on  this  occasion  ;  and  as  he  ap- 
proved highly  of  the  enterprise  which  Ephialtes  undertook  to  accomplish, 
he  forthwith  sent  upon  the  errand  Hydarnes,  and  the  Persians  under  him. 
The  troops  left  the  camp  about  the  time  of  the  lighting  of  the  lamps.  The 
pathway  along  which  they  went  was  first  discovered  by  the  Malians  of  these 
parts,  who  soon  afterward  led  the  Thessalians  by  it  to  attack  the  Phocians, 
at  the  time  when  the  Phocians  fortified  the  pass  with  a  wall,  and  so  put  them- 
selves under  covert  from  danger.  And  ever  since,  the  path  has  always  been 
put  to  an  ill  use  by  the  Malians. 


Ch.  217. — The  Persians  took  this  path,  and,  crossing  the  Asopus,  con- 
tinued their  march  through  the  whole  of  the  night,  having  the  mountains  of 
(Eta  on  their  right  hand,  and  on  their  left  those  of  Trachis.  At  dawn  of 
day  they  found  themselves  close  to  the  summit.  Now  the  hill  was  guarded, 
as  I  have  already  said,  by  a  thousand  Phocian  men-at-arms,  who  were  placed 
there  to  defend  the  pathway,  and  at  the  same  time  to  secure  their  own 
country.  They  had  been  given  the  guard  of  the  mountain  path,  while  the 
other  Greeks  defended  the  pass  below,  because  they  had  volunteered  for 
the  service,  and  had  pledged  themselves  to  Leonidas  to  maintain  the  post. 

Ch.  c?i8. — The  ascent  of  the  Persians  became  known  to  the  Phocians  in 
the  following  manner  : — 

During  all  the  time  that  they  were  making  their  way  up,  the  Greeks  re- 
mained unconscious  of  it,  inasmuch  as  the  whole  mountain  was  covered  with 
groves  of  oak  ;  but  it  happened  that  the  air  was  very  still,  and  the  leaves 
which  the  Persians  stirred  with  their  feet  made,  as  it  was  likely  they  would, 
a  loud  rustling,  whereupon  the  Phocians  jumped  up  and  flew  to  seize  their 
arms.     In  a  moment  the  barbarians  came  in  sight,  and  perceiving  men  arm- 


53P  HERODOTUS. 

ing  themselves,  were  greatly  amazed;  for  they  had  fallen  in  with  an  enemy 
when  they  expected  no  opposition.  Hydarnes,  alarmed  at  the  sight,  and 
fearing  lest  the  Phocians  might  be  Lacedaemonians,  inquired  of  Ephialtes 
to  what  nation  these  troops  belonged.  Ephialtes  told  him  the  exact  truth, 
whereupon  he  arrayed  his  Persians  for  battle.  The  Phocians,  galled  by 
the  showers  of  arrows  to  which  they  were  exposed,  and  imagining  them- 
selves the  special  object  of  the  Persian  attack,  fled  hastily  to  the  crest  of  the 
mountain,  and  there  made  ready  to  meet  death  ;  but  while  their  mistake 
continued,  the  Persians,  with  Ephialtes  and  Hydarnes,  not  thinking  it  worth 
their  while  to  delay  on  account  of  Phocians,  passed  on  and  descended  the 
mountain  with  all  possible  speed. 

Ch.  219. — The  Greeks  at  Thermopylae  received  the  first  warning  of  the 
destruction  which  the  dawn  would  bring  on  them  from  the  seer  Megistias, 
who  read  their  fate  in  the  victims  as  he  was  sacrificing.  After  this  deserters 
came  in,  and  brought  the  news  that  the  Persians  were  marching  round  by 
the  hills  :  it  was  still  night  when  these  men  arrived.  Last  of  all,  the  scouts 
came  running  down  from  the  heights,  and  brought  in  the  same  accounts, 
,when  the  day  was  just  beginning  to  break.  Then  the  Greeks  held  a  council 
to  consider  what  they  should  do,  and  here  opinions  were  divided  :  some 
were  strong  against  quitting  their  post,  while  others  contended  to  the  con- 
trary. So  when  the  council  had  broken  up,  part  of  the  troops  departed  and 
went  their  ways  homeward  to  their  separate  states  ;  part,  however,  resolved 
to  remain,  and  to  stand  by  Leonidas  to  the  last. 

Ch.  220. — It  is  said  that  Leonidas  himself  sent  away  the  troops  who  de- 
parted, because  he  tendered  their  safety,  but  thought  it  unseemly  that  either 
he  or  his  Spartans  should  quit  the  post  which  they  had  been  especially  sent 
to  guard.  For  my  own  part,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Leonidas  gave 
the  order,  because  he  perceived  the  allies  to  be  out  of  heart  and  unwilling 
to  encounter  the  danger  to  which  his  own  mind  was  made  up.  He  there- 
fore commanded  them  to  retreat,  but  said  that  he  himself  could  not  draw 
back  with  honor  ;  knowing  that,  if  he  stayed,  glory  awaited  him,  and  that 
Sparta  in  that  case  would  not  lose  her  prosperity.  For  when  the  Spar- 
tans, at  the  very  beginning  of  the  war,  sent  to  consult  the  oracle  con- 
cerning it,  the  answer  which  they  received  from  the  Pythoness  was,  "  that 
either  Sparta  must  be  overthrown  by  the  barbarians,  or  one  of  her  kings 
must  perish."  The  prophecy  was  delivered  in  hexameter  verse,  and  ran 
thus  : — 

"  Oh  !  ye  men  who  dwell  in  the  streets  of  broad  Lacedcemon  ! 
Either  your  glorious  town  shall  be  sacked  by  the  children  of  Perseus, 
Or,  in  exchange,  must  all  through  the  whole  Laconian  country 
Mourn  for  the  loss  of  a  king,  descendant  of  great  Heracles. 
He  cannot  be  withstood  by  the  courage  of  bulls  or  of  lions, 
Strive  as  they  may;  he  is  mighty  as  Jove ;  there  is  naught  that  shall  stay  him, 
Till  he  have  got  for  his  prey  your  king,  or  your  glorious  city." 

The  remembrance  of  this  answer,  I  think,  and  the  wish  to  secure  the  whole 
glory  for  the  Spartans,  caused  Leonidas  to  send  the  allies  away.  This 
is  more  likely  than  that  they  quarreled  with  him,  and  took  theii  departure 
in  such  unruly  fashion. 


DEFEAT  OF   THE   GREEKS  AT   THERMOPYL^.  53 1 

Ch.  221. — To  me  it  seems  no  small  argument  in  favour  of  this  view,  that 
the  seer  also  who  accompanied  the  army,  Megistias,  the  Acarnanian, —  said 
to  have  been  of  the  blood  of  Melampus,  and  the  same  who  was  led  by  the 
appearance  of  the  victims  to  warn  the  Greeks  of  the  danger  which  threatened 
them, —  received  orders  to  retire  (as  it  is  certain  he  did)  from  Leonidas,  that 
he  might  escape  the  coming  destruction.  Megistias,  however,  though  bidden 
to  depart,  refused,  and  stayed  with  the  army;  but  he  had  an  only  son  present 
with  the  expedition,  whom  he  now  sent  away. 

Ch.  222. — So  the  allies,  when  Leonidas  ordered  them  to  retire,  obeyed 
him  and  forthwith  departed.  Only  the  Thespians  and  the  Thebans  remained 
with  the  Spartans  ;  and  of  these  the  Thebans  were  kept  back  by  Leonidas 
as  hostages,  very  much  against  their  will.  The  Thespians,  on  the  contrary, 
stayed  entirely  of  their  own  accord,  refusing  to  retreat,  and  declaring  that 
they  would  not  forsake  Leonidas  and  his  followers.  So  they  abode  with  the 
Spartans,  and  died  with  them.  Their  leader  was  Demophilus,  the  son  of 
Diadromes. 

Ch.  223. — At  sunrise  Xerxes  made  libations,  after  which  he  waited  until 
the  time  when  the  forum  is  wont  to  fill,  and  then  began  his  advance. 
Ephialtes  had  instructed  him  thus,  as  the  descent  of  the  mountain  is  much 
quicker,  and  the  distance  much  shorter,  than  the  way  round  the  hills,  and  the 
ascent.  So  the  barbarians  under  Xerxes  began  to  draw  nigh  ;  and  the 
Greeks  under  Leonidas,  as  they  now  went  forth  determined  to  die,  advanced 
much  further  than  on  previous  days,  until  they  reached  the  more  open  portion 
of  the  pass.  Hitherto  they  had  held  their  station  within  the  wall,  and  from 
this  had  gone  forth  to  fight  at  the  point  where  the  pass  was  the  narrowest. 
Now  they  joined  battle  beyond  the  defile,  and  carried  slaughter  among  the 
barbarians,  who  fell  in  heaps.  Behind  them  the  captains  of  the  squadrons, 
armed  with  whips,  urged  their  men  forward  with  continual  blows.  Many 
were  thrust  into  the  sea,  and  there  perished  ;  a  still  greater  number  were 
trampled  to  death  by  their  own  soldiers  ;  no  one  heeded  the  dying.  For 
the  Greeks,  reckless  of  their  own  safety  and  desperate,  since  they  knew  that, 
as  the  mountain  had  been  crossed,  their  destruction  was  nigh  at  hand,  exerted 
themselves  with  the  most  furious  valour  against  the  barbarians. 

Ch.  224. — By  this  time  the  spears  of  the  greater  number  were  all  shivered, 
and  with  their  swords  they  hewed  down  the  ranks  of  the  Persians  ;  and  here, 
as  they  strove,  Leonidas  fell  fighting  bravely,  together  with  many  other 
famous  Spartans,  whose  names  I  have  taken  care  to  learn  on  account  of  their 
great  worthiness,  as  indeed  I  have  those  of  all  the  three  hundred.  There 
fell  too  at  the  same  time  very  many  famous  Persians  :  among  them  two 
sons  of  Darius,  Abrocomes  and  Hyperanthes,  his  children  by  Phratagune, 
the  daughter  of  Artanes.  Artanes  was  brother  of  King  Darius,  being  a  son 
of  Hystaspes,  the  son  of  Arsames  ;  and  when  he  gave  his  daughter  to  the 
king  he  made  him  heir  likewise  of  all  his  substance  ;  for  she  was  his 
only  child. 

Ch.  225. — Thus  two  brothers  of  Xerxes  here  fought  and  fell.  And  now 
there  arose  a  fierce  struggle  between  the  Persians  and  the  Lacedaemonians 
over  the  body  of  Leonidas,  in  which  the  Greeks  four  times  drove  back  the 
enemy,  and  at  last  by  their  great  bravery  succeeded  in  bearing  off  the  body. 


532  HERODOTUS. 

This  combat  was  scarcely  ended  when  the  Persians  with  Ephialtes 
approached  ;  and  the  Greeks,  informed  that  they  drew  nigh,  made  a  change 
in  the  manner  of  their  fighting.  Drawing  back  into  the  narrowest  part  of 
the  pass,  and  retreating  even  behind  the  cross  wall,  they  posted  themselves 
upon  a  hillock,  where  they  stood  all  drawn  up  together  in  one  close  body, 
except  only  the  Thebans.  The  hillock  whereof  I  speak  is  at  the  entrance 
of  the  Straits,  where  the  stone  lion  stands  which  was  set  up  in  honour  of 
Leonidas.  Here  they  defended  themselves  to  the  last,  such  as  still  had 
swords  using  them,  and  the  others  resisting  with  their  hands  and  teeth;  till 
the  barbarians,  who  in  part  had  pulled  down  the  wall  and  attacked  them  in 
front,  in  part  had  gone  round  and  now  encircled  them  upon  every  side, 
overwhelmed  and  buried  the  remnant  left  beneath  showers  of  missile 
weapons. 

Ch,  226. — Thus  nobly  did  the  whole  body  of  Lacedaemonians  and  Thes- 
pians behave  ;  but  nevertheless  one  man  is  said  to  have  distinguished  himself 
above  all  the  rest,  to  wit,  Dieneces  the  Spartan.  A  speech  which  he  made 
before  the  Greeks  engaged  the  Medes  remains  on  record.  One  of  the 
Trachinians  told  him,  "  Such  was  the  number  of  the  barbarians,  that  when 
they  shot  forth  their  arrows  the  sun  would  be  darkened  by  their  multitude." 
Dieneces,  not  at  all  frightened  at  these  words,  but  making  light  of  the 
Median  numbers,  answered,  "  Our  Trachinian  friend  brings  us  excellent 
tidings.  If  the  Medes  darken  the  sun,  we  shall  have  our  fight  in  the  shade." 
Other  sayings,  too,  of  a  like  nature  are  reported  to  have  been  left  on  record 
by  this  same  person. 

Ch.  227. — Next  to  him  two  brothers,  Lacedaemonians,  are  reputed  to  have 
made  themselves  conspicuous  :  they  were  named  Alpheus  and  Maro,  and 
were  the  sons  of  Orsiphantus.  There  was  also  a  Thespian  who  gained 
greater  glory  than  any  of  his  countrymen  :  he  was  a  man  called  Dithyrambus, 
the  son  of  Harmatidas. 

Ch.  228. — The  slain  were  buried  where  they  fell,  and  in  their  honour,  nor 
less  in  honour  of  those  who  died  before  Leonidas  sent  the  allies  away,  an 
inscription  was  set  up,  which  said, — 

"  Here  did  four  thousand  men  from  Pelops'  land 
Against  three  hundred  myriads  bravely  stand." 

This  was  in  honour  of  all.     Another  was  for  the  Spartans  alone  : 

"  Go,  stranger,  and  to  Lacedasmon  tell 
That  here,  obeying  her  behests,  we  fell." 

This  was  for  the  Lacedaemonians.     The  seer  had  the  following  : — 

"  The  great  Megistias'  tomb  you  here  may  view, 
Whom  slew  the  Medes,  fresh  from  Spercheius'  fords. 
Well  the  wise  seer  the  coming  death  foreknew. 
Yet  scorned  he  to  forsake  his  Spartan  lords." 

These  inscriptions,  and  the  pillars  likewise,  were  all  set  up  by  the  Amphic- 
tyons,  except  that  in  honour  of  Megistias,  which  was  inscribed  to  him  (on 
account  of  their  sworn  friendship)  by  Simonides,  the  son  of  Leoprepes. 


CHAPTER  II.— THUCYDIDES. 

I. — The  Vast  Difference  between  Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  The  Life  of  Thu- 
cydides.  His  Conception  of  the  Historian's  Duty.  His  Modernness.  His  Lan- 
guage, n. — His  Use  of  Speeches.  His  Self-control.  III. — The  Fame  of  his 
History.     Its  Presentation  of  Political  Principles.     IV. — The  Sicilian  Expedition. 

I. 

WHILE  Herodotus,  with  his  simplicity  and  credulity,  thus  belongs 
to  a  remote  generation  and  has  his  roots  in  a  period  that  had  not 
broken  with  the  mythical  past,  Thucydides  stands  as  perhaps  the 
most  remarkable  representative  of  the  swiftly  but  thoroughly  matured 
Athenian  intellect.  In  fact,  however,  the  two  men,  like  Sophocles 
and  Euripides,  were  very  nearly  contemporaries,  Herodotus  having  been 
born  about  484  B.C.,  and  Thucydides  probably  not  far  from  471  B.C. ; 
yet  this  coincidence  in  time  in  no  way  expresses  an  identity  of  beliefs. 
When  we  read  the  younger  historian  we  find  a  man  who  has  broken 
loose  from  the  old-fashioned  notions  that  had  prevailed  from  imme- 
morial time,  and  is  eager  to  let  his  reason  take  the  place  of  credulous 
imagination.  The  vastness  of  the  change  may  be  compared  only  with 
those  that  have  taken  place  during  the  last  half-century  in  some  of 
the  branches  of  science. 

Of  the  life  of  Thucydides  but  very  little  is  definitely  known.  The 
varying  dates  of  his  birth  rest  on  meager  authority;  further  than  that 
he  tells  us  himself  that  he  suffered  from  the  plague  which  ravaged 
Athens  during  the  Peloponnesian  war,  that  he  held  military  command 
in  the  same  conflict,  and  that  he  was  banished  in  424  B.C.,  for  twenty 
years,  direct  information  is  lacking.  The  statement  that  he  was  assas- 
sinated in  Thrace,  where  he  owned  gold-mines,  completes  the  bio- 
graphic details  that  have  come  down  to  us. 

His  mental  attitude  is,  however,  of  far  more  importance,  and  with 
regard  to  this  we  have  fortunately  abundant  means  of  judging.  As 
has  been  indicated,  the  most  striking  thing  about  this  is  the  complete 
rupture  with  the  unscientific  past ;  it  was  the  aim  of  Thucydides  to 
describe  things  as  they  were,  not  to  record  them  as  they  seemed  to 
men  who  were  trained  for  many  generations  to  detect  divine  inter- 


534  THUCYDIDES. 

ference  throughout  the  course  of  events.  The  omnipresence  of  this 
view  among  the  poets  is  very  evident ;  we  continually  observe  Pindar 
seizing  a  myth  with  which  to  adorn  his  odes,  or  Euripides  introducing 
a  god  to  adorn  the  end  of  his  plays,  as  we  now  see  novelists  overriding 
probability  and  the  truth  to  provide  a  loving  couple  with  a  fortune 
and  a  happy  marriage.     The  whole  history  of  Herodotus  is  an  exposi- 


THUCYDIUES. 


tion  of  the  ways  of  the  divine  beings  in  their  control  of  human  affairs. 
Of  all  this  there  is  no  sign  in  Thucydides ;  he  looks  at  the  mythical 
past  as  many  years  of  study  have  taught  the  men  of  the  present  day 
to  look  at  it,  not  with  contempt,  but  with  the  desire  to  find  the  facts 
that  were  hidden  beneath  the  fantastic  shapes  and  inventions  that  hid 
the  early  days.     Thus,  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  history,  he  says  : 


THUCYDIDES'    VIEW  OF  ANCIENT  SOCIETY.  535 

"  Judging  from  the  evidence  which  I  am  able  to  trust  after  most  careful 
inquiry,  I  should  imagine  that  former  ages  were  not  great  either  in  their 
wars  or  in  anything  else. 

"  The  country  which  is  now  called  Hellas  was  not  regularly  settled  in 
ancient  times.  The  people  were  migratory,  and  readily  left  their  homes 
whenever  they  were  overpowered  by  numbers.  There  was  no  commerce, 
and  they  could  not  safely  hold  intercourse  with  one  another  either  by  land 
or  sea." 

In  this  way  he  goes  on,  showing  the  uncivilized  condition  of  the 
country  in  early  times,  and  finally,  on  reaching  the  end  of  the  sketch, 
he  says : 

"  Such  are  the  results  of  my  inquiry  into  the  early  state  of  Hellas. 
They  will  not  readily  be  believed  upon  a  bare  recital  of  all  the  proofs  of 
them.  Men  do  not  discriminate,  and  are  too  ready  to  receive  ancient  tra- 
ditions about  their  own  as  well  as  about  other  countries.  .  .  ,  Yet,  any  one 
who  upon  the  grounds  which  I  have  given  arrives  at  some  such  conclusion 
as  my  own  about  these  ancient  times  would  not  be  far  wrong.  He  must  not 
be  misled  by  the  exaggerated  fancies  of  the  poets,  or  by  the  tales  of 
chroniclers  who  seek  to  please  the  ear  rather  than  to  speak  the  truth.  Their 
accounts  can  not  be  tested  by  him  ;  and  most  of  the  facts  in  the  lapse  of 
ages  have  passed  into  the  region  of  romance.  At  such  a  distance  of  time 
he  must  make  up  his  mind  to  be  satisfied  with  conclusions  resting  upon  the 
clearest  evidence  which  can  be  had.  And,  though  men  will  always  judge 
any  war  in  which  they  are  actually  fighting  to  be  the  greatest  at  the  time, 
but,  after  it  is  over,  revert  to  their  admiration  of  some  other  which  has  pre- 
ceded, still  the  Peloponnesian,  if  estimated  by  the  actual  facts,  will  certainly 
prove  to  have  been  the  greatest  ever  known." 

It  would  be  hard  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  this  change  in  the 
point  of  view  of  the  historian,  which  substituted  the  direct  examination 
of  evidence  for  the  accumulation  of  poetical  fancies.  It  is  really  the 
triumph  of  the  intellect  over  the  imagination  which  here  finds  expres- 
sion in  these  utterances  of  Thucydides.  By  a  wonderful  anticipation 
of  the  work  of  modern  science,  his  vision  of  the  early  times  as  a  period 
of  crudity  and  barbarism  is  a  direct  contradiction  of  the  fabulous 
stories  of  divine  origin,  of  the  worship  of  heroes,  of  the  fanciful 
genealogies,  which  had  long  been  celebrated  in  poetry,  religious  rites, 
and  the  fine  arts.  When  we  reflect  how  great  has  been  the  authority 
of  these  poetic  conceptions  over  the  imagination  of  subsequent  genera- 
tions, so  that  even  now  Greece  calls  up  to  our  minds  the  vision  of 
beautiful  unrealities,  which  archaeology  is  fast  undoing,  and  when  we 
consider  the  opposition  that  is  felt  to  what  is  deemed  irreverence 
towards  the  fascinating  stories  of  the  poets,  and  a  still  lurking  feeling 
that  archaeology  may  work  everywhere  else,  but  that  here  is  sacred 
ground ;  that  the  stone  age  of  the  Greeks  was  very  different  from  the 
stone  age  of  other  races,  that  they  were  never  real  savages,  but  always 


536  THUCYDIDES. 

a  somewhat  exalted,  half-inspired  race, — when  we  consider  all  these 
things  we  can  only  give  greater  admiration  to  a  people  that  could  so 
swiftly  develop  and  so  speedily  apply  an  intellectual  test  to  the  beliefs 
of  centuries.  No  god-given  superiority  is  greater  than  the  power  of 
using  the  intelligence  ;  and  this  quality  is  what  made  the  Greeks  great, 
not  the  divine  interference  which  they  were  fond  of  picturing. 

Nothing  in  the  history  is  more  striking  than  the  promptness  with 
which  Thucydides  attained  the  position  which  we  have  only  tardily 
reached,  and  it  forms  a  most  marked  instance  of  the  completeness  as 
well  as  the  rapidity  of  the  intellectual  development  of  the  Greeks  after 
the  Persian  war.  That  this  rupture  of  the  firm  confidence  in  the 
stories  of  the  poets  could  not  happen  without  a  diminution  of  the 
general  trust  in  the  religious  myths  is  very  obvious,  and  in  this  treat- 
ment of  the  past  we  see  a  distinct  instance  of  the  scepticism  which 
soon  pervaded  Greek  thought  in  many  directions ;  here,  however,  we 
may  examine  its  first  effect  in  furnishing  the  beginning  of  an  accurate 
method  of  historical  research.  Not  all  that  he  says  has  received 
absolute  approval  in  later  times,  yet  there  are  many  sentences  that 
have  a  distinctly  modern  sound,  as  when,  for  example,  he  makes  men- 
tion of  the  early  pirates. 

"  They  were  commanded,"  he  says,  "by  powerful  chiefs,  who  took  this 
means  of  increasing  their  wealth  and  providing  for  their  poorer  followers. 
They  would  fail  upon  the  unwalled  and  straggling  towns,  or  rather  villages, 
which  they  plundered,  and  maintained  themselves  by  the  plunder  of  them  ; 
for,  as  yet,  such  an  occupation  was  held  to  be  honourable  and  not  disgraceful. 
This  is  proved  by  the  practice  of  certain  tribes  on  the  mainland  who,  to  the 
present  day,  glory  in  piratical  exploits,  and  by  the  witness  of  the  ancient 
poets,  in  whose  verses  the  question  is  invariably  asked  of  newly-arrived 
voyagers,  whether  they  are  pirates  ;  which  implies  that  neither  those  who  are 
questioned  disclaim,  nor  those  who  are  interested  in  knowing  censure  the 
occupation.  The  land,  too,  was  infested  by  robbers.  .  .  .  The  fashion  of 
wearing  arms  among  these  continental  tribes  is  a  relic  of  their  old  predatory 
habits.  For  in  ancient  times  all  Hellenes  carried  weapons  because  their 
homes  were  undefended  and  intercourse  was  unsafe  ;  like  the  Barbarians, 
they  went  armed  in  their  every-day  life.  And  the  continuance  of  the 
custom  in  certain  parts  of  the  country  proves  that  it  once  prevailed 
everywhere." 

Might  one  not  be  reading  a  book  published  only  the  day  before 
yesterday?  This  application  of  the  intelligence  to  facts  and  the 
observation  of  the  value  of  custom  as  a  proof  of  earlier  habit  have 
certainly  a  very  modern  sound,  and  are  very  unlike  the  smooth  gossip 
of  Herodotus.  They  are  very  satisfactory  indications  of  the  scientific 
spirit  applying  itself  to  the  discussion  of  historical  problems.  Those, 
and  they  are  many,  who  suffer  from  the  fear  that  this  spirit  is  destruc- 


NOVELTY  OF    THUCYDIDES'    TREATMENT  OF  HISTORY.        537 

tive  of  poetry,  will  do  well  to  remember  that  Thucydides  was  the 
contemporary  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  that  Shakspere  was  the 
contemporary  of  Bacon,  and  Milton  of  Harvey.  If  they  are  right  in 
their  fears,  and  poetry  exists  only  in  conjunction  with  unquestioning 
credulity,  its  fate  is  certain  and  desirable.  As  it  is,  poetry  has  never 
yet  been  injured  by  an  excess  of  real  wisdom.  They  may  also  console 
themselves  for  the  inevitable  by  recalling  the  fact  that  music  has  not 
been  ruined  by  the  application  of  scientific  treatment. 

Whatever  may  be  the  future  fate  of  poetry,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  history  has  a  higher  value  when  subjected  to  scientific  treatment; 
the  capacity  of  listening  to  both  sides,  and  the  readiness  to  examine 
all  testimony  by  the  laws  of  evidence,  is  sure  to  produce  better  work 
than  will  blind  confidence  in  mere  report.  Thucydides  himself  was  by 
no  means  unconscious  of  the  change  that  he  was  making  in  his  treat- 
ment of  history.  Thus,  in  the  same  introductory  pages  from  which 
quotations  have  been  already  made,  he  says : 

"Of  the  events  of  the  war  I  have  not  ventured  to  speak  from  any  chance 
information,  nor  according  to  any  notion  of  my  own  ;  I  have  described 
nothing  but  what  I  either  saw  myself,  or  learned  from  others  from  whom  I 
made  the  most  careful  and  particular  inquiry.  The  task  was  a  laborious 
one,  because  eye-witnesses  of  the  same  occurrences  gave  different  accounts 
of  them,  as  they  remembered  or  were  interested  in  the  actions  of  one  side 
or  the  other.  And  very  likely  the  strictly  historical  character  of  my  narra- 
tive may  be  disappointing  to  the  ear.  But  if  he  who  desires  to  have  before 
his  eyes  a  true  picture  of  the  events  which  have  happened,  and  of  the  like 
events  which  may  be  expected  to  happen  hereafter  in  the  order  of  human 
things,  shall  pronounce  what  I  have  written  to  be  useful,  then  I  shall  be  sat- 
isfied. My  history  is  an  everlasting  procession,  not  a  prize  composition, 
which  is  heard  and  forgotten." 

This  explicit  statement,  with  its  half  apology,  makes  it  clear  that 
Thucydides  was  aware  of  the  novelty  of  the  step  he  was  taking,  and  of 
the  criticism  that  was  probably  awaiting  him.  Herodotus  supplied 
entertainment  ;  he  would  give  exact  information,  and  with  the  per- 
formance of  this  plan  scientific  history  was  begun,  and  Athens  showed 
that  it  had  reached  maturity  in  prose  as  well  as  in  poetry  and  art.  The 
style  of  Thucydides,  to  be  sure,  is  harsh  and  confused,  as  is  natural ; 
for  only  practice  can  give  grace  and  smoothness.  The  orators  had 
this  practice,  and  thus  earlier  acquired  the  facility  which  was  made 
easier  for  them  by  the  example  of  the  dramatists,  who  put  into  the 
mouths  of  their  characters  long  pleadings  that  reflected  the  Athenian 
love  of  argument  and  discussion.  Thus  Antiphon,  Andocides  and  Lysias 
are  not  at  all  obscure.  In  Thucydides,  however,  we  often  find  a  cumbrous, 
awkward  movement  which  is  thus  described  and  explained  in  the  intro- 
duction to  Jowett's  translation  :  "  He  who  considers  that  Thucydides 


538  THUCYDIDES. 

was  a  great  genius  writing  in  an  ante-grammatical  age,  when  logic  was 
just  beginning  to  be  cultivated,  who  had  thoughts  far  beyond  his  con- 
temporaries, and  who  had  great  difficulty  in  the  arrangement  and  ex- 
pression of  them,  who  is  anxious  but  not  always  able  to  escape  tau- 
tology, will  not  be  surprised  at  his  personifications,  at  his  confusion  of 
negatives  and  affirmatives,  of  consequents  and  antecedents,  at  his  im- 
perfect antitheses  and  involved  parentheses,  at  his  employment  of  the 
participle  to  express  abstract  ideas  in  the  making,  at  his  substitution 
of  one  construction  for  another,  at  his  repetition  of  a  word,  or  unmean- 
ing alteration  of  it  for  the  sake  of  variety,  at  his  over-logical  form,  at 
his  forgetfulness  of  the  beginning  of  a  sentence  before  he  arrives  at 
the  end  of  it.  The  solecisms  or  barbarisms  of  which  he  is  supposed  to 
be  guilty  are  the  natural  phenomena  of  a  language  in  a  time  of  transi- 
tion. .  .  .  They  are  also  to  be  ascribed  to  a  strong  individuality, 
which  subtilizes,  which  rationalizes,  which  concentrates,  which  crowds 
the  use  of  words,  which  thinks  more  than  it  can  express." 

Many  of  the  characteristics  of  his  language  are,  moreover,  such  as 
belonged  to  the  general  form  of  the  new  prose  which,  as  will  be  seen 
later,  was  now  establishing  itself  in  Athens ;  and  some  of  its  peculiar- 
ities were  due,  perhaps,  to  his  long  absence  from  that  city,  which  de- 
prived him  of  the  opportunity  of  acquiring  the  rapidly  developing  per- 
fection which  it  then  assumed.  He  carried  away  with  him  a  crude 
instrument  and  was  compelled  to  model  it  in  shape  after  his  own 
devices,  and  possibly  in  his  perpetual  antitheses  and  harsh  construc- 
tions gives  us  the  outline  which  the  Athenians  enriched  with  many 
graceful  forms.  Few,  however,  put  language  to  so  severe  a  test  as  he  ; 
and  throughout  one  of  the  main  causes  of  his  obscurity  was  his  desire 
to  avoid  clouding  his  meaning  by  an  excessive  use  of  words.  The 
compactness  of  the  sentences  makes  them  hard  to  understand,  and  it 
is  not  the  degenerate  moderns  alone  who  have  found  him  difficult: 
even  the  ancients  complained  of  his  abstruseness. 

II. 

One  of  the  striking  things  about  his  method  is  the  custom  of  placing 
speeches  in  the  mouths  of  different  characters,  in  such  a  way  that  much 
of  the  story  is  set  in  a  dramatic  form  before  the  reader.  We  find  a 
similar  device  frequently  employed  by  Homer,  who  faithfully  reports 
the  speeches  at  the  councils  of  the  heroes,  instead  of  merely  narrating 
what  was  done  ;  and  Herodotus  continues  the  same  practice.  Its  ad- 
vantage in  the  way  of  vividness  is  very  evident  ;  and  to  those  who 
were  accustomed  to  listen  rather  than  to  read,  its  merits  were  most 
conspicuous.     Thucydides  inherited  the  plan  from  good  sources,  and 


{From  Temple  of  Nike,  Memorial  of  Persian  Wars.) 


54°  THUCYDIDES. 

SO  well-established  a  device  had  to  be  put  into  use,  exactly  as  every 
old  relic  has  to  have  a  place  provided  for  it  by  thrifty  heirs.  What  he 
did  was  to  give  the  reader  not  so  much  exactly  what  the  characters 
said  as  what  they  might  have  said  under  the  given  conditions.  He  is 
careful,  however,  to  explain  his  course  of  action,  stating  that  it  would 
have  been  very  difficult  for  him  to  report  the  exact  language  of  either 
what  he  had  heard  with  his  own  ears,  or  what  had.  been  reported  to 
him  by  credible  witnesses,  and  that  consequently  he  decided  to  put 
down  what,  all  things  considered,  was  most  likely  to  be  said,  always 
adhering  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  general  sense  of  the  words  used. 

"  As  to  the  speeches,"  to  quote  his  own  language,  **  which  were  made 
either  before  or  during  the  war,  it  was  hard  for  me,  and  for  others  who  re- 
ported them  tp  me,  to  recollect  the  exact  words.  I  have  therefore  put  into 
the  mouth  of  each  speaker  the  sentiments  proper  to  the  occasion,  expressed 
as  I  thought  he  would  be  likely  to  express  them,  while  at  the  same  time  I 
endeavoured,  as  nearly  as  I  could,  to  give  the  general  purport  of  what  was 
actually  said." 

Undoubtedly  then  he  treated  the  inherited  custom  with  new  ex- 
actitude. 

We  shall  see  later  convincing  proof  of  the  general  accuracy  of  his 
statement  about  the  speeches,  and  the  whole  book  stands  as  a  justifica- 
tion of  his  boast  that  he  had  written  an  everlasting  composition.  The 
momentou.sness  of  the  war  which  he  undertook  to  describe  found  a  fit 
chronicler  in  Thucydides,  and  his  seriousness  is  amply  proved  by  the 
extracts  given  above.  Quite  as  remarkable  is  his  impartiality,  his 
freedom  from  personal  feeling.  This  quality  shows  itself  in  various 
ways  :  the  manner  in  which  he  speaks  of  Cleon  is  a  marked  instance 
of  his  continual  self-control ;  less  than  half  a  dozen  times  does  he  have 
occasion  to  characterize  that  notorious  demagogue,  and  then  his  harsh- 
est condemnation  is  to  call  him  violent,  "  the  most  violent  of  the  citi- 
zens," who  "  at  that  time  exercised  by  far  the  greatest  influence  over 
the  people,"  and  elsewhere  he  merely  says  .that  he  was  "  a  popular 
leader  of  the  day  who  had  the  greatest  influence  over  the  multitude." 
In  another  place  he  says  that  Cleon  hated  peace,  "  because  he  fancied 
that  in  quiet  times  his  rogueries  would  be  more  transparent  and  his 
slanders  less  credible."  Contemporary  judgment  is  not  always  so 
calm,  as  those  who  saw  the  plays  of  Aristophanes  would  have  been 
willing  to  testify.  Even  more  remarkable  is  his  unflinching  devotion 
to  the  duty  of  a  historian  to  record  events  and  not  to  treat  the  world 
to  his  views  about  them.  If  he  does  this  faithfully,  he  is  safe  in  leav- 
ing the  facts  to  produce  the  desired  result  without  aid  from  him,  and 
if  he  fails  to  record  accurately,  no  amount  of  enthusiasm  will  long  im- 


IMPARTIALITY  AND  SELF-CONTROL    OF    THUCYDIDES.  541 

pose  upon  the  world  ;  yet  too  often  historians,  like  their  brother- 
writers,  the  novelists,  appeal  to  their  readers  by  exaggeration  and 
eloquence  instead  of  their  legitimate  weapons,  description  and  nar- 
ration. We  notice  especially  in  Thucydides  the  absence  of  expression 
of  moral  judgments,  yet  in  the  pages  of  no  other  historian  does  the 
truth  burn  so  vividly  into  the  heart  of  the  reader  as  in  his,  which  are 
carefully  kept  free  from  praise  or  blame.  Thus,  when  Plataea  surren- 
dered to  the  Lacedaemonians,  its  inhabitants  were  put  to  death  by 
their  conquerors.  Thucydides,  following  his  usual  fashion,  lets  them 
plead  for  mercy  ;  and  these  are  some  of  the  words  that  he  places  in 
their  mouths : 

"  Yet  once  more  for  the  sake  of  those  gods  in  whose  name  we  made  a 
league  of  old,  and  for  our  services  to  the  cause  of  Hellas,  relent  and  change 
your  minds,  if  the  Thebans  have  at  all  influenced  you  :  in  return  for  the 
wicked  request  which  they  make  of  you,  ask  of  them  the  righteous  boon 
that  you  should  not  slay  us  to  your  own  dishonour.  Do  not  bring  upon 
yourselves  an  evil  name  merely  to  gratify  others.  For,  although  you  may 
quickly  take  our  lives,  you  will  not  so  easily  obliterate  the  memory  of  the 
deed.  We  are  not  enemies  whom  you  might  rightly  punish,  but  friends  who 
were  compelled  to  go  to  war  with  you;  and  therefore  piety  demands  that  you 
should  spare  our  lives.  Before  you  pass  judgment,  consider  that  we  surren- 
dered ourselves,  and  stretched  out  our  hands  to  you  ;  the  custom  of  Hellas 
does  not  allow  the  suppliant  to  be  put  to  death.  Remember,  too,  that  we 
have  ever  been  your  benefactors.  Cast  your  eyes  upon  the  sepulchres  of 
your  fathers  slam  by  the  Persians  and  buried  in  our  land,  whom  we  have 
honoured  by  a  yearly  public  offering  of  garments,  and  other  customary  gifts. 
We  were  their  friends,  and  we  gave  them  the  first-fruits  in  their  season  of 
that  friendly  land  in  which  they  rest  ;  we  were  their  allies  too,  who  in  times 
past  had  fought  at  their  side  ;  and  if  you  now  pass  an  unjust  sentence,  will 
not  your  conduct  strangely  contrast  with  ours  ?  Reflect :  when  Pausanias 
buried  them  here,  he  thought  that  he  was  laying  them  among  friends 
and  in  friendly  earth.  But  if  you  put  us  to  death,  and  make  Plataea  one 
with  Thebes,  are  you  not  robbing  your  fathers  and  kindred  of  the 
honour  which  they  enjoy,  and  leaving  them  in  a  hostile  land  inhabited  by 
their  murderers?  Nay, more,  you  enslave  the  land  in  which  the  Hellenes 
won  their  liberty  ;  you  bring  desolation  upon  the  temples  in  which  they 
prayed  when  they  conquered  the  Persians  ;  and  you  take  away  the  sacri- 
fices which  our  fathers  instituted  from  the  city  which  ordained  and  estab- 
lished them. 

These  things,  O  Lacedaemonians,  would  not  be  for  your  honor.  They 
would  be  an  offense  against  the  common  feeling  of  Hellas  and  against  your 
ancestors.  You  should  be  ashamed  to  put  us  to  death,  who  are  your  bene- 
factors and  have  never  done  you  any  wrong,  in  order  that  you  may  gratify 
the  enmity  of  another.  Spare  us,  and  let  your  heart  be  softened  toward  us  ; 
be  wise  and  have  mercy  upon  us,  considering  not  only  how  terrible  will  be 
our  fate,  but  who  the  sufferers  are  ;  think,  too,  of  the  uncertainty  of  fortune, 
which  may  strike  any  one,  however  innocent.  We  implore  you,  as  is  becom- 
ing and  natural  in  our  hour  of  need,  by  the  gods  whom  the  Hellenes  wor- 
ship at  common  altars,  to  listen  to  our  prayers.     We   appeal  to  the  oaths 


542 


THUCYDIDES. 


which  our  fathers   swore,   and  entreat  you  not  to  forget  them.     We  kneel 
at  your  fathers'  tombs,"  etc. 

Do  these  passionate  appeals,  these  solemn  invocations,  need  any 
exposition  on  the  part  of  Thucydides  to  show  us  how  wicked  he 
thought  treachery  to  be,  how  repulsive  cold-blooded  slaughter  ? 
Then  he  goes  on  to  let  the  Thebans  point  out  instances  of  similar 
ill-treatment  of  their  prisoners  by  the  Plataeans  : 

"  Now  we  do  not  so  much  complain  of  the  fate  of  those  whom  you  slew 
in  battle — for  they  suffered  by  a  kind  of  law — but  there  were  others  who 
stretched  out  their  hands  to  you  ;  and  although  you  gave  them  quarter,  and 
then  promised  to  us  that  you  would  spare  them,  in  utter  defiance  of  law  you 
took  their  lives — was  not  that  a  cruel  act  ?  " 


HONORING    THE   TOMBS  OF   THE   HEROIC   DEAD. 


When  he  says  this,  there  is  no  room  for  impertinent  judgment  ;  the 
story  is  told,  and  he  has  only  to  record  that  they  took  out  each  man 
separately,  asked  him  if  he  had  done  any  service  to  the  Lacedaemo- 
nians and  their  allies  in  the  war. 

"  When  he  said  no,  they  took  him  away  and  slew  him;  no  one  was  spared. 
They  put  to  death  not  less  than  two  hundred  Plataeans,  as  well  as  twenty- 
five  Athenians  who  had  shared  with  them  in  the  siege  ;  and  made  slaves  of 
the  women." 

A  similar  absence  of  praise  or  blame  marks  the  whole  book  ;  we 
see,  we  are  not  told  to  admire,  the  bravery  and  military  skill  of  Bras- 


RETICENCE    OF   THE  HISTORIAN  IN  PASSING  JUDGMENT.      543 

idas,  the  Spartan  commander  ;  the  pernicious  course  of  Alcibiades  is 
set  before  us  without  superfluous  comment,  and  in  the  account,  given 
below,  of  the  Sicilian  expedition,  we  behold  the  Athenian  general 
Nicias  letting  everything  go  amiss  by  his  dilatoriness  and  incompe- 
tence, without  having  the  obvious  lessons  pointed  out  by  the  writer. 
In  other  words,  he  thoroughly  respects  his  readers ;  he  does  not  find 
it  necessary  to  tell  them  what  they  ought  to  think,  but  he  rather 
exercises  the  reasonable  flattery  of  supposing  that  they  will  be  able 
to  draw  right  conclusions  from  the  facts  if  these  are  properly  set 
before  them. 

With  regard  to  Antiphon,  the  head  of  a  dangerous  revolution,  he 
observes  his  usual  reticence,  or  indeed  something  more  than  his  usual 
reticence,  and  the  question  of  the  guilt  of  that  leader  remains  unde- 
termined. A  more  striking  instance  of  his  reserve  is  in  his  avoidance 
of  partisanship  with  regard  to  the  great  conflict  between  Athens  and 
Sparta,  between  what  we  may  call  the  new  and  the  old  spirit  of  Greece, 
between  the  disposition  to  form  a  union  and  the  aversion  to  any  aban- 
donment of  the  principle  of  separate  municipal  independence.  What 
Thucydides  felt  in  the  matter  is  known  ;  but  he  tells  the  story  with- 
out adjudging  praise  or  blame,  showing  the  merits  as  well  as  the  de- 
fects of  both  sides  with  unequalled  impartiality.  This  is  his  claim  to 
the  admiration  of  all  his  readers :  he  told  his  story,  we  are  free  to 
form  our  opinions  as  we  please.  There  are,  at  least,  the  facts  with 
which  our  opinions  must  finally  conform. 

The  matter  of  the  immortal  book  of  Thucydides  belongs  rather 
to  Greek  history  than  to  the  study  of  literature,  for  it  is  a  thorough 
chronicle  of  warlike  events  narrated  in  chronological  order,  year  by 
year,  and  presenting  a  most  vivid  picture  of  that  miserable  war.  Cer- 
tain chapters  burn  themselves  strongly  on  the  memory,  as,  for  exam- 
ple, those  describing  the  plague  that  devastated  Athens  in  the  second 
year  of  the  war.  The  wretched  citizens  were  closely  confined  within 
the  walls,  and  the  pest  had  full  sway  among  a  populace  wholly  igno- 
rant of  sanitary  principles.  Thucydides  himself  was  attacked  by  it, 
and  he  was  also  an  eye-witness  of  all  its  horrors. 

"  At  the  very  beginning  of  the  second  summer  the  Peloponnesians  and 
their  allies,  with  two-thirds  of  their  forces,  as  on  the  first  occasion,  invaded 
Attica,  under  the  command  of  Archidamus,  the  son  of  Zeuxidamas,  king  of 
the  Lacedsemonians  ;  and  after  encamping,  they  laid  waste  the  country. 
When  they  had  not  yet  been  many  days  in  Attica,  the  plague  first  began  to 
show  itself  among  the  Athenians,  though  it  was  said  to  have  previously  smitten 
many  places,  about  Lemnos  and  elsewhere.  Such  a  pestilence,  however, 
and  loss  of  life  as  this  were  nowhere  remembered  to  have  happened.  For 
neither  were  physicians  of  any  avail  at  first,  treating  it,  as  they  did,  in  igno- 
rance of  its   nature  —  nay,  they  themselves  died  most  of  all,  inasmuch  as 


544  THUCYDIDES. 

they  most  visited  the  sick  —  nor  any  other  art  of  man.  And  as  to  the  sup- 
plications that  they  offered  in  their  temples  or  the  divinations,  and  similar 
means  that  they  had  recourse  to,  they  were  all  unavailing  ;  and  at  last  they 
ceased  from  them,  being  overcome  by  the  weight  of  the  calamity." 


"  The  disease  then,  to  pass  over  many  peculiar  traits,  as  it  differed  in 
different  cases,  was  in  general  such  as  I  have  described.  And  none  of  the 
usual  diseases  prevailed  at  the  same  time  ;  or  if  they  did  appear,  they  turned 
into  this.  And  of  those  who  were  attacked  by  the  plague,  some  died  in 
neglect,  others  encompassed  by  every  attention.  And  there  was  no  settled 
remedy  which  brought  relief,  for  what  was  good  for  one  wrought  harm  to 
another.  And  no  constitution,  whether  strong  or  weak,  was  secure  against 
it,  but  it  attacked  all  alike,  even  those  who  were  most  careful  about  their 
diet.  But  the  most  terrible  part  of  the  whole  misery  was  the  despair  that 
seized  every  one  who  felt  himself  sickening — for  by  yielding  to  this  despair 
they  gave  way  without  resistance  to  the  disease — and  the  fact  that  they 
carried  the  contagion  from  one  to  another  and  so  died  like  sheep.  This 
caused  the  greatest  mortality  among  them,  for  if  from  fear  they  were  averse 
to  visiting  one  another,  they  perished  from  being  left  untended,  and  many 
houses  were  emptied  for  want  of  some  one  to  wait  on  the  sick  ;  and  if  they 
did  visit  them,  they  came  to  their  death,  and  especially  such  as  were  reputed 
to  be  kind,  for  shame  made  them  tireless  in  visiting  the  houses  of  their 
friends,  since  even  the  members  of  the  family  were  at  last  worn  of  mourning 
for  the  dying,  and  were  overwhelmed  by  their  excessive  misery.  Those 
who  had  recovered  from  the  plague  showed  still  more  pity  for  the  sick  and 
dying,  both  because  they  knew  from  their  own  experience  what  they  felt, and 
because  they  no  longer  felt  any  fear,  for  the  disease  never  attacked  them 
twice,  so  as  to  prove  fatal.  Such  persons  were  congratulated  by  others,  and 
in  the  excess  of  their  joy,  they  nourished  a  vain  hope  for  the  future  that  they 
were  now  secure  against  every  form  of  disease." 

Even  more  interesting  is  the  account  of  the  recklessness  that  the 
plague  produced  : 

"  Things  which  before  men  did  secretly,  not  daring  to  give  full  rein  to  their 
lusts,  they  now  did  freely,  seeing  the  swift  change  in  the  case  of  those  who  were 
rich  and  died  suddenly,  and  of  the  poor  who  succeeded  to  their  wealth.  So 
they  determined  upon  swift  enjoyment  and  immediate  gratification,  regarding 
life  and  wealth  as  things  of  a  day.  As  for  exertion  in  behalf  of  honourable 
things,  no  one  cared  for  it,  in  view  of  the  uncertainty  whether  he  might  not 
be  cut  off  before  he  attained  it,  but  everything  that  was  immediately 
pleasant  or  led  to  it  in  any  way  whatsoever,  was  held  to  be  honourable  and 
expedient.  Fear  of  the  gods  or  law  of  men  there  was  none  to  restrain  them  : 
in  the  one  case  they  thought  it  all  the  same  whether  they  worshiped  them 
or  not,  inasmuch  as  all  perished  alike,  in  the  other  none  expected  to  live 
long  enough  to  be  tried  and  punished,  but  that  a  severe  penalty  hung  over 
them  and  that  they  should  have  some  enjoyment  of  life  before  it  fell." 

Then  he  goes  on  to  mention  an  old  saying,  that  a  Dorian  war  should 
come,  and  a  plague  with  it ;    there  was  some  uncertainty,  however, 


HIS  MODERNNESS— ABSTENTION  FROM  EMBELLISHMENT.       545 

whether  it  was  a  plague  or  a  famine — the  words  in  Greek  being  very 
similar — that  should  accompany  the  war. 

"  Now,"  Thucydides  said,  "  the  opinion  prevailed  that  a  plague  had  been 
mentioned,  many  adapting  their  recollections  to  their  experience.  But  if  at 
any  time  in  the  future  there  should  be  a  Dorian  war  and  a  famine  at  the 
same  time,  in  all  probability  they  will  quote  the  line  to  that  effect." 

It  is  these  touches  of  impassibility  that  give  this  historian  his  air  of 
modernness  and  mark  the  enormous  stride  made  in  the  few  years  that 
had  elapsed  since  Herodotus  wrote.  This  change,  indeed,  is  obvious 
in  every  page  as  one  notices  the  firm  grasp  that  Thucydides  had  of  his 
subject  and  his  omission  of  all  extraneous  matter.  Nothing  can  exceed 
his  grim  exclusion  of  all  the  decorative  part  of  historical  writing;  it 
almost  seems  as  if  he  felt  that  the  facts  of  life  were  of  too  vast  impor- 
tance to  be  hidden  beneath  fine  writing.  This  serious  view  of  the 
solemnity  of  history  was  of  influence  in  limiting  his  attention  to  the 
military  events  of  the  great  war.  He  did  his  best,  one  might  almost 
say,  to  write  a  log-book  of  the  long  contest,  carefully  omitting  those 
general  views  regarding  society  which  later  times  have  learned  to 
notice  in  proportion  as  they  have  recognized  the  fact  that  life  is  a  unit, 
that  war,  peace,  art,  letters,  religion,  society,  are  but  different,  though 
interwoven,  manifestations  of  the  greater  human  life  that  can  not  be 
studied  exclusively  in  any  one  of  its  numberless  forms.  Even  now 
this  is  barely  accepted  as  a  theory  and  still  less  in  practice,  and  it  has 
required  for  its  statement  many  centuries  of  experience,  so  that  there 
is  no  cause  for  wonder  that  it  should  have  escaped  Thucydides. 
Moreover,  the  narrowness  of  Greek  interests  and  the  exclusiveness  of 
political  life  which  only  seldom  looked  beyond  the  walls  of  a  single 
city,  blinded  even  the  most  intelligent  to  the  wider  view. 

It  is  moreover  obvious  that  in  writing  a  chronicle  of  contemporary 
events  the  historian  takes  it  for  granted  that  those  for  whom  he  writes 
are  perfectly  familiar  with  all  that  we  may  call  the  atmosphere  of  the 
surrounding  conditions.     Any  references  that  he  might  have  made  to 
the  intellectual  or  artistic  interests  of  the  time  in  which  he  lived,  how- 
ever much  they  would  have  gratified  our  curiosity,  which  by  education 
:  concerns  itself  mainly  about  the  writings  and  works  of  art  of  the  Greeks, 
[would  have  blurred  the  distinctness  of  the  picture  which  he  undertook 
|to  draw  of  the  political  and  military  events.     These  alone  formed  his 
bubject,  to  which  he  confined  himself  with  strict  care,  with  this  single 
fobject  in  view,  and  the  result  is  a  justification  of  his  dignified  boast 
^that  he  was  preparing  an   everlasting  possession.     Like  every  really 
Igreat    book,   it   repels   everything  but    the    most    exalted    curiosity ; 
linferior  work  always  tempts  our  idle  moments ;  only  a  high  enthusiasm 


546  •  THUCYDIDES. 

can  keep  us  alert  for  what  is  best,  in  literature  or  art,  as  in  conduct. 
Hence,  the  history  of  Thucydides  is  in  no  way  popular,  but  for  those 
who  study  its  powerful  pages,  full  of  compressed  truth,  it  is  full  of  the 
most  valuable  lessons. 

In  the  speeches  we  find  a  full  exposition  of  the  political  principles 
that  inspired  the  war.  Everything  in  Greece,  it  will  be  remembered, 
at  least  every  public  act,  was  the  object  of  discussion  on  the  part  of 
the  whole  assembly  of  free  citizens,  and  it  was  by  presenting  the  various 
arguments  and  explanations  of  the  leading  men  under  the  form  of 
speeches  that  Thucydides  made  what  he  had  to  say  most  intelligible 
to  his  public,  and  employed  the  form  that  doubtless  first  suggested 
itself  to  his  mind.  For  just  as  now  the  newspapers  maintain  a  per- 
petual comment  on  public  affairs  and  exercise  an  enormous  influence 
on  men's  minds,  so  then  it  was  oral  discussion,  argument  in  the  form 
of  speeches,  that  formed  and  expressed  public  opinion.  It  was  not 
precisely  what  we  should  understand  as  oratory  that  distinguished 
these  speeches,  for  that  word  conveys  to  our  minds  a  vague  notion  of 
an  artificial,  conventional  form  of  more  or  less  imaginary  entertainment, 
and  these  discussions  had  a  direct  practical  value  as  the  mechanism  of 
politics.  These  speeches  then  are  not  fantastic  oratorical  utterances, 
they  are  rather  full  of  the  forcible  and  eloquent  treatment  of  political 
questions. 

Even  if  we  have  not  the  exact  words  of  the  various  speakers,  what 
is  put  in  their  mouths  thus  possesses  great  historical  value,  for  in  a 
contemporary  history  Thucydides  must  have  kept  very  near  the  exact 
truth.  Even  if  we  imagine  him  to  have  discarded  what  would  have 
seemed  to  him  such  over-precision  as  the  observance  of  dialectic  pecu- 
liarities, the  dramatic  vividness  that  he  retained  is  most  valuable. 
Thus  the  speech  of  Alcibiades,  in  the  sixth  book,  can  be  only  the 
statement  of  facts  familiar  to  all  the  historian's  fellow-citizens. 

"  Athenians,  I  have  not  only  a  better  title  than  others  to  the  command  — 
a  topic  with  which,  attacked  as  I  have  been  by  Nicias,  I  am  compelled  to 
commence  —  but  I  also  consider  myself  personally  worthy  of  it  ;  since  the 
very  qualities  for  which  I  am  denounced  not  only  reflect  honour  on  myself 
and  my  ancestors,  but  are  of  positive  advantage  to  my  country.  In  proof 
of  this  latter  assertion,  I  need  only  remind  you  that  the  Greeks,  who  had 
previously  hoped  that  the  resources  of  our  capital  had  been  pulled  down  by 
the  war,  were  induced  even  to  overrate  them  by  the  magnificent  style  in 
which  I  represented  Athens  at  the  Olympic  festival,  when  I  sent  down  seven 
chariots  to  the  lists  —  more  than  any  private  citizen  had  ever  entered — gain- 
ing a  first,  a  second,  and  a  fourth  prize :  nor  did  the  style  of  my  equipments 
disparage  the  lustre  of  my  triumph.  Public  opinion  honours  trophies  such  as 
these  :  and  the  pageantry  itself  creates  an  impression  of  power.  Again,  the 
distinction  with  which,  within  the  city,  I  have  served  the  ofifice  of  choregus, 
among  other  public  functions,  though  it  may  naturally  excite  the  envy  of  a 


THE   SPEECHES— ALCIBIADES. 


547 


fellow-citizen,  is,  to  the  eye  of  a  foreigner,  eloquent  of  large  resources.  My 
wild  extravagance,  then,  as  you  call  it,  is  not  devoid  of  use,  when  its  votary 
serves  the  public  as  well  as  his  personal  interests  at  his  own  cost.  And  it 
certainly  is  not  unfair  that  a  man  who  is  proud  of  his  wealth  and  station 
should  repudiate  equality  with  the  mass  ;  society  acts  on  this  principle  every 
day  :  the  man  of  broken  fortunes,  for  instance,  finds  none  to  share  his 
calamity.  On  the  contrary,  just  as  people  take  no  notice  of  us  in  our  hour 
of  adversity,  must  they,  when  their  turn  of  misfortune  comes,  brook  the 
disdain  of  prosperity;  they  can  only  expect  others  to  make  no  differ- 
ence toward  them  when  they  deal 
with  them  on  that  principle." 

Certainly  one  has  here,  if  not 
the  words,  at  least  the  thoughts 
of  the  speaker,  uttered  with  a 
vigour  and  air  of  reality  that  the 
actual  scene  could  not  have  sur- 
passed. Whatever  may  have  been 
the  characteristics  of  Greek  elo- 
quence, it  had  the  advantage  of 
being  practical,  and  in  some  of 
the  later  passages  of  this  speech 
we  find  the  serious  consideration 
of  important  questions.  This  is 
the  way  in  which  he  urged  the 
Athenians  to  the  ill-fated  Sicilian 
expedition  : 

"  What  excuse  can  we  plead  to  our 
Sicilian  allies  for  failing  to  succour 
them  ?  We  certainly  ought  to  aid 
them,  especially  as  we  have  actually 
sworn  to  do  so,  instead  of  content- 
ing ourselves  with  the  counterplea 
that  they  have  never  aided  us.  For, 
when  we  espoused  their  alliance,  it 
was  not  with  the  view  of  their  rev- 
turning  the  favour  by  coming  here 
to  fight  for  us  :  we  hoped  they 
would  keep  our  Sicilian  foes  con- 
stantly embroiled,  and  prevent  their  assailing  us  at  home.  Besides,  it 
was  by  a  policy  of  intervention  that  we,  in  common  with  all  who  ever 
won  dominion,  acquired  our  empire  ;  it  was  by  heartily  assisting  com- 
munities, whether  Greek  or  barbarian,  which  from  time  to  time  invoked 
our  aid.  Indeed,  if  there  were  no  dissensions  to  interfere  in,  and  if 
distinctions  of  race  were  made  in  choosing  whom  to  succour,  the  exten- 
sion of  our  empire  would  be  a  very  slow  process  ;  or,  rather,  we  should 
run  a  risk  of  losing  it  altogether.  For  every  state  is  on  the  watch  not  only 
to  repel  the  aggression  of  a  superior  power,  but  to  defeat,  by  anticipation, 


ALCIBIADBS. 


(Busi  in  the  Chiaramonti  Museum  in  Rome.') 


548  THUC  YD  IDES. 

the  possibility  of  such  aggression.  And  it  is  out  of  the  question  for  us  to 
cut  and  carve  at  pleasure  the  area  of  our  rule  :  we  are  compelled,  by  our 
position  as  an  imperial  city,  to  intrigue  systematically  for  the  subjection  of 
one  state,  while  we  tighten  our  rein  upon  another  :  threatened  as  we  are 
with  the  risk  of  foreign  subjugation,  should  we  halt  in  our  career  of  aggran- 
dizement. In  your  situation,  you  cannot  regard  political  quietism  from 
the  same  point  of  view  as  other  communities,  unless,  at  the  same  time,  you 
choose  to  recast  your  national  character  and  pursuits  on  the  model  of 
theirs." 


Whether  Alcibiades  actually  used  these  arguments  is  certainly  an 
important  question,  but  even  if  he  did  not,  the  fact  that  a  contempo- 
rary could  utter  them  in  this  form  is  also  important.  It  may  be  un- 
certain which  deserves  the  credit,  the  brilliant  leader  or  the  historian  ; 
it  is  at  least  sure  that  it  was  possible  for  a  man  of  this  time  to  see  the 
condition  of  things  and  to  represent  it  in  this  form.  Just  as  an  intel- 
ligent statement  about  human  nature  is  one  that  enforces  its  truth 
upon  every  one  that  hears  it,  so  these  vivid  political  controversies 
remind  the  modern  reader  quite  as  much  of  recent  as  of  ancient 
history,  for  the  ambitions  of  men,  and  the  arguments  by  which  they 
defend  them,  are  the  same  at  all  times:  the  main  difference  lies  in 
the  quality  of  the  words  in  which  they  disguise  or  express  them.  The 
firmness  with  which  Thucydides  sets  the  condition  of  things  before 
those  who  study  his  immortal  book  justifies  his  method  ;  the  speeches 
are  full  of  lessons,  they  make  clear  the  enthusiasm  that  called  the 
history  "  the  eternal  manual  of  statesmen."  His  own  essential  quality 
is  to  be  seen  in  the  exclusion  of  everything  that  is  trivial  and  com- 
monplace. Yet  the  fashion  that  he  set  was  one  that  helped  to  produce 
much  inaccurate  work  in  later  times.  Livy  and  Tacitus,  as  Sir  G.  C. 
Lewis  said,  regarded  "  a  deliberation  in  a  popular  body,  or  a  military 
harangue,  as  an  opportunity  for  rhetorical  display,  and  composed 
speeches  in  prose  with  as  much  freedom  as  a  dramatist  would  in 
verse,"  Indeed,  they  often  abandoned  the  texts  that  lay  at  hand  for 
speeches  of  their  own  invention,  which  they  much  preferred.  His- 
tory has  always  suffered  from  being  misplaced  among  the  fine  arts, 
instead  of  being  treated  as  a  science. 

Later,  the  reader  will  find  some  examples  of  the  eloquence  that  is 
reported  by  Thucydides — with  what  exactness  can  not  now  be  defi- 
nitely ascertained — but  this  is  not  all  on  which  his  fame  rests.  The 
strict  impartiality  of  his  chronicle,  the  dignified  avoidance  of  partisan- 
ship, have  won  all  praise.  The  chronological  division  of  events  lends 
a  monotony,  a  lack  of  picturesqueness,  to  the  style  of  the  book,  but  its 
veracity  overcomes  this  slight  objection.  The  history  consists  of 
eight  books,  although  this  division  was  not  made  by  Thucydides  him- 


COMPOSITION  AND  ARRANGEMENT  OF    THE  HISTORY. 


549 


self ;  the  first  is  of  the  nature  of  a  general  introduction,  in  which  the 
author  expresses  his  opinion  of  the  magnitude  and  importance  of  the 
war  which  he  had  undertaken  to  describe,  and  he  tries  to  show  by  a 
brief  recital  of  the  traditions  of  antiquity  and  a  fuller  exposition  of 
recent  events  how  it  was  that  the  war  broke  out.  For  some  time  after 
the  Trojan  war,  the  importance  of  which  he  thought  to  have  been 
naturally  much  exaggerated  by  the  poets,  the  migrations  of  the  Greek 
peoples  went  on  ;  finally 
matters  settled  them- 
selves, and  the  Greeks 
began  to  send  out  colo- 
nies. Meanwhile,  as  the 
colonies  spread  among  the 
islands  and  in  Asia  Minor, 
the  Persian  Empire  arose, 
and  conquered  these 
Greek  neighbors.  Greece 
itself  was  pitiably  enfee- 
bled by  the  power  of  the 
tyrants  who  held  the  vari- 
ous cities  in  subjection  and 
prevented  all  common  ac- 
tion ;  Sparta  alone  escaped 
this  oppressive  form  of 
government.  The  way  in 
which  the  mother-country 
aided  the  colonists  when 
defeated,  attracted  the  at- 
tention of  the  Persians  and 
evoked  the  great  wars,  in 
which  the  Athenians  were 
first  victorious  at  Mara- 
thon. Ten  years  later 
Xerxes  came  with  his 
huge  host  to  destroy 
Greece.  The  Athenians 
defeated  him  by  sea,  and 

the  Lacedaemonians  by  land,  and  the  country  was  saved.  For  a 
short  time  afterward  the  confederacy  held  together,  but  then  the 
Lacedaemonians  and  Athenians,  the  strongest  members,  one  by  land, 
the  other  by  sea,  quarreled  and  fought.  A  thirty  years'  truce,  how- 
ever, put  an  end  to  th'is  state  of  things,  until  natural  jealousies  again 
aroused  them,  and  they  fell  apart  over  the  controversies  of  the  Corin- 


THEMISTOCLES. 


55°  THUCYDIDES. 

thians  and  Corcyreans  concerning  the  city  of  Epidamnus  ;  the  Corcy- 
reans  found  support  in  Athens,  and  the  Corinthians,  in  revenge,  per- 
suaded Potidaea  to  revolt,  and  induced  the  Lacedaemonians  to  declare 
their  belief  that  the  peace  was  broken,  and  that  war  should  begin. 
Then  Thucydides  explains  how  Athens  had  attained  its  leadership 
after  the  Persian  wars,  in  part  by  the  merits  of  Themistocles,  in  part 
by  the  treachery  of  Pausanias,  whose  stories  are  told  at  some  length. 
Finally  the  Lacedaemonians  sent  an  embassy  to  announce  that  they 
would  abstain  from  war  if  the  Athenians  would  leave  the  Greeks  inde- 
pendent, and  an  assembly  of  the  people  was  called,  in  which  Periales 
induces  the  Athenians  to  prefer  war  to  such  a  concession.  Thus  the 
actual  story  of  the  war  begins  only  with  the  second  book.  The 
account  of  the  hostilities  up  to  the  time  of  the  peace  of  Nicias  occu- 
pies about  half  the  space,  while  the  rest  is  taken  up  with  an  account 
of  the  five  years'  truce,  the  Sicilian  expedition,  and  the  later  occur- 
rences to  the  battle  of  Cyzicus,  in  the  twenty-first  year  of  the  war.  His 
death  prevented  the  completion  of  the  whole  story ;  indeed,  it  is  said 
that  the  eighth  book  was  brought  out  by  Xenophon ;  the  exact  amount 
of  his  work  is  not  to  be  determined. 

in. 

This  history  early  found,  not  popularity,  but  enthusiastic  admira- 
tion from  competent  judges  among  the  ancients.  It  was  said  that 
Thucydides  imitated  ^schylus,  Pindar,  Antiphon,  Prodicus,  Euripides, 
and  Homer,  a  statement  which  shows  conclusively  what  authors  were 
most  esteemed  by  the  utterer  of  this  lavish  outburst  of  praise.  Quin- 
tilian  made  an  intelligent  comparison  between  the  fluent,  easy,  con- 
versational grace  of  Herodotus  and  the  brevity  of  Thucydides  which 
sounds  as  if  he  were  speaking  in  a  deliberate  assembly.  Cicero  called 
him  a  great  historian,  and  said  that  he  was  weighty  in  words,  rich  in 
thoughts,  but  sometimes  obscure  from  compression.  Dionysius  of 
Halicarnassus,  however,  expressed  the  opinion  that  has  been  echoed 
by  countless  students, when  he  said  that  the  style  of  Thucydides  was 
affected,  hard,  confused,  childish,  and  puzzling.  The  laudation,  it  must 
be  remembered,  was  the  exception,  for  he  was  never  popular.  Not 
every  one  cares  most  for  precious  metals  in  nuggets.  Yet  those  who 
admired  him  more  than  made  up  for  the  lack  of  general  applause 
which  a  man  who  strives  to  be  impartial  never  expects  to  receive. 
The  history  was  said  by  the  ancients  to  be  like  a  tragedy,  a  com- 
parison which  shows  what  was  regarded  by  them  as  the  highest  lite- 
rary product,  for  it  was  the  sequence  of  events  that  made  the  resem- 
blance to  the  tragedy,  quite  as  much  as  the  execution  of  the  book. 


MEMORIAL    SPEECH  BY  PERICLES. 


551 


A  certain  similarity  is  to  be  found,  it  is  true,  in  the  form  that  Thu- 
cydides  adopted,  that  of  letting  the  speeches  elucidate  the  actions,  but 
just  as  now  any  picture,  poem,  or  what  not,  is  said  to  be  like  a  piece 
of  music,  so  then  resemblance  to  a  tragedy  was  the  expression  of  the 
highest  praise. 

As  a  further  example  of  the  eloquence  of  the  speeches  that  he 
introduces  into  his 
book,  no  better  ex- 
ample can  be  found 
than  the  funeral 
speech  uttered  by,  or 
invented  for  Pericles. 
It  was  spoken  in 
honor  of  the  Athe- 
nian citizens  who  had 
fallen  in  battle  in 
the  first  year  of  the 
war,  B.C.  431. 


"  Most  of  the  previ- 
ous speakers  on  these 
occasions  have  com- 
mended the  statesman 
who  made  an  oration 
a  part  of  the  funeral 
ceremony,  considering 
its  delivery  a  fitting 
tribute  to  the  brave 
men  who  have  fallen 
in  battle,  and  are 
brought  here  for  burial. 
In  my  opinion,  how- 
ever, it  would  have 
been  well  that  the 
honours  due  to  men 
who  have  proved  their 
valour  by  their  deeds  in 
arms  should  be  paid  in 
deeds  rather  than  in 
words  ;  such,  for  in- 
stance, as  the  public 
celebration  of  this 
funeral,  instead  of  stak- 


PERICLES. 
(From  the  bust  in  the  Louvre.) 


ing  the  reputation  of 
many  on  one  man,  so 
as  to  make  it  depend 
on  his  speaking  well 
or  ill.  It  is  a  hard 
task  to  hit  the  mean; 
when  there  is  a  special 
difficulty  in  impressing 
the  audience  with  a 
conviction  of  the 
truth  of  what  is  told 
them.  An  audience 
favorably  disposed  and 
familiar  with  the  sub- 
ject, naturally  thinks 
the  picture  feebly 
drawn,  compared  with 
its  own  wishes  and 
convictions ;  while  per- 
sons unacquainted  with 
the  facts  even  suspect 
exaggeration,  their 
jealousy  being  aroused, 
when  they  hear  any- 
thing that  transcends 
their  own  capacity. 
The  fact  is,  eulogies  of 
other  men  are  toler- 
able only  when  the 
individuals  addressed 
believe  themselves  able 
to  achieve  some  of  the 
feats  attributed  to 
others  ;  the  moment 
they  are  surpassed  they 
begin  to  be  jealous, 
and  then  they  disbe- 
lieve. However,  as 
this  branch  of  the  sol- 
emnity has  been  delib- 


erately approved  by  our  forefathers,  I  must  endeavor,  in  conforming,  like 
my  predecessors,  to  the  ordinance,  to  meet  the  wishes  and  sentiments  of  each 
of  you  as  nearly  as  I  can. 

"  Our  ancestors  claim  my  earliest  praise  ;  for  it  is  only  just,  and  it  is  quite 
in  harmony  with  the  present  occasion,  that  a  tribute  of  honourable  remem- 


552  THUCYDIDES. 

brance  should  be  offered  them,  whose  virtues  maintained  and  handed  down 
to  our  own  days,  through  a  long  line  of  successors,  the  purity  of  their  race 
and  the  integrity  of  their  freedom.  But,  worthy  of  eulogy  as  they  are,  our 
fathers  are  still  more  so.  Not  content  with  maintaining  the  territory  they 
inherited,  they  acquired  and  bequeathed  to  us  of  this  generation  our  exist- 
ing dominion,  the  fruit  of  many  struggles.  That  dominion,  however,  has 
been  largely  aggrandized  by  our  own  efforts  :  by  the  efforts  of  the  men  now 
before  you,  still,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  prime  of  life  :  and  our  country  has 
been  richly  endowed  with  all  the  appliances  of  perfect  independence, 
whether  for  war  or  peace.  The  military  achievements  of  these  heroes, 
whereby  the  several  accessions  of  territory  were  won,  and  the  threatened 
invasions,  foreign  or  Greek,  which  our  fathers  or  ourselves  have  bravely 
repulsed  from  our  shores,  I  will  not  now  detail,  as  I  have  no  desire  to  be 
prolix  before  an  audience  so  familiar  with  our  history.  I  must,  however, 
dwell  for  a  moment  on  the  training  which  gained  us  empire,  on  the  form  of 
government,  the  habits  and  the  principles  which  raised  that  empire  to  great- 
ness, before  I  proceed  with  my  panegyric,  believing  the  topic  at  once  con- 
genial to  the  occasion,  and  suited  to  the  whole  of  my  audience,  whether 
Athenians  or  strangers. 

"  The  constitution  we  enjoy  is  not  copied  from  a  foreign  code  :  we  are 
rather  a  pattern  to,  than  imitators  of,  other  states.  It  goes  by  the  name  of 
a  democracy,  because  it  is  administered  for  the  benefit  of  the  many,  not  of 
the  few.  It  is  so  constituted,  that,  if  we  look  to  the  laws,  we  shall  find  all 
Athenians  on  a  footing  of  perfect  equality  as  to  the  decision  of  their  private 
suits  ;  if  we  look  to  the  popular  estimate  of  political  capacity,  distinction  in 
the  public  service  will  be  found  to  depend  on  merit,  weighed  by  a  man's  emi- 
nence in  his  own  calling,  not  on  caste.  Nor  again  is  poverty  any  exclusion, 
when  a  man,  however  humble  his  rank,  is  able  to  serve  his  country.  A 
spirit  of  freedom  regulates  alike  our  public  and  our  private  life  :  we  tol- 
erate, without  a  particle  of  jealousy,  varieties  in  each  other's  daily  pursuits  : 
we  are  not  angry  with  our  neighbour  for  following  the  bent  of  his  humour  ;  nor 
do  our  faces  wear  censorious  looks,  harmless,  perhaps,  but  odious.  In  pri- 
vate society,  our  politeness  insures  harmony  :  in  public  life,  fear  is  our  prin- 
cipal check  on  illegal  acts  :  we  obey  the  magistrates  who  are  from  time  to 
time  in  authority,  and  the  laws,  especially  those  enacted  to  protect  the 
oppressed,  and  that  unwritten  code  whose  sanction  is  a  common  sense  of 
shame. 

''Abundant  recreation,  too,  to  recruit  our  spirits,  when  jaded  by  the  cares  of 
business,  is  supplied  by  the  very  festivals  which  the  Dorians  ridicule,  and 
the  customary  solemnities  of  sacrifice  throughout  the  year,  as  well  as  by  the 
splendour  of  our  private  establishments,  our  daily  enjoyment  of  which  scares 
melancholy  away.  Owing  to  the  magnitude  of  our  capital,  the  luxuries  of 
every  clime  pour  themselves  into  our  hands,  and  it  is  our  good  fortune  to 
enjoy  the  products  of  other  realms  as  familiarly  as  the  fruits  of  our  own 
soil. 

"  Another  remarkable  contrast  between  ourselves  and  our  rivals  lies  in  the 
difference  of  our  methods  of  training  for  war.  The  following  are  the  salient 
points  :  We  throw  open  our  gates  to  all  the  world  ;  no  alien  acts  exclude 
any  of  our  foes  from  learning  or  seeing  anything,  the  revelation  of  which 
may  be  of  any  service  to  them  :  for  we  do  not  trust  so  much  to  precon- 
certed stratagems  as  to  that  courage  in  action  which  springs  from  our  own 
nature.     Again,  in  education,  our  rivals  set  out  in  pursuit  of  manly  qualities 


554  THUCYDIDES. 

by  a  laborious  course  of  training  commenced  in  childhood  :  yet  we,  though 
living  at  our  ease,  are  perfectly  ready  to  encounter  dangers  quite  as  great 
as  theirs, — an  assertion  I  can  prove  by  facts  ;  when  the  Lacedaemonians  in- 
vade our  realm,  it  is  never  with  mere  detachments,  but  at  the  head  of  their 
collective  force.  In  our  case,  when  we  march  against  their  territory,  it  is 
with  Athenian  troops  only,  with  whom,  though  struggling  on  a  foreign  soil 
against  men  who  are  fighting  for  their  own  hearths,  we  generally  gain  an 
easy  victory.  In  fact,  not  one  of  our  enemies  has  ever  yet  encountered  our 
united  force,  because  we  have  to  provide  for  our  navy  as  well  as  our  army, 
and  are  constantly  despatching  our  native  troops  on  so  many  expeditions  by 
land.  If  ever  they  engage  a  fraction  of  our  troops,  and  get  the  better  of  a 
few  of  us,  they  pretend  to  have  defeated  us  all  :  while,  if  repulsed,  they  say 
they  have  been  defeated  by  all.  And  yet  —  to  revert  to  what  I  was  just 
now  saying  —  if  we,  who  live  under  a  luxurious  system  instead  of  a  toilsome 
training,  if  we,  whose  courage  is  the  gift  of  nature,  rather  than  the  fruit  of 
discipline,  are,  as  I  hope,  just  as  ready  to  brave  danger:  a  double  advan- 
tage is  gained  ;  we  do  not  suffer  from  the  anticipation  of  impending  perils: 
and  when  we  meet  them,  we  do  not  yield  in  courage  to  the  slaves  of  a  life- 
long drill. 

"  On  other  grounds,  too,  I  claim  admiration  for  our  country.  Our  fondness 
for  art  is  free  from  extravagance,  nor  do  our  literary  tastes  make  us  effem- 
inate ;  wealth  we  use  as  an  opportunity  for  action,  not  for  ostentatious  talk  : 
poverty  we  think  it  no  disgrace  to  avow,  though  we  do  think  it  a  disgrace 
not  to  try  to  avoid  it  by  industry.  Among  our  countrymen  political  and 
social  duties  are  combined  in  the  same  men  :  even  our  laboring  classes 
have  a  competent  knowledge  of  politics  ;  indeed,  we  are  the  only  Greeks 
who  regard  a  man  who  takes  no  interest  in  public  affairs,  not  as  one  who 
only  minds  his  own  business,  but  as  a  man  unfit  for  any  business  at  all.  If 
we,  the  people  at  large,  can  not  originate  measures  of  policy,  we  can,  at  any 
rate,  judge  of  them  when  proposed  :  we  do  not  think  discussion  a  prejudice 
to  action,  but  we  do  think  it  a  prejudice  not  to  be  foretaught  by  discussion, 
before  entering  on  the  field  of  action.  This  leads  me  to  mention  another 
characteristic  of  ours  —  the  combination  of  chivalrous  daring  with  the  most 
careful  calculation  of  our  plans  :  whereas,  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  daring 
is  but  the  offspring  of  ignorance,  while  reflection  tends  to  hesitation.  And 
surely  the  palm  of  magnanimity  may  well  be  awarded  to  those  whom  the 
liveliest  appreciation  of  the  hardships  of  war  and  the  pleasures  of  peace  fail 
to  lure  from  the  perilous  path  of  honour  to  the  charms  of  ease.  Again,  in 
point  of  beneficence  and  liberality,  we  act  on  principles  different  from  those 
of  the  world  at  large  ;  we  gain  our  friends  not  by  receiving  but  by  con- 
ferring benefits.  Now  benefactors  are  more  constant  in  their  friendship 
than  those  whom  they  oblige  :  they  like  to  keep  the  sense  of  obligation 
alive  by  acting  kindly  to  the  recipients  of  their  favors  ;  the  friendship  of 
the  debtor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  clouded  by  the  remembrance  that  his 
acknowledgment  of  the  service  will  be  the  payment  of  a  debt,  not  the  be- 
stowal of  a  favor.  We,  too,  are  the  only  people  who,  without  a  particle  of 
distrust,  aid  the  distressed,  from  no  sordid  calculations  of  advantage,  but  in 
all  the  confidence  of  genuine  liberality. 

"  In  one  word,  I  declare  that  our  capital  at  large  is  the  school  of  Greece  ; 
while,  if  we  look  to  the  citizens  individually,  I  believe  every  man  among  us 
could  prove  himself  personally  qualified,  without  aid  from  others,  to  meet 
exigencies  the  most  varied,  with  a  versatility  the   most  graceful.     That  this 


EULOGY  OF   THE  ATHENIANS  BY  PERICLES.  555 

is  no  mere  rhetorical  vaunt  of  tlie  moment,  but  the  real  truth,  our  political 
power,  the  offspring  of  our  national  character  and  the  tastes  I  have  de- 
scribed, is  itself  a  sufficient  proof.  Of  all  existing  states,  Athens  alone 
eclipses  her  prestige  when  tested  by  trial :  she  alone  inspires  no  mortifica- 
tion in  the  invading  foe,  when  he  thinks  by  whom  he  is  repulsed  :  no  self- 
reproach  in  the  subject  for  submitting  to  a  degrading  rule.  So  far  from  our 
supremacy  needing  attestation,  it  is  written  in  the  clearest  characters  :  it  will 
command  the  admiration  of  future  ages,  as  it  already  does  of  our  own  ;  we 
want  no  Homer  to  sing  our  praises,  nor  any  other  poet  whose  verses  may 
charm  for  the  moment,  while  history  will  mar  the  conception  he  raises  of 
our  deeds.  No  !  we  shall  be  admired  for  having  forced  every  sea  and 
every  shore  to  yield  access  to  our  courage,  and  for  the  imperishable  monu- 
ments of  the  evils  heaped  on  foes  and  the  blessings  conferred  on  friends, 
which  we  have,  by  common  effort,  reared  on  every  soil.  Such,  then,  is  the 
state  for  which  these  men,  determined  not  to  be  robbed  of  their  country, 
bravely  died  on  the  battlefield  :  and  every  one  of  their  survivors  will  be 
ready,  I  am  sure,  to  suffer  in  the  same  cause. 

*'  I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  on  our  national  advantages,  partly  from  a 
wish  to  convince  you  that  we  have  a  higher  stake  in  the  contest  than  those 
who  can  not  rival  those  advantages,  partly  to  enforce,  by  the  palpable  evi- 
dence of  facts,  the  justice  of  the  panegyric  it  is  my  commission  to  deliver 
over  our  fallen  patriots.  That  commission,  indeed,  is  nearly  fulfilled  :  for  if 
our  country  has  been  the  theme  of  my  encomium,  it  is  because  she  has  been 
graced  by  the  virtues  of  those  heroes  and  others  who  assembled  them  ;  nor 
are  there  many  among  the  Greeks  whose  reputation  can  be  shown  to  be  so 
evenly  balanced  by  their  actions.  But  I  may  still  appeal  to  the  closing  scene 
of  their  lives,  as  either  of¥ering  the  first  indication,  or  giving  the  crowning 
proof,  of  their  manly  worth.  In  the  former  case,  men  may  fairly  be  allowed 
to  veil  their  defects  beneath  the  courage  they  have  shown  in  their  country's 
cause  :  they  cancel  evil  by  good  :  their  public  services  outweigh  the  mischief 
of  their  private  life.  Yet  among  these  men  there  was  not  one  whom  the 
prospect  of  a  prolonged  enjoyment  of  wealth  lured  to  play  the  coward  :  not 
one  whom  the  hope  whispered  by  poverty,  the  hope  of  some  day  exchanging 
penury  for  affluence,  tempted  to  quail  before  the  hour  of  peril.  Considering 
vengeance  on  their  foes  more  precious  than  such  prospects,  they  willingly, 
in  what  they  thought  the  noblest  of  causes,  risked  their  lives  to  make  sure 
of  their  revenge,  holding  their  chances  of  future  enjoyment  in  reserve.  They 
left  hope  to  provide  for  the  uncertainty  of  success  :  but  when  engaged  in 
action,  face  to  face  with  danger,  they  scorned  to  trust  aught  but  themselves: 
and,  on  the  field  of  battle,  they  chose  to  fall  in  resisting  the  enemy  rather 
than  save  their  lives  by  surrender.  If,  indeed,  they  fled,  it  was  only  from 
disgrace  to  their  name  :  far  from  flying  from  the  battlefield,  they  bore  the 
brunt  of  the  conflict  with  their  bodies,  and,  in  a  moment,  at  the  very  crisis 
of  victory,  were  carried  away  from  a  scene,  not  of  terror,  but  of  glory. 

"  Such  then  were  the  principles  of  these  men  :  principles  worthy  of  their 
country.  You,  their  surviving  countrymen,  may  perhaps  hope  that  your 
patriotism  may  be  more  compatible  with  personal  safety,  but  you  must  dis- 
dain to  harbor  a  spirit  a  whit  less  daring  towards  our  enemies  :  looking  not 
to  the  mere  policy  of  so  doing,  with  the  eye  of  a  rhetorician  haranguing  you, 
as  familiar  with  the  subject  as  himself,  on  the  advantages  to  be  reaped  by  a 
brave' repulse  of  the  foe  :  but  looking  to  the  practical  side  of  the  picture,  the 
palpable  proofs,  daily  revealed,  of  our  political  greatness — which  may  well 


556  THUCYDIDES. 

inspire  you  with  a  lover's  enthusiasm  for  your  country.  And  when  you  are 
impressed  with  its  greatness,  remember  that  it  was  gained  by  brave  men,  by 
men  who  were  shrewd  in  counsel,  and,  in  action,  sensibly  alive  to  honor  : 
and  who,  if  ever  foiled  in  an  attack,  never  thought  of  saving  themselves,  but 
paid  their  country  the  full  tribute  of  their  valor,  nobly  lavishing  their  lives 
as  a  joint-offering  to  her.  Yes,  they  jointly  offered  their  lives,  and  were 
repaid,  individually,  by  that  glory  that  can  never  die,  and  by  the  most 
honorable  of  tombs,  not  that  wherein  they  lie,  but  that  wherein  their  fame 
is  treasured  in  everlasting  honor,  refreshed  by  every  incident,  either  of 
action  or  debate,  that  stirs  its  remembrance.  For  the  whole  world  is  the 
tomb  of  illustrious  men  :  it  is  not  the  mere  monumental  inscription  in  their 
native  land  that  records  their  valor  :  no  !  even  in  climes  that  knew  them 
not,  an  unwritten  memorial  of  them  finds  a  home,  not  in  monuments,  but  in 
the  hearts  of  the  brave.  Emulate,  then,  their  heroic  deeds  :  and,  believing 
happiness  to  depend  on  freedom,  and  freedom  on  valor,  shrink  not,  to  your 
own  prejudice,  from  the  perils  of  war  :  for  it  is  not  men  of  broken  fortunes, 
men  hopeless  of  prosperity,  of  whom  we  can  so  fairly  expect  a  generous 
prodigality  of  life,  as  of  those  who  still  risk  the  change  from  wealth  to 
poverty,  and  who  have  most  at  stake  in  the  event  of  a  reverse.  And  surely 
disaster,  coupled  with  the  stigma  of  cowardice,  is  far  more  grievous  to  a 
man  of  high  spirit,  than  the  sudden  and  painless  death  that  surprises  the 
soldier  in  the  bloom  of  his  strength  and  patriotic  hope. 

"  For  these  reasons,  I  have  to  offer  consolation  rather  than  condolence  to 
those  among  the  parents  of  the  dead,  who  are  now  present.  They  know 
that  their  lot  from  childhood  has  been  chequered  with  calamity  :  and  that 
those  may  be  called  fortunate,  whose  fate,  whether  in  affliction,  as  theirs,  or 
in  death,  as  their  relatives,  has  been  most  brilliant :  and  whose  term  of  life 
has  not  been  prolonged  beyond  the  term  of  their  happiness.  Still,  I  feel 
how  difficult  it  is  to  console  you  :  for  the  successes  of  others  —  successes  in 
which  you,  too,  used  to  rejoice — will  constantly  remind  you  of  those  whom 
you  have  lost ;  and  grief  is  naturally  felt  not  for  blessings  of  which  a  man 
is  robbed  before  he  can  appreciate  them,  but  for  those  which  he  loses  after 
long  habituation  to  them.  Those,  however,  among  you,  whose  age  allows 
them  offspring,  must  comfort  themselves  with  the  hope  of  children  yet  to 
come.  In  private  life  they  will  lull  their  parents  into  forgetfulness  of  those 
who  are  no  more,  and  our  country  will  reap  a  twofold  advantage  :  she  will 
not  suffer  from  depopulation,  and  she  will  be  more  secure  :  for  it  is  impos- 
sible to  expect  fair  and  just  legislation  from  men  who  do  not  share  their 
neighbors'  risks  by  having  children  as  well  as  property  at  stake.  Those, 
on  the  other  hand,  who  are  past  their  prime,  must  consider  the  longer  period 
of  their  life  during  which  they  have  been  fortunate,  as  clear  gain  :  the 
remainder  they  must  expect,  will  be  short :  and  they  ought  to  cheer  them- 
selves with  the  fame  of  their  heroic  sons.  For  the  love  of  honors  is  the 
only  sentiment  that  is  always  young  :  and  when  men  are  past  the  age  of 
heroic  service,  it  is  not  gain,  as  cynics  say,  but  rather  respect,  which 
pleases  them. 

"  As  for  you,  the  children  or  brothers  of  the  fallen,  you  will,  I  am  sure,  find 
the  task  of  emulation  difficult.  Every  one  is  ready  to  praise  those  who  are 
no  more  :  and,  even  with  extraordinary  merit,  you  will  find  it  hard  to  be 
pronounced,  I  will  not  say  equal,  but  only  slightly  inferior  to  them  :  for 
envy  will  attack  a  rival's  fame,  while  life  remains  :  and  it  is  only  when  com- 
petition is  barred  by  death  that  affection  will  applaud  without  alloy.     Per- 


SPEECH  ASCRIBED    TO  PERICLES  BY   THUCYDIDES.  557 

haps,  in  deference  to  those  among  you  who  have  been  plunged  into  widow- 
hood, I  ought  to  say  a  word  on  woman's  excellence.  A  brief  recommenda- 
tion will  suffice  :  it  is  your  glory  not  to  overstep  the  modesty  of  nature,  and 
to  be  in  the  least  possible  degree  the  subject  of  discussion,  either  for  praise 
or  blame,  among  men. 

"  Honors  may  be  rendered  both  in  words  and  acts.  As  to  the  former,  the 
tribute  has  been  paid  in  the  address  which  I,  like  my  predecessors,  have 
delivered,  according  to  the  law,  to  the  best  of  my  ability  :  as  to  the  latter, 
this  public  funeral  has  tendered  to  our  patriots  a  portion  of  the  honor  due 
to  them,  and  the  rest  their  country  will  pay,  by  rearing  their  children  at  the 
public  expense  from  this  day  till  they  are  of  age  :  thus  presenting,  in  a  spirit 
of  the  soundest  policy,  to  our  fallen  countrymen  and  their  survivors,  an 
honorable  reward  for  their  courage  in  the  battle-field.  In  a  spirit  of  policy, 
I  say  :  for  the  states  that  institute  the  highest  prizes  for  valor  have  the 
bravest  men  for  citizens.  And  now,  having  concluded  the  mourning  rites 
due  to  your  several  relations,  you  may  go  home." 

Of  course  the  question  arises  here,  as  elsewhere,  how  closely 
Thucydides  has  preserved  the  actual  words  that  the  great  orator 
uttered,  to  which  no  absolutely  certain  answer  can  be  given,  yet  when 
we  remember  the  importance  and  interest  of  this  address,  it  seems 
likely  that  very  much  of  it  would  live  in  the  memory  of  those  who 
heard  it,  and  that  this  is  of  the  nature  of  a  true  report.  A  few  of  the 
words  of  Pericles  have  come  down  to  us,  that  attest  the  picturesque 
vividness  of  his  language.  Such,  for  example,  is  the  sentence  which 
Aristotle  quotes  in  his  work  on  Rhetoric  from  this  very  speech,  that 
in  the  slain  youth  of  Athens  the  year  had  lost  its  spring,  but  the 
sentence  is  not  given  by  Thucydides.  Of  the  other  fragments  there 
is  this  which  Plutarch  quotes  from  his  encomium  on  those  who  fell  at 
Samos,  wherein  he  said  that  they  had  become  immortal,  like  the  gods : 
"  for  we  do  not  see  them  themselves,  but  only, by  the  honors  we  pay 
them  and  by  the  benefits  they  do  us,  attribute  to  them  immortality ; 
and  the  like  attributes  belong  also  to  those  that  die  in  the  service  of 
their  country."  Plutarch  also  characterizes  Pericles  with  a  certain  touch 
of  sarcasm  as  filled  with  "  lofty,  and,  as  they  call  it,  up-in-the-air  sort  of 
thought,  whence  he  derived  not  merely,  as  was  natural,  elevation  of 
purpose  and  dignity  of  language,  raised  far  above  the  base  and  dis- 
honest buffooneries  of  mob-eloquence,  but,  besides  this,  a  composure 
of  countenance,  and  a  serenity  and  calmness  in  all  his  movements, 
which  no  occurrence  while  he  was  speaking  could  disturb,  a  sustained 
and  even  tone  of  voice,  and  various  other  advantages  of  a  similar  kind, 
which  produced  the  greatest  effect  on  his  hearers." 

While  this  oration  which  is  placed  in  the  mouth  of  Pericles 
presents  the  Athenian  side,  that  of  the  Spartans  is  unfolded  in  the 
earlier  speech  of  Archidamus,  King  of  Sparta,  which  runs  as  follows : 

"  I  have  already,  Lacedaemonians,  been  personally  engaged  in  several  wars, 


558  THUCYDIDES. 

and  I  know  that  those  of  my  own  age  among  you  are  also  conversant  with 
warfare,  so  that  you  are  not  likely  to  long  for  hostilities,  like  the  mass  of 
men,  either  through  inexperience,  or  from  a  belief  that  they 'are  in  them- 
selves desirable  and  safe. 

You  would  find,  too,  that  this  war,  the  subject  of  our  present  deliberations, 
is  not  likely  to  be  one  of  trifling  moment,  were  any  of  you  dispassionately  to 
weigh  the  nature  of  the  struggle.  Our  forces,  indeed,  when  directed  against 
Peloponnesian  communities,  especially  those  in  our  neighborhood,  are 
similar  to,  and  a  match  for  theirs,  and  we  can  attack  them  rapidly  in  detail. 
But  —  a  struggle  with  men  who  are  rich  in  foreign  dominion,  who  are 
thorough  masters  of  the  sea,  and  have  long  been  admirably  provided  with 
all  the  appliances  of  war,  with  wealth,  both  national  and  private,  with  ships, 
with  cavalry,  with  troops,  heavy  and  light,  in  greater  numbers  than  any 
which  elsewhere  exist  in  any  one  district  of  Greece  :  and  who,  besides  all 
this,  have  a  host  of  confederates  who  pay  them  tribute — how  can  it  be 
politic  rashly  to  engage  in  such  a  struggle,  and  in  what  can  we  trust  when 
we  attack  them  unprepared  ?  Are  we  to  trust  in  our  fleet !  No  !  we  are 
inferior  therein,  and  it  will  take  time  to  practise  and  prepare  a  counter 
armament.  Shall  we  rely,  then,  on  our  wealth?  Scarcely  !  for  in  this  point 
we  are  far  more  deficient  still :  we  have  no  money  in  our  treasury,  nor  do 
we  readily  contribute  from  our  private  resources. 

"  Perhaps,  however,  some  of  you  may  feel  sanguine  on  the  ground  that  we 
surpass  them  in  our  heavy  infantry,  and  in  the  number  of  our  troops,  which 
would  enable  us  to  ravage  their  land  by  repeated  incursions.  But  then  there 
are  considerable  domains,  besides  Attica,  which  own  their  sway,  and  their 
command  of  the  sea  will  enable  them  to  import  whatever  they  require.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  were  to  try  to  seduce  their  confederates,  we  must  find 
ships  for  their  special  protection,  as  they  are  for  the  most  part  islanders. 
What  then  will  be  the  character  of  the  war  we  shall  be  waging  ?  Unless  we 
can  either  sweep  the  seas  with  our  fleet,  or  cut  off  the  supplies  that  feed 
the  Athenian  marine,  ours  will  on  the  whole  be  a  losing  game  ;  and  in  such 
a  case  we  can  no  longer  with  honour  even  negotiate  for  peace,  especially 
should  we  appear  to  have  provoked  the  strife.  God  forbid  that  we  should 
encourage  ourselves  with  the  utterly  delusive  hope  that  the  war  will  speedily 
be  terminated  if  we  devastate  their  land  !  I  rather  fear  we  shall  even  be- 
queath it  to  our  children  ;  so  improbable  is  it  that  Athenian  spirit  will  chain 
itself  to  the  soil  it  tenants,  or  suffer  Athenians,  like  men  who  have  never 
been  in  arms,  to  quail  before  the  terrors  of  war. 

*'  Not,  however,  that  I  advise  you  tamely  to  allow  them  to  injure  our  allies, 
and  to  refrain  from  exposing  their  intrigues.  But  I  do  advise  you  not  as  yet 
to  draw  the  sword,  but  to  send  an  embassy  and  to  expostulate,  without  either 
too  plainly  menacing  war,  or  allowing  them  to  think  we  shall  be  blind  to 
their  ambition.  In  the  interval  I  recommend  you  to  complete  our  own 
preparations,  by  the  acquisition  of  allies,  both  in  Greece  and  abroad,  in  any 
quarter  where  we  can  gain  either  naval  or  pecuniary  aid  ;  for  men  who,  like 
ourselves,  are  the  intended  victims  of  Athenian  treachery,  cannot  be  blamed 
for  consulting  their  safety  by  foreign  as  well  as  Greek  alliances.  Let  us,  at 
the  same  time,  develope  to  the  utmost  our  internal  resources  :  should  they 
then  show  any  inclination  to  listen  to  our  embassies,  all  the  better  ;  if  they 
refuse,  after  the  lapse  of  two  or  three  years,  we  shall  be  better  prepared  to 
attack  them,  should  we  resolve  to  do  so.  Perhaps,  too,  by  that  time,  when 
they  observe  our  armaments,  and  the  warlike  tone  of  our  diplomacy,  they 


SPEECH  OF   THE   SPARTAN  ARCHIDAMUS.  559 

may  be  more  disposed  toward  concession,  while  their  territory  is  still  invio- 
late, and  they  are  able  to  enjoy,  in  their  full  integrity,  those  great  national 
advantages  whose  fate  depends  on  their  deliberations.  Indeed,  the  only 
light  in  which  you  should  regard  their  domain  is  that  of  a  hostage  ;  a  hos- 
tage the  more  precious,  the  richer  its  cultivation.  It  is,  therefore,  your 
interest  to  spare  it  as  long  as  possible,  instead  of  rendering  its  proprietors, 
by  reducing  them  to  desperation,  more  than  ever  intractable  to  terms.  If 
we  take  the  opposite  course  ;  if,  hurried  on  by  the  complaints  of  our  con- 
federates, we  ravage  Attica  without  adequate  supplies,  beware  that  we  are 
not  adopting  a  course  little  to  the  honor  of  Peloponnese,  and  full  of  embar- 
rassment. The  grievances,  indeed,  whether  of  states  or  of  individuals,  it  is 
possible  to  adjust  ;  but  it  is  not  easy  for  a  whole  confederacy  to  terminate 
hostilities  on  creditable  terms,  when  its  members  have,  each  for  his  own 
interest,  engaged  in  a  war  whose  issue  it  is  impossible  to  foresee. 

"  Nor  let  it  be  supposed  that  delay  on  the  part  of  a  numerous  confederacy 
to  attack  a  single  state  is  a  mark  of  pusillanimity.  Athens,  like  ourselves, 
has  allies  —  allies  as  numerous  as  ours  :  they  pay  her  tribute,  and  the  con- 
test hinges  not  so  much  on  arms  as  on  treasure,  the  sinews  of  war,  especially 
when,  as  in  the  present  case,  an  island  is  opposed  to  a  maritime  power.  Let 
us  first,  then,  fill  our  treasury,  instead  of  being  carried  away  by  the  elo- 
quence of  our  allies  ;  let  us^  who  will  be  mainly  responsible  for  the  results, 
whether  fortunate  or  adverse,  leisurely  revolve  beforehand  the  chances  of 
success  or  defeat. 

"  I  must  warn  you,  too,  not  to  feel  ashamed  of  that  slow  and  deliberate  cir- 
cumspection which  is  their  principal  reproach  against  us  ;  for  if  you  hastily 
take  up  arms,  it  will  be  all  the  later  before  you  lay  them  down,  because  you 
will  be  entering  on  the  conflict  without  due  deliberation.  The  wisdom  of 
our  cautious  policy  reflects  itself  in  our  long  career  of  freedom  and  glory  ; 
and  the  very  quality  they  ridicule  in  us  is  only  another  name  for  a  wise 
moderation  ;  a  quality  which  secures  us  a  singular  exemption  from  insolent 
elation  in  the  hour  of  triumph,  and,  compared  with  others,  from  despondency 
in  disaster ;  from  yielding  to  the  fascinations  of  a  gratified  vanity,  when  people 
praise  us  and  cheer  us  on  to  hazards  which  our  sober  judgment  disapproves; 
or  from  being  piqued  into  compliance  when  a  Corinthian  speaker  goads  us 
with  invective.  Our  love  of  order  and  discipline  renders  us  brave  soldiers 
and  wise  counsellors  ;  brave  soldiers,  because  sensibility  to  shame  is  a  power- 
ful element  in  the  love  of  order,  and  a  chivalrous  spirit  in  sensibility  to 
shame  ;  wise  counsellors,  because  we  are  trained  with  too  little  refinement 
to  despise  the  laws,  and  with  too  severe  a  self-control  to  disobey  them. 
Nor  are  we  so  overskilled  in  useless  accomplishments  as  to  depreciate  our 
enemies'  armaments  in  plausible  speeches,  without  any  corresponding  en- 
ergy in  action.  No  !  our  education  teaches  us  to  believe  that,  in  point  of 
tactics,  our  neighbors  are  nearly  on  a  par  with  ourselves,  and  that  the 
chances  incident  to  war  are  far  beyond  the  calculaticfns  of  debate.  We 
arm  energetically  against  the  foe  on  the  presumption  that  his  plans  will  be 
wisely  laid  ;  for  we  have  no  right  to  build  our  hopes  on  the  chance  of  his 
mistakes,  but  on  the  surer  ground  of  our  own  foresight.  We  do  not  believe 
in  any  great  natural  superiority  in  one  man  over  another  :  that  man  we  hold 
the  most  valuable  citizen  who  has  been  trained  in  the  severest  school. 

"  Let  us  not,  then,  renounce  the  principles  bequeathed  by  our  fathers  to  us, 
and  retained  by  us  down  to  the  present  moment  with  uniform  advantage  ; 
let  us  not,  in  the  brief  space  of  an  hour,  pass  a  hurried  resolution,  when  the 


560  THUCYDIDES. 

lives  of  many  citizens,  the  fortunes  of  many  families,  the  fate  of  many  cities, 
and  our  own  glory  are  involved  ;  let  us  take  time  to  consider,  as  our 
strength  permits  us  to  do  more  easily  than  other  states.  Despatch  an  em- 
bassy to  treat  on  the  affairs  of  Potidaea,  and  on  the  alleged  wrongs  of  the 
allies,  especially  as  Athens  is  willing  to  submit  the  subjects  of  complaint  to 
arbitration  ;  for  public  justice  forbids  your  proceeding,  previous  to  trial, 
against  a  party  willing  to  accept  such  a  decision,  as  against  an  avowed  crim- 
inal. At  the  same  time  make  every  preparation  for  war.  This  will  be  the 
safest  course  you  can  adopt,  and  the  most  likely  to  intimidate  your  foes." 

IV. 

Undoubtedly,  the  most  tragical  part  of  the  whole  book  is  the 
account  of  the  ill-fated  Sicilian  expedition,  from  which  the  following 
extracts  are  taken.  The  reader  will  notice  the  grim,  dispassionate 
spirit  of  the  historian,  who  is  as  impartial  as  nature  itself.  Thucydides, 
whose  heart  must  have  been  wrung  as  he  wrote  down  this  merciless 
chronicle  of  error  and  misfortune,  preserves  his  statue-like  calm 
throughout,  letting  the  facts  speak  for  themselves,  and  suppressing, 
with  a  dignity  that  really  rises  to  sublimity,  all  personal  comment. 
He  was  a  true  representative  of  the  greatest  grandeur  of  Greece.  His 
majestic  spirit  shines  through  the  thick  veil  of  obscurity  that  clouds 
his  expression. 

When  Gylippus  and  the  other  Syracusan  generals  had,  like  Nicias, 
encouraged  their  troops,  perceiving  the  Athenians  to  be  manning  their 
ships,  they  presently  did  the  same.  Nicias,  overwhelmed  by  the  situation, 
and  seeing  how  great  and  how  near  the  peril  was  (for  the  ships  were  on  the 
very  point  of  rowing  out),  feeling  too,  as  men  do  on  the  eve  of  a  great 
struggle,  that  all  which  he  had  done  was  nothing,  and  that  he  had  not  said 
half  enough,  again  addressed  the  trierarchs,  and  calling  each  of  them  by  his 
father's  name,  and  his  own  name,  and  the  name  of  his  tribe,  he  entreated 
those  who  had  made  any  reputation  for  themselves  not  to  be  false  to  it,  and 
those  whose  ancestors  were  eminent  not  to  tarnish  their  hereditary  fame. 
He  reminded  them  that  they  were  the  inhabitants  of  the  freest  country  in 
the  world,  and  how  in  Athens  there  was  no  interference  with  the  daily  life 
of  any  man.  He  spoke  to  them  of  their  wives  and  children  and  their  fathers' 
Gods,  as  men  will  at  such  a  time  ;  for  then  they  do  not  care  whether  their 
common-place  phrases  seem  to  be  out  of  date  or  not,  but  loudly  reiterate 
the  old  appeals,  believing  that  they  may  be  of  some  service  at  the  awful 
moment.  When  he  thought  that  he  had  exhorted  them,  not  enough,  but  as 
much  as  the  scanty  time  allowed,  he  retired,  and  led  the  land-forces  to  the 
shore,  extending  the  line  as  far  as  he  could,  so  that  they  might  be  of  the 
greatest  use  in  encouraging  the  combatants  on  board  ship.  Demosthenes, 
Menander,  and  Euthydemus,  who  had  gone  on  board  the  Athenian  fleet  to 
take  the  command,  now  quitted  their  own  station,  and  proceeded  straight  to 
the  closed  mouth  of  the  harbour,  intending  to  force  their  way  to  the  open 
sea  where  a  passage  was  still  left. 

The  Syracusans  and  their  allies  had  already  put  out  with  nearly  the  same 
number  of  ships  as  before.     A  detachment  of  them  guarded  the  entrance 


THE   SICILIAN  EXPEDITION.  561 

of  the  harbour  ;  the  remainder  were  disposed  all  around  it  in  such  a  manner 
that  they  might  fall  on  the  Athenians  from  every  side  at  once,  and  that  their 
land-forces  might  at  the  same  time  be  able  to  co-operate  wherever  the  ships 
retreated  to  the  shore.  Sicanus  and  Agatharchus  commanded  the  Syracusan 
fleet,  each  of  them  a  wing  ;  Pythen  and  the  Corinthians  occupied  the  centre. 
When  the  Athenians  approached  the  closed  mouth  of  the  harbour  the  violence 
of  their  onset  overpowered  the  ships  which  were  stationed  there  ;  they  then 
attempted  to  loosen  the  fastenings.  Whereupon  from  all  sides  the  Syra- 
cusans  and  their  allies  came  bearing  down  upon  them,  and  the  conflict  was 
no  longer  confined  to  the  entrance,  but  extended  throughout  the  harbour. 
No  previous  engagement  had  been  so  fierce  and  obstinate.  Great  was  the 
eagerness  with  which  the  rowers  on  both  sides  rushed  upon  their  enemies 
whenever  the  word  of  command  was  given  ;  and  keen  was  the  contest 
between  the  pilots  as  they  manoeuvred  one  against  another.  The  marines 
too  were  full  of  anxiety  that,  when  ship  struck  ship,  the  service  on  deck 
should  not  fall  short  of  the  rest ;  every  one  in  the  place  assigned  to  him  was 
eager  to  be  foremost  among  his  fellows.  Many  vessels  meeting — and  never 
did  so  many  fight  in  so  small  a  space,  for  the  two  fleets  together  amounted 
to  nearly  two  hundred — they  were  seldom  able  to  strike  in  the  regular 
manner,  because  they  had  no  opportunity  of  first  retiring  or  breaking  the 
line  ;  they  generally  fouled  one  another  as  ship  dashed  against  ship  in  the 
hurry  of  flight  or  pursuit.  All  the  time  that  another  vessel  was  bearing 
down,  the  men  on  deck  poured  showers  of  javelins  and  arrows  and  stones 
upon  the  enemy  ;  and  when  the  two  closed,  the  marines  fought  hand  to 
hand,  and  endeavoured  to  board.  In  many  places,  owing  to  the  want  of 
room,  they  who  had  struck  another  found  that  they  were  struck  them- 
selves ;  often  two  or  even  more  vessels  were  unavoidably  entangled  about 
one,  and  the  pilots  had  to  make  plans  of  attack  and  defence,  not  against  one 
adversary  only,  but  against  several  coming  from  different  sides.  The  crash 
of  so  many  ships  dashing  against  one  another  took  away  the  wits  of  the 
sailors,  and  made  it  impossible  to  hear  the  boatswains,  whose  voices  in  both 
fleets  rose  high,  as  they  gave  directions  to  the  rowers,  or  cheered  them  on 
in  the  excitement  of  the  struggle.  On  the  Athenian  side  they  were  shouting 
to  their  men  that  they  must  force  a  passage  and  seize  the  opportunity  now 
or  never  of  returning  in  safety  to  their  native  land.  To  the  Syracusans  and 
their  allies  was  represented  the  glory  of  preventing  the  escape  of  their 
enemies,  and  of  a  victory  by  which  every  man  would  exalt  the  honour  of  his 
own  city.  The  commanders  too,  when  they  saw  any  ship  backing  water 
without  necessity,  would  call  the  captain  by  his  name,  and  ask,  of  the 
Athenians,  whether  they  were  retreating  because  they  expected  to  be  more 
at  home  upon  the  land  of  their  bitterest  foes  than  upon  that  sea  which  had 
been  their  own  so  long  ;  on  the  Syracusan  side,  whether,  when  they  knew 
perfectly  well  that  the  Athenians  were  only  eager  to  find  some  means  of 
flight,  they  would  themselves  fly  from  the  fugitives. 

While  the  naval  engagement  hung  in  the  balance  the  two  armies  on  shore 
had  great  trial  and  conflict  of  soul.  The  Sicilian  soldier  was  animated  by 
the  hope  of  increasing  the  glory  which  he  had  already  won,  while  the  invader 
was  tormented  by  the  fear  that  his  fortunes  might  sink  lower  still.  The  last 
chance  of  the  Athenians  lay  in  their  ships,  and  their  anxiety  was  dreadful. 
The  fortune  of  the  battle  varied  ;  and  it  was  not  possible  that  the  spectators 
on  the  shore  should  all  receive  the  same  impression  of  it.  Being  quite 
close  and  having  different  points  of  view,  they  would  some  of  them  see  their 


562  THUCYDIDES. 

own  ships  victorious ;  their  courage  would  then  revive,  and  they  would 
earnestly  call  upon  the  Gods  not  to  take  from  them  their  hope  of  deliverance. 

But  others,  who  saw  their  ships  worsted,  cried  and  shrieked  aloud,  and 
were  by  the  sight  alone  more  utterly  unnerved  than  the  defeated  combatants 
themselves.  Others  again,  who  had  fixed  their  gaze  on  some  part  of  the 
struggle  which  was  undecided,  were  in  a  state  of  excitement  still  more 
terrible  ;  they  kept  swaying  their  bodies  to  and  fro  in  an  agony  of  hope  and 
fear  as  the  stubborn  conflict  went  on  and  on  ;  for  at  every  instant  they  were 
all  but  saved  or  all  but  lost.  And  while  the  strife  hung  in  the  balance  you 
might  hear  in  the  Athenian  army  at  once  lamentation,  shouting,  cries  of 
victory  or  defeat,  and  all  the  various  sounds  which  are  wrung  from  a  great 
host  in  extremity  of  danger.  Not  less  agonising  were  the  feelings  of  those 
on  board.  At  length  the  Syracusans  and  their  allies,  after  a  protracted 
struggle,  put  the  Athenians  to  flight,  and  triumphantly  bearing  down  upon 
them,  and  encouraging  one  another  with  loud  cries  and  exhortations,  drove 
them  to  land.  Then  that  part  of  the  navy  which  had  not  been  taken  in  the 
deep  water  fell  back  in  confusion  to  the  shore,  and  the  crews  rushed  out  of 
the  ships  into  the  camp.  And  the  land-forces,  no  longer  now  divided  in 
feeling,  but  uttering  one  universal  groan  of  intolerable  anguish,  ran,  some 
of  them  to  save  the  ships,  others  to  defend  what  remained  of  the  wall  ;  but 
the  greater  number  began  to  look  to  themselves  and  to  their  own  safety. 
Never  had  there  been  a  greater  panic  in  an  Athenian  army  than  at  that 
moment.  They  now  suffered  what  they  had  done  to  others  at  Pylos.  For 
at  Pylos  the  Lacedaemonians,  when  they  saw  their  ships  destroyed,  knew  that 
their  friends  who  had  crossed  over  into  the  island  of  Sphacteria  were  lost 
with  them.  And  so  now  the  Athenians  after  the  rout  of  their  fleet,  knew 
that  they  had  no  hope  of  saving  themselves  by  land  unless  events  took  some 
extraordinary  turn. 

Thus,  after  a  fierce  battle  and  a  great  destruction  of  ships  and  men  on 
both  sides,  the  Syracusans  and  their  allies  gained  the  victory.  They  gathered 
up  the  wrecks  and  bodies  of  the  dead,  and  sailing  back  to  the  city,  erected 
a  trophy.  The  Athenians,  overwhelmed  by  their  misery,  never  so  much  as 
thought  of  recovering  their  wrecks  or  of  asking  leave  to  collect  their  dead. 
Their  intention  was  to  retreat  that  very  night.  Demosthenes  came  to  Nicias 
and  proposed  that  they  should  once  more  man  their  remaining  vessels  and 
endeavour  to  force  the  passage  at  daybreak,  saying  that  they  had  more  ships 
fit  for  service  than  the  enemy.  For  the  Athenian  fleet  still  numbered  sixty, 
but  the  enemy  had  less  than  fifty.  Nicias  approved  of  his  proposal,  and 
they  would  have  manned  the  ships,  but  the  sailors  refused  to  embark  ;  for 
they  were  paralysed  by  their  defeat,  and  had  no  longer  any  hope  of  suc- 
ceeding.    So  the  Athenians  all  made  up  their  minds  to  escape  by  land. 

Hermocrates  the  Syracusan  suspected  their  intention,  and  dreading  what 
might  happen  if  their  vast  army,  retreating  by  land  and  settling  somewhere 
in  Sicily,  should  choose  to  renew  the  war,  he  went  to  the  authorities,  and 
represented  to  them  that  they  ought  not  to  allow  the  Athenians  to  withdraw 
by  night  (mentioning  his  own  suspicion  of  their  intentions),  but  that  all  the 
Syracusans  and  their  allies  should  march  out  before  them,  wall  up  the  roads, 
and  occupy  the  passes  with  a  guard.  They  thought  very  much  as  he  did, 
and  wanted  to  carry  out  his  plan,  but  doubted  whether  their  men,  who  were 
too  glad  to  repose  after  a  great  battle,  and  in  time  of  festival — for  there 
happened  on  that  very  day  to  be  a  sacrifice  to  Heracles — could  be  induced 
to  obey.     Most  of  them,  in  the  exultation  of  victory,  were  drinking  and 


5^4  THUCYDIDES. 

keeping  holiday,  and  at  such  a  time  how  could  they  ever  be  expected  to  take 
up  arms  and  go  forth  at  the  order  of  the  generals  ?  On  these  grounds  the 
authorities  decided  that  the  thing  was  impossible.  Whereupon  Hermocrates 
himself,  fearing  lest  the  Athenians  should  gain  a  start  and  quietly  pass  the 
most  difficult  places  in  the  night,  contrived  the  following  plan  :  when  it  was 
growing  dark  he  sent  certain  of  his  own  acquaintances,  accompanied  by  a 
few  horsemen,  to  the  Athenian  camp.  They  rode  up  within  earshot,  and 
pretending  to  be  friends  (there  were  known  to  be  men  in  the  city  who  gave 
information  to  Nicias  of  what  went  on)  called  to  some  of  the  soldiers,  and 
bade  them  tell  him  not  to  withdraw  his  army  during  the  night,  for  the 
Syracusans  were  guarding  the  roads  ;  he  should  make  preparation  at  leisure 
and  retire  by  day.  Having  delivered  their  message  they  departed,  and 
those  who  heard  them  informed  the  Athenian  generals. 

On  receiving  this  message,  which  they  supposed  to  be  genuine,  they 
remained  during  the  night.  And  having  once  given  up  the  intention  of 
starting  immediately,  they  decided  to  remain  during  the  next  day,  that  the 
soldiers  might,  as  well  as  they  could,  put  together  their  baggage  in  the  most 
convenient  form,  and  depart,  taking  with  them  the  bare  necessaries  of  life, 
but  nothing  else. 

Meanwhile  the  Syracusans  and  Gylippus,  going  forth  before  them  with 
their  land-forces,  blocked  the  roads  in  the  country  by  which  the  Athenians 
were  likely  to  pass,  guarded  the  fords  of  the  rivers  and  streams,  and  posted 
themselves  at  the  best  points  for  receiving  and  stopping  them.  Their  sailors 
rowed  up  to  the  beach  and  dragged  away  the  Athenian  ships.  The  Athenians 
themselves  burnt  a  few  of  them,  as  they  had  intended,  but  the  rest  the  Syra- 
cusans towed  away,  unmolested  and  at  their  leisure,  from  the  places  where 
they  had  severally  run  aground,  and  conveyed  them  to  the  city. 

"  On  the  third  day  after  the  sea-fight,  when  Nicias  and  Demosthenes 
thought  that  their  preparations  were  complete,  the  army  began  to  move. 
They  were  in  a  dreadful  condition  ;  not  only  was  there  the  great  fact  that 
they  had  lost  their  whole  fleet,  and  instead  of  their  expected  triumph  had 
brought  the  utmost  peril  upon  Athens  as  well  as  upon  themselves,  but 
also  the  sights  which  presented  themselves  as  they  quitted  the  camp 
were  painful  to  every  eye  and  mind.  The  dead  were  unburied,  and 
when  any  one  saw  the  body  of  a  friend  lying  on  the  ground  he 
was  smitten  with  sorrow  and  dread,  while  the  sick  or  wounded  who  still 
survived  but  had  to  be  left,  were  even  a  greater  trial  to  the  living,  and  more 
to  be  pitied  than  those  who  were  gone.  Their  prayers  and  lamentations 
drove  their  companions  to  distraction  ;  they  would  beg  that  they  might  be 
taken  with  them,  and  call  by  name  any  friend  or  relation  whom  they  saw 
passing;  they  would  hang  upon  their  departing  comrades  and  follow  as  far 
as  they  could,  and  when  their  limbs  and  strength  failed  them  and  they 
dropped  behind,  many  were  the  imprecations  and  cries  which  they  uttered. 
So  that  the  whole  army  was  in  tears,  and  such  was  their  despair  that  they 
could  hardly  make  up  their  minds  to  stir,  although  they  were  leaving  an 
enemy's  country,  having  suffered  calamities  too  great  for  tears  already,  and 
dreading  miseries  yet  greater  in  the  unknown  future.  There  was  also  a 
general  feeling  of  shame  and  self-reproach, — indeed  they  seemed,  not  like 
an  army,  but  like  the  fugitive  population  of  a  city  captured  after  a  siege  ; 
and  of  a  great  city  too.  For  the  whole  multitude  who  were  marching 
together  numbered  not  less  than  forty  thousand.  Each  of  them  took  with 
him  anything  he  could   carry  which  was    likely  to  be  of   use.     Even  the 


THE    SICILIAN  EXPEDITION.  565 

heavy-armed  and  cavalry,  contrary  to  their  practice  when  under  arms,  con- 
veyed about  their  persons  their  own  food,  some  because  they  had  no 
attendants,  others  because  they  could  not  trust  them  ;  for  they  had  long 
been  deserting,  and  most  of  them  had  gone  off  all  at  once.  Nor  was  the 
food  which  they  carried  sufficient ;  for  the  supplies  of  the  camp  had  failed. 
Their  disgrace  and  the  universality  of  the  misery,  although  there  might  be 
some  consolation  in  the  very  community  of  suffering,  was  nevertheless  at 
that  moment  hard  to  bear,  especially  when  they  remembered  from  what  pomp 
and  splendour  they  had  fallen  into  their  present  low  estate.  Never  had  an 
Hellenic  army  experienced  such  a  reverse.  They  had  come  intending  to 
enslave  others,  and  they  were  going  away  in  fear  that  they  would  be  them- 
selves enslaved.  Instead  of  the  prayers  and  hymns  with  which  they  had 
put  to  sea,  they  were  now  departing  amid  appeals  to  heaven  of  another  sort. 
They  were  no  longer  sailors  but  landsmen,  depending,  not  upon  their  fleet, 
but  upon  their  infantry.  Yet  in  face  of  the  great  danger  which  still 
threatened  them  all  these  things  appeared  endurable. 

Nicias,  seeing  the  army  disheartened  at  their  terrible  fall,  went  along  the 
ranks  and  encouraged  and  consoled  them  as  well  as  he  could.  In  his  fervour 
he  raised  his  voice  as  he  passed  from  one  to  another  and  spoke  louder  and 
louder,  desiring  that  the  benefit  of  his  words  might  reach  as  far  as  possible. 

"  Even  now,  Athenians  and  allies,  we  must  hope :  men  have  been 
delivered  out  of  worse  straits  than  these,  and  I  would  not  have  you  judge 
yourselves  too  severely  on  account  either  of  the  reverses  which  you  have 
sustained  or  of  your  present  undeserved  miseries.  I  too  am  as  weak  as  any 
of  you  ;  for  I  am  quite  prostrated  by  my  disease  as  you  see.  And  although 
there  was  a  time  when  I  might  have  been  thought  equal  to  the  best  of  you 
in  the  happiness  of  my  private  and  public  life,  I  am  now  in  as  great  danger 
and  as  much  at  the  mercy  of  fortune  as  the  meanest.  Yet  my  days  have 
been  passed  in  the  performance  of  many  a  religious  duty,  and  of  many  a  just 
and  blameless  action.  Therefore  my  hope  of  the  future  remains  unshaken, 
and  our  calamities  do  not  appal  me  as  they  might.  Who  knows  that  they 
may  not  be  lightened  ?  For  our  enemies  have  had  their  full  share  of  success, 
and  if  our  expedition  provoked  the  jealousy  of  any  god,  by  this  time  we 
have  been  punished  enough.  Others  ere  now  have  attacked  their  neighbours  ; 
they  have  done  as  men  will  do,  and  suffered  what  men  can  bear.  We  may 
therefore  begin  to  hope  that  the  gods  will  be  more  merciful  to  us  ;  for  we 
now  invite  their  pity  rather  than  their  jealousy.  And  look  at  your  own  well- 
armed  ranks  ;  see  how  many  brave  soldiers  you  are,  marching  in  solid  array, 
and  do  not  be  dismayed  ;  bear  in  mind  that  wherever  you  plant  yourselves 
you  are  a  city  already,  and  that  no  city  of  Sicily  will  find  it  easy  to  resist 
your  attack,  or  can  dislodge  you  if  you  choose  to  settle.  Provide  for  the 
safety  and  good  order  of  your  own  march,  and  remember  every  one  of  you 
that  on  whatever  spot  a  man  is  compelled  to  fight,  there  if  he  conquer  he 
may  find  a  home  and  a  fortress. 

"  We  must  press  forward  day  and  night,  for  our  supplies  are  but  scanty. 
The  Sicels  through  fear  of  the  Syracusans  still  adhere  to  us,  and  if  we  can 
only  reach  any  part  of  their  territory  we  shall  be  among  friends,  and  you 
may  consider  yourselves  secure.  We  have  sent  to  them,  and  they  have  been 
told  to  meet  us  and  bring  food.  In  a  word,  soldiers,  let  me  tell  you  that 
you  must  be  brave  ;  there  is  no  place  near  to  which  a  coward  can  fly.  And 
if  you  now  escape  your  enemies,  those  of  you  who  are  not  Athenians  may 
see  once   more  the  home    for  which  they  long,  while   you   Athenians  will 


566 


THUCYDIDES. 


again  rear  aloft  the  fallen  greatness  of  Athens, 
ships  in  which  are  no  men,  constitute  a  state." 

Thus 


For  men,  and  not  walls  or 


GREEK   HOPLIT. 


exhorting  his  troops 
Nicias  passed  through  the  army, 
and  wherever  he  saw  gaps  in  the 
ranks  or  the  men  dropping  out 
of  line,  he  brought  them  back  to 
their  proper  place.  Demosthenes 
did  the  same  for  the  troops  under 
his  command,  and  gave  them 
similar  exhortations.  The  army 
marched  disposed  in  a  hollow 
oblong  :  the  division  of  Nicias 
leading,  and  that  of  Demosthe- 
nes following ;  the  hoplites  en- 
closed within  their  ranks  the 
baggage-bearers  and  the  rest  of 
the  army.  When  they  arrived  at 
the  ford  of  the  river  Anapus 
they  found  a  force  of  the  Syracu- 
sans  and  of  their  allies  drawn 
up  to  meet  them  ;  these  they  put 
to  flight,  and,  getting  command 
of  the  ford,  proceeded  on  their 
march.  The  Syracusans  con- 
tinually harassed  them,  the  cav- 
alry riding  alongside,  and  the 
light-armed  troops  hurling  darts 
at  them.  On  this  day  the  Athen- 
ians proceeded  about  four-and- 
a-half  miles  and  encamped  at  a 
hill.  On  the  next  day  they  started 
early,  and,  having  advanced  more 
than  two  miles,  descended  into 
a  level  plain,  and  encamped, 
country  was  inhabited,  and 
were  desirous  of  obtaining 


The 
they 
food 


from  the  houses,  and  also  water 
which  they  might  carry  with  them,  as  there  was  little  to  be  had  for  many 
miles  in  the  country  which  lay  before 
them.  Meanwhile  the  Syracusans  had 
gone  on  before  them,  and  at  a  point 
where  the  road  ascends  a  steep  hill 
called  the  Acraean  height,  and  there 
is  a  precipitous  ravine  on  either  side, 
were  blocking  up  the  pass  by  a  wall. 
On  the  next  day  the  Athenians  ad- 
vanced, although  again  impeded  by 
the  numbers  of  the  enemy's  cavalry 
who  rode  alongside,  and  of  their 
javelin-men  who  threw  darts  at  them. 
For  a  long  time  the  Athenians  maintained   the  struggle,  but  at  last  retired 


COIN   WITH    MOUNTED   SPEARMAN. 


THE   SICILIAN  EXPEDITION. 


567 


kUJ 


STORMING   A    WALL. 


to  their  own  encampment.     Their  supplies  were  now  cut  off,  because  the 
horsemen  circumscribed  their  movements. 

In  the  morning  they  started  early  and  resumed  their  march.  They 
pressed  onwards  to  the  hill  where  the  way  was  barred,  and  found  in  front  of 
them  the  Syracusan  infantry  drawn  up  to  defend  the  wall,  in  deep  array,  for 
the  pass  was  narrow.  Whereupon  the  Athenians  advanced  and  assaulted 
the  barrier,  but  the  enemy,  who  were  numerous  and  had  the  advantage  of 
position,  threw  missiles  upon  them  from  the  hill,  which  was  steep,  and  so, 
not  being  able  to  force  their  way, 
they  again  retired  and  rested.  Dur- 
ing the  conflict,  as  is  often  the  case 
in  the  fall  of  the  year,  there  came  a 
storm  of  rain  and  thunder,  whereby 
the  Athenians  were  yet  more  dis- 
heartened, for  they  thought  that 
everything  was  conspiring  to  their 
destruction.  While  they  were  resting 
Gylippus  and  the  Syracusans  de- 
spatched a  division  of  their  army  to 
raise  a  wall  behind  them  across  the 
road  by  which  they  had  come  ;  but 
the  Athenians  sent  some  of  their  own 
troops  and  frustrated  their  inten- 
tion. They  then  retired  with  their  whole  army  in  the  direction  of  the 
plain  and  passed  the  night.  On  the  following  day  they  again  advanced. 
The  Syracusans  now  surrounded  and  attacked  them  on  every  side,  and 
wounded  many  of  them.  If  the  Athenians  advanced  they  retreated,  but 
charged  them  when  they  retired,  falling  especially  upon  the  hindermost  of 
them,  in  the  hope  that,  if  they  could  put  to  flight  a  few  at  a  time,  they  might 
strike  a  panic  into  the  whole  army.  In  this  fashion  the  Athenians  strug- 
gled on  for  a  long  time,  and  having  advanced  about  three-quarters  of  a  mile 
rested  in  the  plain.  The  Syracusans  then  left  them  and  returned  to  their 
own  encampment. 

The  army  was  now  in  a  miserable  plight,  being  in  want  of  every  neces- 
sary ;  and  by  the  continual  assaults  of  the  enemy  great  numbers  of  the 
soldiers  had  been  wounded.  Nicias  and  Demosthenes,  perceiving  their  con- 
dition, resolved  during  the  night  to  light  as  many  watch-fires  as  possible 
and  to  lead  off  their  forces.  They  intended  to  take  another  route  and  march 
towards  the  sea  in  the  direction  opposite  to  that  from  which  the  Syracusans 
were  watching  them.  Now  their  whole  line  of  march  lay,  not  towards  Catana, 
but  towards  the  other  side  of  Sicily,  in  the  direction  of  Camarina  and  Gela, 
and  the  cities,  Hellenic  or  Barbarian,  of  that  region.  So  they  lighted 
numerous  fires  and  departed  in  the  night.  And  then,  as  constantly  happens 
in  armies,  especially  in  very  great  ones,  and  as  might  be  expected  when  they 
were  marching  by  night  in  an  enemy's  country,  and  with  the  enemy  from 
whom  they  were  flying  not  far  off,  there  arose  a  panic  among  them,  and  they 
fell  into  confusion.  The  army  of  Nicias,  which  led  the  way,  kept  together, 
and  was  considerably  in  advance,  but  that  of  Demosthenes,  which  was  the 
larger  half,  got  severed  from  the  other  division,  and  marched  in  less  order. 
At  daybreak  they  succeeded  in  reaching  the  sea,  and  striking  into  the 
Helorine  road  marched  along  it,  intending  as  soon  as  they  arrived  at  the 
river  Cacyparis  to  follow  up  the  stream  through  the  interior  of  the  island. 


568  THUC  YDIDES. 

They  were  expecting  that  the  Sicels  for  whom  they  had  sent  would  meet 
them  on  this  road.  When  they  had  reached  the  river  they  found  there  also 
a  guard  of  the  Syracusans  cutting  off  the  passage  by  a  wall  and  palisade. 
They  forced  their  way  through,  and, crossing  the  river,  passed  on  towards 
another  river  which  is  called  the  Erineus,  this  being  the  direction  in  which 
their  guides  led  them. 

When  daylight  broke  and  the  Syracusans  and  their  allies  saw  that  the 
Athenians  had  departed,  most  of  them  thought  thatGylippus  had  let  them  go 
on  purpose,  and  were  very  angry  with  him.  They  easily  found  the  line  of  their 
retreat,  and  quickly  following,  came  up  with  them  about  the  time  of  the  mid- 
day meal.  The  troops  of  Demosthenes  were  last ;  they  were  marching  slowly 
and  in  disorder,  not  having  recovered  from  the  panic  of  the  previous  night, 
when  they  were  overtaken  by  the  Syracusans,  who  immediately  fell  upon  them 
and  fought.  Separated  as  they  were  from  the  others,  they  were  easily  hemmed 
in  by  the  Syracusan  cavalry  and  driven  into  a  narrow  space.  The  division 
of  Nicias  was  as  much  as  six  miles  in  advance,  for  he  marched  faster,  thinking 
that  their  safety  depended  at  such  a  time,  not  in  remaining  and  fighting,  if 
they  could  avoid  it,  but  in  retreating  as  quickly  as  they  could,  and  resisting 
only  when  they  were  positively  compelled.  Demosthenes,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  had  been  more  incessantly  harassed  throughout  the  retreat, 
because  marching  last  he  was  first  attacked  by  the  enemy,  now,  when  he 
saw  the  Syracusans  pursuing  him,  instead  of  pressing  onward,  had  ranged 
his  army  in  order  of  battle.  Thus  lingering  he  was  surrounded,  and  he  and 
the  Athenians  under  his  command  were  in  the  greatest  danger  and  con- 
fusion. For  they  were  crushed  into  a  walled  enclosure,  having  a  road  on 
both  sides  and  planted  thickly  with  olive-trees,  and  missiles  were  hurled  at 
them  from  all  points.  The  Syracusans  naturally  preferred  this  mode  of 
attack  to  a  regular  engagement.  For  to  risk  themselves  against  desperate 
men  would  have  been  only  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  Athenians.  More- 
over, every  one  was  sparing  of  his  life  ;  their  good  fortune  was  already 
assured,  and  they  did  not  want  to  fall  in  the  hour  of  victory.  Even  by  this 
irregular  mode  of  fighting  they  thought  that  they  could  overpower  and  cap- 
ture the  Athenians. 

And  so  when  they  had  gone  on  all  day  assailing  them  with  missiles 
from  every  quarter,  and  saw  that  they  were  quite  worn  out  with 
their  wounds  and  all  their  other  sutferings,  Gylippus  and  the  Syracusans 
made  a  proclamation,  first  of  all  to  the  islanders,  that  any  of  them  who 
pleased  might  come  over  to  them  and  have  their  freedom.  But  only  a  few 
cities  accepted  the  offer.  At  length  an  agreement  was  made  for  the  entire 
force  under  Demosthenes.  Their  arms  were  to  be  surrendered,  but  no  one 
was  to  suffer  death,  either  from  violence  or  from  imprisonment,  or  from 
want  of  the  bare  means  of  life.  So  they  all  surrendered,  being  in  number 
six  thousand,  and  gave  up  what  money  they  had.  This  they  threw  mto  the 
hollows  of  shields,  and  filled  four.  The  captives  were  at  once  taken  to  the 
city.  On  the  same  day  Nicias  and  his  division  reached  the  river  Erineus, 
which  he  crossed,  and  halted  his  army  on  a  rising  ground. 

"  On  the  following  day  he  was  overtaken  by  the  Syracusans,  who  told  him 
that  Demosthenes  had  surrendered,  and  bade  him  do  the  same.  He,  not 
believing  them,  procured  a  truce  while  he  sent  a  horseman  to  go  and  see. 
Upon  the  return  of  the  horseman  bringing  assurance  of  the  fact,  he  sent  a 
herald  to  Gylippus  and  the  Syracusans,  saying  that  he  would  agree,  on 
behalf  of  the  Athenian  state,  to  pay  the  expenses  which  the  Syracusans  had 


THE   SICILIAN  EXPEDITION.  5^9 

incurred  in  the  war,  on  condition  that  they  should  let  his  army  go  ;  until  the 
money  was  paid  he  would  give  Athenian  citizens  as  hostages,  a  man  for  a 
talent.  Gylippus  and  the  Syracusans  would  not  accept  these  proposals,  but 
attacked  and  surrounded  this  division  of  the  army  as  well  as  the  other,  and 
hurled  missiles  at  them  from  every  side  until  the  evening.  They  too  were 
grievously  in  want  of  food  and  necessaries.  Nevertheless  they  meant  to 
wait  for  the  dead  of  the  night  and  then  to  proceed.  They  were  just  resuming 
their  arms,  when  the  Syracusans  discovered  them  and  raised  the  Paean, 
The  Athenians,  perceiving  that  they  were  detected,  laid  down  their  arms 
again,  with  the  exception  of  about  three  hundred  men  who  broke  through 
the  enemy's  guard  and  made  their  escape  in  the  darkness  as  best  they  could. 

"■  When  the  day  dawned  Nicias  led  forward  his  army,  and  the  Syracusans 
and  the  allies  again  assailed  them  on  every  side,  hurling  javelins  and  other 
missiles  at  them.  The  Athenians  hurried  on  to  the  river  Assinarus.  They 
hoped  to  gain  a  little  relief  if  they  forded  the  river,  for  the  mass  of  horsemen 
and  other  troops  overwhelmed  and  crushed  them  ;  and  they  were  worn  out 
by  fatigue  and  thirst.  But  no  sooner  did  they  reach  the  water  than  they  lost 
all  order  and  rushed  in  ;  every  man  was  trying  to  cross  first,  and,  the 
enemy  pressing  upon  them  at  the  same  time,  the  passage  of  the  river  became 
hopeless.  Being  compelled  to  keep  close  together  they  fell  one  upon 
another,  and  trampled  each  other  under  foot :  some  at  once  perished, 
pierced  by  their  own  spears  ;  others  got  entangled  in  the  baggage  and  were 
carried  down  the  stream.  The  Syracusans  stood  upon  the  further  bank  of 
the  river,  which  was  steep,  and  hurled  missiles  from  above  on  the  Athenians, 
who  were  huddled  together  in  the  deep  bed  of  the  stream  and  for  the  most 
part  were  drinking  greedily.  The  Peloponnesians  came  down  the  bank  and 
slaughtered  them,  falling  chiefly  upon  those  who  were  in  the  river.  Where- 
upon the  water  at  once  became  foul,  but  was  drunk  all  the  same,  although 
muddy  and  dyed  with  blood,  and  the  crowd  fought  for  it. 

"  At  last,  when  the  dead  bodies  were  lying  in  heaps  upon  one  another  in 
the  water, and  the  army  was  utterly  undone,  some  perishing  in  the  river,  and 
any  who  escaped  being  cut  off  by  the  cavalry,  Nicias  surrendered  to  Gylippus, 
in  whom  he  had  more  confidence  than  in  the  Syracusans.  He  entreated  him 
and  the  Lacedaemonians  to  do  what  they  pleased  with  himself,  but  not  to  go 
on  killing  the  men.  So  Gylippus  gave  the  word  to  make  prisoners.  There- 
upon the  survivors,  not  including  however  a  large  number  whom  the  soldiers 
concealed,  were  brought  in  alive.  As  for  the  three  hundred  who  had  broken 
through  the  guard  in  the  night,  the  Syracusans  sent  in  pursuit  and  seized 
them.  The  total  of  the  public  prisoners  when  collected  was  not  great ;  for 
many  were  appropriated  by  the  soldiers,  and  the  whole  of  Sicily  was  full  of 
them,  they  not  having  capitulated  like  the  troops  under  Demosthenes.  A 
large  number  also  perished  ;  the  slaughter  at  the  river  being  very  great, 
quite  as  great  as  any  which  took  place  in  the  Sicilian  war  ;  and  not  a  few 
had  fallen  in  the  frequent  attacks  which  were  made  upon  the  Athenians 
during  their  march.  Still  many  escaped,  some  at  the  time,  others  ran  away 
after  an  interval  of  slavery,  and  all  these  found  refuge  at  Catana. 

"  The  Syracusans  and  their  allies  collected  their  forces  and  returned  with 
the  spoil,  and  as  many  prisoners  as  they  could  take  with  them,  into  the  city. 
The  captive  Athenians  and  allies  they  deposited  in  the  quarries,  which  they 
thought  would  be  the  safest  place  of  confinement.  Nicias  and  Demosthenes 
they  put  to  the  sword,  although  against  the  will  of  Gylippus.  For  Gylippus 
thought  that  to  carry  home  with  him  to  Lacedsemon  the  generals   of  the 


57°  THUCYDIDES. 

enemy,  over  and  above  all  his  other  successes,  would  be  a  brilliant  triumph. 
One  of  them,  Demosthenes,  happened  to  be  the  greatest  foe,  and  the  other 
the  greatest  friend  of  the  Lacedaemonians,  both  in  the  same  matter  of  Pylos 
and  Sphacteria.  For  Nicias  had  taken  up  their  cause,  and  had  persuaded 
the  Athenians  to  make  the  peace  which  set  at  liberty  the  prisoners  taken  in 
the  island.  The  Lacedaemonians  were  grateful  to  him  for  the  service,  and 
this  was  the  main  reason  why  he  trusted  Gylippus  and  surrendered  himself 
to  him.  But  certain  Syracusans,  who  had  been  in  communication  with  him, 
were  afraid  (such  was  the  report)  that  on  some  suspicion  of  their  guilt  he 
might  be  put  to  the  torture  and  bring  trouble  on  them  in  the  hour  of  their 
prosperity.  Others  and  especially  the  Corinthians,  feared  that,  being  rich, 
he  might  by  bribery  escape  and  do  them  further  mischief.  So  the  Syra- 
cusans gained  the  consent  of  the  allies  and  had  him  executed.  For  these  or 
the  like  reasons  he  suffered  death.  No  one  of  the  Hellenes  in  my  time  was 
less  deserving  of  so  miserable  an  end  ;  for  he  lived  in  the  practice  of  every 
virtue.  Those  who  were  imprisoned  in  the  quarries  were  at  the  beginning 
of  their  captivity  harshly  treated  by  the  Syracusans.  There  were  great 
numbers  of  them,  and  they  were  crowded  in  a  deep  and  narrow  place.  At 
first  the  sun  by  day  was  still  scorching  and  suffocating,  for  they  had  no 
roof  over  their  heads,  while  the  autumn  nights  were  cold,  and  the  extremes 
of  temperature  engendered  violent  disorders.  Being  cramped  for  room  they 
had  to  do  everything  on  the  same  spot.  The  corpses  of  those  who  died 
from  their  wounds,  exposure  to  the  weather,  and  the  like,  lay  heaped  one 
upon  another.  The  smells  were  intolerable,  and  they  were  at  the  same  time 
afflicted  by  hunger  and  thirst.  During  eight  months  they  were  allowed  only 
about  half  a  pint  of  water  and  a  pint  of  food  a  day.  Every  kind  of  misery 
which  could  befall  man  in  such  a  place  befell  them.  This  was  the  condition 
of  all  the  captives  for  about  ten  weeks.  At  length  the  Syracusans  sold  them, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Athenians  and  of  any  Sicilian  or  Italian  Greeks 
who  had  sided  with  them  in  the  war.  The  whole  number  of  the  public 
prisoners  is  not  accurately  known,  but  they  were  not  less  than  seven 
thousand. 

Of  all  the  Hellenic  actions  which  took  place  in  this  war,  or  indeed  of  all 
Hellenic  actions  which  are  on  record,  this  was  the  greatest  —  the  most 
glorious  to  the  victors,  the  most  ruinous  to  the  vanquished  ;  for  they  were 
utterly  and  at  all  points  defeated,  and  their  sufferings  were  prodigious. 
Fleet  and  army  perished  from  the  face  of  the  earth  ;  nothing  was  saved,  and 
of  the  many  who  went  forth  few  returned  home. 

Thus  ended  the  Sicilian  expedition. 


CHAPTER  III.— XENOPHON. 

I. — Xenophon's  Relation  to  Thucydides.  His  Life.  The  Anabasis.  II. — The  Hel- 
lenica.  Qualities  of  Xenophon's  Style.  The  Memorabilia.  III. — The  Cyropfedia. 
an  Historical  Novel.  IV. — Xenophon's  Minor  Writings.  The  Possible  Reasons 
for  his  Great  Fame.     His  General,  but  Safe,  Mediocrity.     V. — Extracts. 

I. 

NATURALLY  enough  the  followers  of  Thucydides  took  pains  to 
avoid  the  obscurity  of  their  great  predecessor.  Xenophon,  for 
example,  in  his  Hellenica,  in  which  he  takes  up  the  thread  of  history 
where  Thucydides  had  laid  it  down,  and  carries  on  the  narration  to  the 
battle  of  Mantineia  in  363  B.C.,  writes  simply  and  easily  without 
imitating  the  severe  compression  of  his  master.  This  change  was 
necessary,  and  may  be  compared  with  the  similar  improvement  of  the 
French  prose  style  between  Montaigne  and  Boileau,  or  with  the  swift 
development  of  fluency  between  Milton  and  Dryden.  In  these  cases 
the  underlying  cause  was  the  same,  namely,  the  new  interest  in  count- 
less novel  subjects,  and,  above  all,  the  abundant  practice,  which  soon 
settled  the  laws  of  syntax  and  left  old-fashioned  obscurities  forgotten 
and  neglected.  Yet,  with  all  his  difificulties,  Thucydides  far  overtops 
Xenophon,  who  is  distinctly  a  second-class  man  whose  work  has  been 
preserved  among  that  of  men  of  far  greater  importance.  This  good 
fortune  is  due  in  good  measure,  doubtless,  to  admiration  for  his  lucid 
expression.  The  winnowing  of  time  has  buried  almost  everything 
but  the  very  best  of  Greek  work  ;  Xenophon,  however,  is  left  to  show 
us  that  even  a  Greek  could  be  distinctly  commonplace.  There  is  but 
little  chance  that  writers  of  the  present  time  will  be  taught  to  over- 
look the  importance  of  a  good  style,  but  behind  that  attractive  and 
useful  accomplishment  exists  the  necessity  of  having  something  of 
real  importance  to  say.  Xenophon  wrote  with  delightful  simplicity, 
but  the  quality  of  his  work,  the  message  that  he  had  to  deliver,  would 
have  given  him  a  higher  place  among  Roman  writers  than  that  which 
he  holds  among  the  Greek.  His  position  as  successor  to  Thucydides, 
and  in  a  way  a  rival  of  Plato,  is  one  that  he  fills  but  meagerly,  for 
Thucydides  remains  without  a  rival,  as  the  one  writer  who,  by  rigidly 
suppressing  his  own  personality,  has  made  his  personality  almost  the 
most  impressive  in  the  whole  world  of  letters. 

Xenophon  was  born  in  Athens  at  an  uncertain  date,  though  probably 


572 


XENOPHON. 


not  far  from  the  beginning  of  the  Peloponnesian  war,  431  B.C.  He 
grew  up  then  a  constant  witness  of  the  gradual  defeat  of  his  native 
city,  but  also  under  the  influence  of  the  great  intellectual  stimulants 
with  which  that  decay  was  accompanied.  He  early  became  a  devoted 
adherent  of  Socrates,  who  was  then  conveying  his  lessons  to  any  one 
who  would  listen  to  him.     The  story  runs  that  Xenophon  first  made 

the  great  philosopher's  ac- 
quaintance in  this  wise:  he 
was  passing  through  a  narrow 
alley- way,  when  Socrates 
barred  his  passage  with  a 
stick  that  he  held  in  his  hand, 
and  asked  the  boy  if  he 
knew  where  provisions  were 
sold.  "  In  the  market-place," 
was  the  answer.  "  And  where 
are  men  made  good  and 
noble?"  Xenophon  had  no 
answer  ready  for  that,  and 
Socrates  bade  him  follow  him 
and  learn.  The  boy  appears 
to  have  regarded  Socrates  as 
friend  whose  advice  would  be 
of  service  to  him,  for  in  the 
year  402  B.C.,  on  receiving  from 
a  friend  named  Proxenus  an  in- 
vitation to  come  to  Sardis  and 
enter  the  service  of  Cyrus, 
younger  brother  of  Arta- 
xerxes,  King  of  Persia,  he  con- 
sulted Socrates  as  to  the  wis- 
dom of  this  course.  Socrates 
feared  that  he  would  get  into  trouble  with  the  Athenians  by  allying 
himself  with  Cyrus,  who,  it  was  believed,  had  aided  the  Spartans  in 
their  war  against  Athens,  hence  he  advised  his  young  friend  to  consult 
the  oracle  at  Delphi.  But  Xenophon  ingeniously  asked  Apollo  to 
what  god  he  should  sacrifice  in  order  to  accomplish  his  intended  jour- 
ney most  propitiously,  and  sacrificed,  in  obedience,  to  Zeus  the  king. 
Socrates  blamed  him  for  this  boyish  deceit,  but  bade  him  go. 

This  journey  was  a  most  eventful  one,  and  is  fully  described  in 
Xenophon's  Anabasis.  From  this  book  it  appears  that  Cyrus,  who 
was,  as  has  just  been  said,  the  younger  brother  of  Artaxerxes,  King  of 
Persia,  feeling  himself  defrauded  of  his  just  rights,  determined  upon 


XENOl'HON. 


XENOPHON  LEADS  THE  RETREAT  OF  THE   TEN  THOUSAND.    573 

making  a  bold  and  secret  effort  to  win  the  crown  of  that  country.  For 
this  purpose  he  gathered  together  a  force  of  Greeks,  whose  military- 
skill  and  bravery  were  well  attested  by  the  defeat  of  Persia  fifty  years 
before,  under  the  pretense  that  he  meant  to  make  an  attack  on  the 
mountaineers  of  Pisidia.  The  Greeks  were  in  no  way  averse  to  what 
promised  to  be  a  lucrative  campaign,  and  started  off  in  March  or 
April,  401  B.C.,  with  no  suspicion  of  the  real  purpose  of  their  Persian 
leader.  Cyrus,  who  was  a  young  man  but  little  over  twenty,  kept  his 
counsel  well,  and  distinguished  himself  from  other  Oriental  potentates 
by  the  exact  performance  of  every  promise.  He  led  the  band  of 
about  ten  thousand  men,  a  number  afterwards  somewhat  increased, 
directly  inland,  and  only  when  they  were  far  from  the  coast  did  he 
disclose  his  real  purpose.  After  some  little  hesitation,  the  Greeks, 
tempted  by  further  liberal  promises,  decided  to  push  on.  The  advance 
met  with  no  opposition  until  Cyrus  encountered  Artaxerxes  with  his 
army  at  Cunaxa,  only  about  fifty  miles  distant  from  Babylonia.  Here 
a  battle  was  fought  in  which  the  Greek  contingent  was  successful,  and 
the  rout  of  Artaxerxes  would  have  been  complete,  if  a  body  of  Spar- 
tans had  not  disobeyed  orders  by  keeping  close  to  a  river  instead  of 
advancing.  Cyrus,  observing  that  Artaxerxes  was  about  to  make  a 
flank  movement  on  the  victorious  body  of  Greeks  that  had  wholly 
swept  aside  the  Persian  left,  led  a  charge  of  his  body-guard  of  six 
hundred  men  against  the  Persian  center  where  the  king  was,  and  in  the 
attack  Cyrus  was  slain.  The  ten  thousand  Greeks  now  found  them- 
selves, at  the  beginning  of  September,  in  a  strange  country,  far  from 
the  sea-coast,  confronted  by  a  formidable  host,  and  without  a  leader. 
A  more  diflficult  position  can  not  be  imagined,  especially  for  the  Greeks 
with  their  repugnance  to  long  excursions  from  the  familiar  seaboard. 
It  was  at  this  crisis,  when  all  the  Greeks  were  in  absolute  despair, 
that  Xenophon  came  forward,  inspired  by  a  dream  of  his  father's  house 
being  struck  by  lightning  and  set  on  fire,  a  dream  that  was  like  an 
oracle  in  its  capacity  for  opposing  explanations.  He  at  once  addressed 
his  fellow-officers,  encouraging  them  not  to  abandon  hope,  reminding 
them  of  the  previous  victories  of  the  Greeks  over  the  Persians,  and  of 
the  perils  they  ran  in  placing  any  confidence  in  such  treacherous  foes. 
They  thus  plucked  up  their  courage  and  determined  to  do  their  best 
to  accomplish  what  had  seemed  an  impossible  task.  The  command 
was  divided  among  five  officers,  Xenophon  being  one  of  the  two 
appointed  to  take  charge  of  the  rear-guard.  The  next  morning  the 
army  began  its  march,  formed  in  a  hollow  square,  enclosing  the  baggage. 
The  retreating  forces  were  much  harassed  by  the  Persian  cavalry 
during  the  first  day,  and  Xenophon,  who  was  really  the  soul  of  the 
army,  mounted  fifty  men  on  baggage-horses  with  the  further  aid  of 


574 


XENOPHON. 


two  hundred  expert  slingers,  a  device  that  was  perfectly  successful 
even  when  they  were  attacked  by  one  thousand  cavalry  and  four 
thousand  archers  and  slingers.  They  crossed  the  Carduchian  moun- 
tains, fighting  uninterruptedly  for  seven  days  with  the  natives,  but 
freed  at  last  from  the  more  formidable  Persian  host,  and  forded  the 
river  Centrites  into  Armenia.  They  were  now,  towards  the  end  of 
November,  on  the  high  table-lands  of  that  country,  exposed  to  snow- 
storms and  cold  for  which  they  were  ill-prepared.  Many  perished  and 
all  suffered  from  exposure  to  the  fierceness  of  the  weather,  as  they 
wandered  without  a  guide  for  six  days.     When  they  got  down  to  a 


A    HOLLOW    SQUARE. 

lower  level,  it  was  but  to  meet  new  enemies  in  the  various  Georgian 
tribes  who  attacked  them  on  every  side.  At  last  from  the  top  of 
Mount  Theches  they  got  sight  of  the  distant  Euxine. 

"  When  the  men  who  were  in  front,"  says  Xenophon,  "  had  mounted  the 
height,  and  looked  down  upon  the  sea,  a  great  shout  proceeded  from  them  ; 
and  Xenophon  and  the  rear-guard,  when  they  heard  it,  thought  that  some 
new  enemies  were  assailing  their  front.  .  .  .  But  as  the  noise  still  increased, 
and  drew  nearer,  and  as  those  who  came  up  from  time  to  time  kept  running 
at  full  speed  to  join  those  who  were  continually  shouting,  the  cries  growing 
louder  as  the  men  became  more  numerous,  it  appeared  to  Xenophon  that  it 
must  be  something  of  very  great  importance.  Mounting  his  horse,  there- 
fore, and  taking  with  him  Lycius  and  the  cavalry,  he  hastened  forward  to 
give  aid,  when  presently  they  heard  the  soldiers  shouting,  '  The  sea,  the  sea  ! ' 
and  cheering  on  one  another.  They  then  all  began  to  run,  the  rear-guard 
as  well  as  the  rest,  and  the  baggage-cattle  and  horses  were  put  to  their  speed. 
When  they  had  all  reached  the  top  the  men  embraced  one  another  and  their 
generals  and  captains  with  tears  in  their  eyes." 


THE   SUBJECT  OF  THE  ANABASIS.  575 

Their  troubles  were  not  over,  however,  although  the  obstacles  that 
immediately  threatened  them  were  speedily  overcome.  The  Macrones 
were  drawn  up  to  resist  their  march,  but  among  the  ten  thousand  there 
happened  to  be  one  of  that  tribe  who  was  able  to  explain  matters  to 
their  satisfaction,  so  that  they  aided  the  progress  of  the  retreating 
Greeks.  The  Colchians  persisted  in  their  hostile  intent  until  the  Greeks 
charged  on  them,  when  they  relented  and  fled.  The  most  dangerous 
foe  that  they  found  hereabout  was  some  poisonous  honey  that  disabled 
several  of  the  men  for  a  few  days.  Two  more  marches  brought  the 
8600  survivors  at  last  to  Trapezus  (now  Trebizond)  where  they  rested 
for  a  month.  Their  retreat  was  now  over  in  February  of  the  year  400 
B.C.  Thanks  in  great  measure  to  the  tact  and  ingenuity  of  Xenophon 
they  had  escaped  from  a  powerful  foe,  and  had  survived  strange  perils 
that  had  at  first  seemed  insuperable.  They  brought  with  them  not 
only  a  well-earned  reputation  for  bravery,  but  also  abundant  testimony 
of  the  weakness  of  Persia.  That  empire,  with  its  vast  forces  and 
enormous  wealth,  had  always  seemed  a  dangerous  antagonist ;  now  its 
reputation  was  gone,  and  although  for  some  time  it  continued 
to  subsidize  one  Greek  state  against  another,  its  fate  was  sealed. 
Alexander  the  Great,  when  he  had  conquered  Greece,  conquered 
Persia,  and  put  a  final  blow  to  all  danger. from  the  old  Oriental 
monarchies. 

The  remaining  two  books  of  the  Anabasis  recount  the  further  adven- 
tures of  this  army,  which  was  driven  by  want  to  enroll  itself  among 
the  forces  of  the  exiled  Thracian  ruler  Seuthes.  For  two  months  they 
fought  successfully,  but  Seuthes  broke  his  promises,  and  refused  to 
make  the  agreed  payments.  Xenophon  especially  aroused  his  dislike, 
and  even  the  soldiers  began  to  detest  their  old  leader,  who,  however,  was 
able  to  win  back  their  confidence.  Then  messengers  arrived  from  the 
Spartan  Thibron,  inviting  them  to  join  him  in  an  attack  on  their  old 
enemy  Tissaphernes,  the  Persian  satrap.  This  proposal  they  accepted 
eagerly,  especially  when  Seuthes  consented  to  pay  at  least  a  part  of 
the  sum  he  owed  them.  But  Xenophon,  when  he  left  him,  was  in  such 
poverty  that  he  had  to  raise  money  by  selling  his  horse  in  Lampsacus. 
Soon,  however,  fortune  changed,  and,  by  a  lucky  turn  of  events, 
Xenophon  was  able  to  return  to  Greece  a  rich  man.  This  fortunate 
result  he  ascribed  to  the  special  interposition  of  Zeus  the  Gracious ; 
that  it  was  satisfactory,  may  be  gathered  from  his  statement  that  he 
was  now  able  "  even  to  serve  a  friend."  Many  of  his  companions 
doubtless  returned  with  him  ;  those  who  remained  were  merged  into 
the  Spartan  army  that  succeeded  in  freeing  many  of  the  Greek  cities 
in  Asia  Minor  from  Persian  rule. 

The  Anabasis  has  a  charm  that  is  not  always  found  in  the  writings 


576  XENOPHON.  , 

of  Xenophon,  in  that  it  describes  the  author's  own  adventures  and  his 
own  very  creditable  conduct  in  the  most  trying  conditions.  The  style 
has  a  delightful,  Bunyan-like  simplicity,  and  the  tact  with  which 
Xenophon  exercised  the  Athenian's  birthright,  the  gift  of  oratory, 
renders  the  book  instructive  as  well  as  entertaining.  The  account  of 
the  intrigues  that  were  woven  about  this  formidable  little  host,  which 
was  rather  feared  than  loved,  although  much  condensed  in  the  abstract 
given  above,  shows  Xenophon's  skill  as  well  as  the  disintegrating  forces 
that  were  at  work  in  Greece.  His  future  career  further  illustrates 
these  baleful  processes :  within  three  years  after  his  return  he  was 
fighting  under  the  Lacedaemonian  King  Agesilaus  against  the  Persians 
in  Asia  Minor  and  when  the  Athenians  joined  hands  with  the  Persians, 
he  took  part  in  the  invasion  of  northern  Greece  and  fought  against 
the  Athenians  and  their  Theban  auxiliaries  when  they  were  defeated 
at  Coroneia,  in  394  B.C.  For  his  lack  of  patriotism  he  was  formally 
banished. 

Yet  this  statement  proves  rather  the  complexity  of  Hellenic 
politics  than  any  personal  treachery  of  Xenophon's.  When  govern- 
ments perpetually  shifted  their  ground,  honorable  men  might  well 
regard  consistency  as  something  superior  to  blind  allegiance.  Xeno- 
phon had  returned  to  Athens  shortly  after  the  execution  of  his  old 
friend  Socrates,  and  of  their  friendship  he  left  a  monument  in  his 
Memorabilia.  Moreover  Xenophon  had  an  especial  admiration  for 
some  of  the  Spartan  qualities,  that  were  now  employed  against  his  old 
antagonists  the  Persians,  and  it  must  have  been  with  content  that  he 
settled  down  in  the  new  home  granted  him  by  the  Lacedaemonians  at 
Scillus,  a  village  about  two  miles  distant  from  Olympia.  Here  he  built 
an  altar  and  a  temple,  and  found  the  occupation  in  which  he  most 
delighted  in  hunting  the  abundant  game.  Here,  too,  it  was  that  he 
wrote  his  later  books.  In  his  old  age  he  was  driven  out  from  this 
pleasant  retreat  by  war  and  forced  to  seek  refuge  in  Corinth.  The 
Athenians  and  Spartans  were  now  united  against  the  Thebans,  and 
his  sentence  of  banishment  was  repealed.  He  sent  his  two  sons  to 
Athens,  and  both  of  them  fought  at  Mantineia ;  the  story  runs  that 
when  the  news  was  brought  to  the  aged  father,  he  happened  to  be 
offering  a  sacrifice,  with  a  garland  on  his  head.  This  he  took  off  on 
hearing  the  sad  tidings,  but  when  he  heard  that  his  son  had  died 
nobly,  he  replaced  it,  and  refused  to  weep,  because,  he  said,  he  knew 
that  his  son  was  mortal.     He  is  said  to  have  died  at  the  age  of  90. 

IL 

Mention  has  already  been  made  of  the  Hellenica,  or  Greek  history, 
which  Xenophon  brought   down  to  the  battle  of  Mantineia,  but  no 


THE  HELLENICA— QUALITIES  OF  XENOPHON'S  STYLE.  577 

abstract  can  be  given  of  it  which  shall  not  be  a  mere  condensation  of 
the  turbid  stream  of  Grecian  politics  and  conflicts.  The  book  tells  its 
story  briefly  and  simply ;  its  artless  grace  was  much  admired  by  the 
ancients,  who  called  its  author  the  "Attic  bee,"  but  it  wholly  lacks 
the  fascinating  credulity  and  the  serious,  childlike  earnestness  of 
Herodotus,  as  well  as  the  austerer  qualities  of  Thucydides.  Indeed, 
one  might  not  go  wrong  in  saying  that  the  pleasing  moderation  of 
Xenophon's  style,  the  song  of  the  Attic  bee,  was  the  characteristic 
note  of  his  temperate  thought ;  it  most  harmoniously  matched  the 
comparative  tepidity  of  his  intelligence,  as  that  graceful  style  always 
does.  We  see  the  same  correspondence  throughout  all  literature  ;  the 
somewhat  similar  ease  and  grace  of  Addison  were  the  expression  of  a 
corresponding  moderation  in  the  message  he  had  to  deliver :  civiliza- 
tion, decorum,  elegance,  were  the  subject  of  his  graceful  lessons,  and 
his  style  well  represented  what  he  had  undertaken  to  preach.  A  more 
serious  message  requires  and  secures  a  more  impressive  style.  This  is 
what  we  notice  in  a  comparison  between  ^schylus  and  Euripides,  one, 
as  it  were,  Titan,  and  the  other  a  man  of  complex  civilization  ;  the 
language  of  the  older  poet  being  as  majestic  as  his  sublime  thought, 
under  which  he  staggers,  while  the  other  possesses  all  fluency  that 
clear  thought  alone  can  give.  In  Thucydides,  again,  we  notice  besides 
the  clumsiness  inherent  in  the  newness  of  prose,  his  frequent  stumbling 
over  the  intensity  and  complexity  of  what  he  had  to  say,  while  Xeno- 
phon  with  his  less  piercing  vision  knew  no  such  difUculties.  The  state- 
ment that  his  style  was  like  Addison's  does  not  contradict  this,  it 
merely  enforces  its  noticeable  freedom  from  obscurity  ;  its  rhythmical, 
almost  excessive  modulations  show  that  it  was  of  course  subject  to  the 
conditions  that  make  all  literature. 

The  upshot  of  this  statement  is  but  the  affirmation  of  the  undeniable 
fact  that  Xenophon  possessed  his  full  share  of  mediocrity.  Thucydides 
hides  all  personal  feeling,  but  his  hand  trembles  with  the  effort : 
Xenophon's  impartiality,  in  the  Hellenica  at  least,  is  more  nearly  that 
of  indifference.  Yet  in  the  Memorabilia,  in  which  he  records  the  con- 
versation of  Socrates,  he  was  certainly  not  indifferent,  and  he  has  left 
posterity  a  most  valuable  amount  of  testimony  with  regard  to  that 
eminent  philosopher.  Indeed,  it  is  to  Pla'to  and  Xenophon  that  we 
are  indebted  for  by  far  the  largest  part  of  our  knowledge  of  Socrates, 
and  while  Plato  has  idealized  him,  Xenophon  has  possibly  erred  in  the 
other  direction  by  neglecting  some  of  the  more  delicate  qualities  of 
his  subtle  character.  Still  the  book  is  of  great  value,  in  the  first  place 
because  it  testifies  to  the  activity  of  intellectual  life  among  the  Greeks, 
that  an  event  of  so  great  importance  as  the  execution  of  Socrates 
should  have  called  forth  a  protest  from  one  of  his  friends,  and, 
secondly,  because  of  the  information  that  it  gives.     The  charges  that 


578  XENOPHON. 

were  brought  against  Socrates  were  twofold — first,  that  he  was  guilty 
of  impiety  towards  the  gods,  and  secondly,  that  he  was  a  corrupter  of 
youth.  This  is  the  indictment  to  which  Xenophon  pleads.  Besides 
a  general  defense  of  his  old  friend  and  teacher,  he  recites  a  number  of 
the  conversations  of  Socrates  to  show  his  devotion  to  the  gods,  and 
the  benefits  that  he  did  to  men  of  all  conditions  of  life.  He  makes  it 
clear  that  Socrates  always  sought  to  distinguish  good  from  evil  and  to 
inculcate  righteousness.  The  conversations  are  most  vividly  reported, 
with  a  charming  air  of  reality,  and  are  so  arranged  in  four  books  as  to 
cover  the  various  forms  of  instruction  which  the  philosopher  was  never 
tired  of  inculcating.  Thus,  in  the  first  book  Xenophon  makes  mention 
of  the  conversations  of  Socrates  concerning  the  duties  of  men  towards 
the  gods  ;  in  the  second,  on  the  social  relations  ;  in  the  third,  on  public 
duties ;  in  the  fourth,  he  shows  how  So,crates  tried  to  find  out  the 
capacity  of  each  one  of  his  interlocutors,  how  it  was  to  be  directed, 
and  how  made  complete.  The  whole  book  sets  Socrates  in  a  most 
favorable  light,  and  casts  a  corresponding  cloud  on  the  Athenian 
democracy.  The  question  that  it  calls  forth  will  come  up  again  in 
discussing  Plato,  who  brings  further  testimony  concerning  these  events, 
and  it  will  then  be  seen  how  excellent  was  the  impression  made  upon 
two  very  different  observers  by  the  immortal  Socrates.  Without 
Xenophon's  testimony  we  should  be  very  much  in  the  dark. 

III. 

The  only  other  one  of  Xenophon's  long  works  is  the  Cyropaedia, 
or  the  Education  of  Cyrus,  a  historical  novel.  We  have  already  seen 
the  Greeks  mingling  fiction  with  their  history,  for  in  writing  the 
Anabasis  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  the  author  made  over  his  speeches 
with  an  eye  to  rhetorical  effect,  and  in  this  earliest  European  novel  we 
find,  by  a  natural  transition,  a  historical  basis  underlying  the  story. 
Yet  the  historical  basis  is  very  slight ;  Cyrus,  and  the  various  nations 
whom  he  conquered,  and  ruled  were  by  no  means  unfamiliar  to  the 
Greeks,  but  to  use  the  Cyropaedia  as  a  document  for  studying  the 
Persians  would  be  like  consulting  Rasselas  for  information  concerning 
the  geography  and  civil  polity  of  Abyssinia,  or  pursuing  archaeological 
investigations  with  regard  to  the  prehistoric  period  in  Fenelon's  Tele- 
machus.  The  persons  and  names  were  chosen  apparently  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  they  were  on  men's  lips;  the  most  rigid  rule  with  all 
writers  is  economy  of  invention.  The  scene  had  to  be  laid  in  foreign 
parts,  and  Xenophon  selected  Persia  a  country  that  was  in  people's 
thoughts,  and  one  about  which  he  knew  something. 

The  Cyrus  who  is  the  hero  of  the  book  is  an  imaginary  being,  with 


THE  EDUCATION'  OF    YOUTH  IN  ATHENS. 


579 


no  resemblance  to  the  real  possessor  of  that  name ;  it  is  his  flawless 
character,  wise  education,  and  subsequent  career  of  uniform  success 
that  compose  the  story,  which  seems  meant  to  show  an  ideal  that 
Xenophon  regards  as  the  most  practicable  and  praiseworthy.  Some 
of  the  laws  concerning  the  training  of  the  young  which  Xenophon 
describes  are  derived  from  Sparta  rather  than  from  Persia.  Boys, 
until  the  age  of  sixteen  or  seventeen,  were  brought  up  together  under 
a  semi-military  discipline,  learning  justice,  as  Xenophon  says,  meaning 
that  they  took  charge  of  the  various  misdemeanors  of  one  another. 


inflicting  punishment, 
and  acquiring  habits  of 
self-control.  They 
moreover  began  to  prac- 
tice the  use  of  arms. 
During  the  next  ten 
years,  they  hunted  wild 
beasts  and  further  hard- 
ened themselves  for  war 
by  athletic  exercises. 
This  training  was  very 
d  i  ff  e  r  e  n  t  from  that 
which  the  young  Athe- 
nians received,  yet  its 
obvious  advantages,  as 
they  seemed  to  Xeno- 
phon, early  attracted 
his  admiration.  Pos- 
sibly, the  fact  that  he 
transferred  the  system 
to  Persia,  with  reckless 
disregard  of  probabili- 
ty, goes  to  show  the 
aversion  of  the  Athe- 
nians to  learning  from 


GREEK    HUNTER. 


their  enemies.  In  mod- 
ern times,  as  we  all 
know,  it  is  a  persuasive, 
if  not  a  sound,  argu- 
ment, when  others  fail, 
against  any  needed  re- 
form in  political  busi- 
ness, that  it  is  English 
and  so  monarchical,  or 
in  education  that  it  is 
German  and  so  unprac- 
tical. It  is  easy  to 
imagine  how  much  more 
frequently  this  unwor- 
thy appeal  to  the  pas- 
sions must  have  been 
used,  when  we  consider 
the  vigor  of  local  pre- 
judices among  the 
Greeks,  and  the  fact 
that  the  Athenians  were 
sore  over  the  disgrace 
inflicted  upon  them  by 
their  successful  foes. 
Xenophon    continually 


shows  his  high  opinion  of  the  Athenian  system ;  as  a  soldier  of 
fortune  he  was  free  to  adopt  a  lofty  cosmopolitanism  that  was  also 
encouraged  by  a  desire  to  help  his  fellow-countrymen  out  of  their 
difficulties.  The  fate  of  Socrates  must  have  shown  his  friends  what 
further  perils  resulted  from  the  demoralization  of  Athens.  Even  on 
its  own  ground,  so  to  speak,  the  training  of  the  intellect  shows 
itself  a  failure. 

Certainly  the  picture  that  is  drawn  of  the  success  of  Cyrus  was  of  a 
sort  to  encourage  those  who  agreed  with  Xenophon  regarding  educa- 


5  So 


XENOPHON. 


tion.  He  conquered  all  his  foes  without  difficulty,  and  if,  as  is  said, 
Alexander  the  Great  learned  the  weakness  of  Persia  from  the  Anabasis, 
it  may  not  be  fanciful  to  suppose  that  the  Cyropaedia  presented  him 


DISCOBOLUS   CASTING. 
(In  the  Palazzo  Massimi,  Rome.) 


a  certain  sort  of  ideal  representation  of  a  great  conqueror  which  he 
undertook  to  verify  in  his  own  life,  just  as  the  great  Spanish  generals 
who  won  possession  of  Mexico  imitated  the  spirit  that  inspired  the 


CYRUS  AND  ALEXANDER    THE   GREAT. 


581 


fantastic  romances  on  which  their  youth  had  been  nourished.  If  this 
is  the  case,  Alexander  indubitably  followed  a  good  model,  for  Cyrus  is 
as  wise,   discreet,   and   intelligent   a   ruler  as  any  crown-prince  ever 


DISCOBOLUS  RESTING. 
(/«  the  Vatican.) 


promised  to  be.  Besides  the  notion  of  universal  dominion  which  was 
shared  by  Cyrus  and  Alexander,  we  find  other  coincidences  that  sup- 
port  this  hypothesis.      Thus,  the   self-restraint   which   Cyrus   in   the 


582  XENOPHON. 

Story  imposed  upon  himself  with  regard  to  the  beautiful  Panthea — an 
incident  that  forms  the  first  love-tale  in  European  literature — was 
repeated  by  Alexander  in  his  chivalrous  treatment  of  the  wife  of 
Darius,  who  was  said  to  be  the  most  beautiful  woman  in  Asia.  When 
Alexander  punished  Batis  by  dragging  him  tied  to  the  tail  of  his 
chariot  in  imitation  of  the  indignity  inflicted  by  Achilles  on  the  body 
of  Hector,  in  the  Iliad,  he  openly  showed  the  same  spirit ;  it  is  cer- 
tainly possible  that  he  might  have  been  also  influenced  by  a  romance 
which  seemed  to  prophesy  his  success.  In  his  treatment  of  his  con- 
quered foes,  winning  them  to  his  side  by  tact  and  generosity,  he  also 
resembled  the  imaginary  Cyrus,  as  well  as  in  his  sympathy  with 
philosophers  and  men  of  learning. 

The  book  was  probably  more  or  less  inspired  by  Xenophon's 
intimacy  with  Socrates ;  it  at  any  rate  contains  an  undoubted  allusion 
to  his  death  in  a  scene  representing  Tigranes,  the  son  of  the  Armenian 
chief,  in  conversation  with  Cyrus.  That  great  man  asks  him  what  had 
become  of  a  certain  sophist  with  whom  he  had  seen  him  ;  Tigranes 
tells  him  that  his  father  had  put  him  to  death.  "And  why?"  "Out 
of  jealousy,  Cyrus,"  answered  the  Armenian  father,  "  I  could  not  help 
hating  that  man,  because  I  thought  he  was  stealing  my  son's  heart 
away  from  me.  My  son  admired  him  more  than  he  did  me."  This 
was  the  very  ground  on  which  was  made  the  basis  of  the  accusation 
against  Socrates,  that  he  taught  sons  to  hate  their  fathers.  And  in 
his  farewell  speech  upon  his  death-bed,  Cyrus  expresses  his  belief  in 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  in  a  way  that  reminds  the  reader  of  the 
Apology  of  Socrates.  Possibly  in  other  places  Xenophon  repeats  the 
words  of  his  master,  extending  his  influence  in  a  very  different  way 
from  that  in  which  Plato  immortalized  his  name,  but  with  perhaps 
more  effect.  The  book  was  much  admired  in  antiquity,  and  even  now 
it  is  infinitely  more  readable  than  hosts  of  romances  that  have  lived 
their  day  of  popularity  ;  and  however  it  may  have  been  with  Alexander 
the  Great,  we  know  that  Cicero  recommended  it  to  his  brother  Quintus 
as  a  manual  of  wise  instruction  for  a  ruler,  and  that  it  was  a  favorite 
of  Scipio  Africanus. 

IV. 

The  Apology  of  Socrates,  of  which  mention  has  just  been  made,  is 
one  of  the  many  minor  books  of  Xenophon  that  have  floated  down  to 
us  with  all  the  security  of  mediocrity  when  far  more  important  works 
have  wholly  perished.  It  consists  of  a  speech  ascribed  to  Socrates  in 
which  he  defends  himself  against  his  accusers,  and  explains  his  willing- 
ness to  meet  his  death.     Unfortunately  the  genuineness  of  the  Apology 


THE  APOLOGY  OF  SOCRATES. 


583 


is  extremely  doubtful.  Socrates  again  appears  as  a  prominent  person 
in  the  Symposium,  or  Banquet,  which  represents  a  fashionable  supper- 
party  at  Athens,  where  the  great  philosopher  turns  the  conversation 
with  ease  and  eloquence  into  good  advice  for  his  young  friends.  Plato, 
as  we  shall  see,  wrote  another  Banquet,  in  which  Socrates  was  the  first 
figure,  but  he  lent  it  another  and  profounder  quality  than  that  which 
Xenophon  gave  to  his  charming  sketch.  In  the  book  on  Husbandry, 
again,  we  find  Socrates  taking  an  important  part  in  the  conversation 
regarding  what  is  the  oldest  as  well,  perhaps,  as  the  crudest  of  sciences. 
The  book  is  attractive,  and  possibly  it  was  from  the  method  here 
employed  by  Xenophon  that  Plato  conceived  the  notion  of  his  Socratic 
dialogues.  Here,  however,  we  find  Socrates  represented  in  a  very 
different  light  from  that  in  which  the  later  writer  has  set  him.  He  is 
a  model  of  domestic  wisdom  and  kindliness.  The  book  presents  an 
attractive  picture  of  the  rustic  life  of  the  old  Greeks,  and  was  highly 
esteemed  by  the  Romans. 

Besides  these  writings  we  have  Xenophon's  enthusiastic  eulogy  of 
Agesilaus,  the  Spartan,  admiration  of  Spartan  ways  being  one  of  this 
author's  characteristics;  an  imaginary  conversation  between  Hiero, 
tyrant  of  Syracuse,  and  Simonides,  in  which  the  miseries  of  a  despot's 
life  are  portrayed  ;  political  essays  on  Lacedsemonia  and  Athens ;  and 


HORSE-TRAINING. 


an  essay  on  the  training  of  a  horse  and  similar  subjects,  in  which  he 
repeats  his  familiar  praise  of  hunting  and  exercise  as  training  for  the 
young.  Much  that  he  says  is  as  true  now  and  as  valuable  as  on  the 
day  it  was  written.  Such,  for  example,  is  the  undeniably  sound  advice 
not  to  approach  a  horse  when  under  the  influence  of  anger;  for  anger 
is  thoughtless  and  leads  men  to  actions  which  they  afterwards  repent. 
Xenophon's  message  at  the  best  was  not  a  great  one,  but  he  repeated 
and  impressed  it  so  carefully  on  his  readers  that  his  influence  was  great 
and  lasting.     Indeed,  his  very  moderation  and   unfailing  grace  have 


THE    SPARTAN  AND  ATHENIAN  POLITICAL    SYSTEMS.  585 

always  found  him  admirers,  while  greater,  stronger  men  have  had  to 
live  through  periods  of  indifference  or  actual  obloquy.  No  one  is 
really  great  with  impunity;  a  time  will  come  when  majesty  is  held  to 
be  roughness;  naturalness,  offensive  simplicity ;  eloquence  bombast ; 
but  good-nature  and  grace,  even  if  they  arouse  no  enthusiasm,  are 
always  pleasing,  and  it  is  probably  to  the  possession  of  these  qualities 
that  Xenophon  owes  a  good  part  of  his  reputation.  He  at  least  never 
offends. 

More  than  this,  the  ready  intelligibility  of  his  language  is  but  a  sign 
of  the  clearness  and  simplicity  of  his  thought,  and  this  is  never  tired 
of  busying  itself  with  the  attractiveness  and  the  utility  of  a  life  of 
virtue.  He  is  not  a  moralist  who  leads  enthusiastic  disciples  to  exalted 
heights  of  renunciation  and  unselfishness,  but  rather  a  sort  of  Greek 
Franklin  whose  ideal  is  a  good  citizen.  Not  every  one  when  fretted 
by  worldly  cares  and  disappointments  can  recall  the  lofty  truths  which 
only  unfold  their  inspiring  secret  after  long  and  arduous  contemplation, 
but  Xenophon's  principle,  that  virtue,  happiness,  and  beauty  are  three 
faces  of  a  single  truth,  is  readily  grasped  and  assimilated.  The  world, 
too,  was  ready  to  approve  another  of  the  main  inspirations  of  his  work, 
namely,  his  unconcealed  admiration  for  the  civil  polity  that  gave 
strength  to  Sparta  in  its  struggle  with  Athens.  The  conflict  between 
those  two  civilizations  was  a  many-sided  one ;  it  was  due  not  merely 
to  the  natural  hostility  of  one  state  to  another,  to  the  simple  objection 
of  one  powerful  nation  to  the  leadership  of  a  rival,  but  it  was  embit- 
tered by  jealousy  and  by  the  instinctive  dislike  that  an  aristocracy 
always  feels  for  its  democratic  neighbors.  Instances  abound  in  modern 
history,  as  in  the  feeling  of  the  imperial  governments  of  the  Continent 
for  England  and  America.  This  last  Avas  a  most  important  element, 
not  merely  in  the  Peloponnesian  war,  but  in  its  continued  effect  upon 
men's  minds  for  many  generations. 

Sparta  was  an  aristocracy,  and  possessed  what  we  may  call  a  strong 
government  which  demanded  and  kept  a  firm  hold  upon  every  citizen. 
Athens  was  a  democracy  resting  on  wholly  opposite  principles,  when 
the  freedom  of  the  individual  citizen  was  the  corner-stone  of  its  civic 
existence.  We  are  mainly  concerned  at  this  moment  with  its  influence 
upon  literature,  and  we  have  seen  what  this  was  in  the  study  of  the 
magnificent  works  wherein  the  eager  life  of  the  time  found  expression. 
Xenophon,  however,  was  an  aristocrat  by  birth  and  by  feeling,  and  the 
views  that  he  expressed  with  ingenuity  regarding  the  superiority  of 
the  Spartan  to  the  Athenian  political  system  became  common  in 
Athens  as  a  natural  result  of  the  excesses  of  the  democracy  and  of  its 
defeat  in  the  war.  The  unjust  death  of  Socrates  had  an  enormous 
effect  in  forming  men's  opinions  ;  and  the  general  overthrow  of  all  that 


586  XENOPHON. 

was  held  precious  produced  the  same  result  that  repeated  itself  in 
modern  history  with  men  like  Wordsworth,  who  hailed  the  French 
Revolution  with  delight,  and  were  afterwards  horrified  into  the  con- 
demnation of  their  earlier  raptures.  Henceforth  Athens  was  a  divided 
city,  torn  by  intestine  strife,  or  at  least  by  divergent  counsels,  with  the 
aristocracy  and  the  democracy  regarding  each  other  with  active  hos- 
tility. It  lost  its  previous  magnificent  unity ;  how  much  this  was 
imperilled  in  the  Peloponnesian  war  has  been  evident  in  the  hostility 
that  Aristophanes  showed  to  Euripides.  That  schism  extended  further 
until  the  Athenian  democracy  failed,  as  we  judge  human  failure,  and 
in  the  futile  arguments  of  Demosthenes,  in  the  equally  powerless 
eloquence  of  Socrates,  we  shall  find  further  illustrations  of  the  hopeless- 
ness of  all  attempts  to  make  over  the  past  as  we  have  already  seen  it 
in  the  plays  of  Aristophanes. 

Xenophon's  repugnance  to  the  democracy  was,  however,  not  a  mere 
personal  quality  of  his  own,  but  also  in  great  measure  an  expression 
of  the  natural  change  of  sentiments  which  was  coming  over  a  whole 
generation  of  men.  Instances  of  its  power  with  him  abound  in  all  his 
works,  as  in  the  veiled  encomiums  of  Sparta  in  his  imaginary  pictures 
of  Persia,  and  throughout  the  Hellenica  when  he  has  occasion  to  point 
out  the  excesses  of  the  democracy  in  contrast  with  the  greater  wisdom 
of  the  aristocracy.  Thus,  when  he  had  to  speak  of  a  massacre  at 
Corinth,  where  a  number  of  nobles  were  put  to  death,  he  felt  and 
expressed  all  the  repugnance  that  would  have  animated  an  Englishman 
at  the  beginning  of  this  century  when  he  spoke  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. To  be  sure,  Xenophon  condemns  the  bloody  vengeance  that 
the  Thirty  Tyrants  in  Athens  took  upon  the  democracy,  but  it  is  only 
with  temperate  and  cooler  indignation.  Generally,  to  be  sure,  it  is 
Sparta  that  receives  all  the  praise,  not  from  treachery  or  a  disgraceful 
lack  of  patriotism,  but  simply  because  the  Lacedaemonians  were  the 
best  representatives  of  the  party  of  law  and  order.  Their  principles 
appeared  to  be  the  only  ones  that  could  save  Greece  from  anarchy, 
and  to  advocate  them  seemed  to  Xenophon  the  direct  duty  of  an 
honest  man  who  had  the  good  of  his  country  at  heart.  It  was  not  a 
new  influx  of  brotherly  love  that  brought  Russians,  Austrians,  Prus- 
sians, and  Englishmen  to  unite  against  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  but  a 
desire  to  save  society;  and,  too,  in  the  case  before  us,  after  the  failure 
of  democracy,  aristocratic  principles  held  out  the  only  hope  of  escaping 
ruin,  and  strict  adherence  to  Athens  was,  in  the  eyes  of  Xenophon  and 
the  many  who  agreed  with  him,  only  a  narrow  and  pernicious  interpre- 
tation of  real  duty  to  their  country.  Its  liberty,  it  was  thought,  was 
merely  licentiousness ;  the  universal  right  of  speech  seemed  to  give 
room  for  the  power  of  demagogues;    the  rule  of  the  multitude  was 


SPARTAN  SUPREMACY— XENOPHON' S  ARISTOCRATIC    VIEWS.    587 

mob  rule,  and  in  comparison  no  praise  was  too  warm  for  the  institu- 
tions of  Sparta,  which  kept  the  citizens,  from  infancy  to  old  age,  bound 
up  in  in  a  narrow  circle  of  clearly  defined  duties,  and  left  the  supreme 
control  in  the  hands  of  a  small,  select  number  of  men.  Thenceforth, 
we  may  see  the  prevalence  of  these  views  not  merely  in  Athens,  where 
it  prevailed  against  the  fervid  eloquence  of  Demosthenes,  and  so 
opened  the  gates  to  the  Macedonians,  but  throughout  the  entire 
civilization  of  the  subsequent  ages.  It  does  not  cover  the  ground  to 
say  that  Xenophon  laconized,  as  they  called  it,  or  became  an  adherent 
of  Sparta ;  the  whole  world  laconized.  It  looked  with  horror  on  a 
method  of  government  which  had  failed  completely  and  ended  in 
violence  and  anarchy.  To  be  sure,  the  material  power  of  Sparta  lasted 
for  but  a  very  short  time,  and  its  defeat  at  Leuktra,  in  371  B.C., 
destroyed  many  of  the  hopes  that  had  gathered  around  it,  but  the 
underlying  spirit  of  confidence  in  aristocracy  and  of  distrust  in  democ- 
racy survived  the  downfall  of  its  strongest  supporter.  The  condition 
of  Athens  was  not  materially  improved  by  the  overthrow  of  Sparta, 
and  the  fate  of  the  city  served  as  a  solemn  warning  against  all 
sympathy  with  democracy.  A  chapter  of  human  experience  seemed 
closed. 

In  Xenophon  the  world  saw  a  man  who  was  a  powerful  and  eloquent 
ally  of  their  cause,  and,  naturally  enough,  every  effort  was  made  to 
point  out  his  importance.  He  had  the  good  fortune  to  express  what 
was  the  animating  principle  of  future  civilizations,  namely,  absolute 
confidence  in  a  strong  government,  and  a  Greek  who  spoke  words  of 
what  seemed  the  highest  wisdom  was  sure  to  be  admired,  especially 
when  he  brought  to  this  side  some  of  the  authority  which  had  been 
acquired  by  men  with  very  different  views.  Some  of  the  light  of  those 
who  lived  before  him  in  happier  days  still  illuminated  him  ;  he  held 
an  important  position  as  the  man  who  continued  the  history  of 
Thucydides,  as  the  biographer  of  Socrates,  and  that  gave  added 
weight  to  the  writer  who  pointed  out  the  path  which  the  world  was 
to  follow  for  many  centuries.  It  is  also  interesting  to  notice  how  well 
he  represents  the  best  side  of  what  we  may  call  the  aristocratic  party. 
Wit,  grace,  unfailing  decorum,  what  is  called  good  sense,  are  his  char- 
acteristic qualities ;  they  found  him  enthusiastic  admirers  in  Rome 
and  preserved  his  popularity  in  modern  times  so  long  as  men  felt  that 
material  security  and  literary  charm  rested  on  a  common  groundwork 
of  conventionality  which  it  would  be  indiscreet  to  examine  too  closely. 
He  was  admirably  fitted  to  retain  the  position  which  he  soon  acquired 
as  the  favorite  of  men  whose  views  of  the  world  were  like  his  own, 
and  it  is  to  his  excellence  as  a  representative  of  what  in  comparison 
with  the  greatest  men  who  preceded  him  is  mediocrity  that  he  owes  his 


588  XENOPHON. 

long-lived  fame.  He  was  safe  in  the  possession  of  what  appeared  to 
be  worldly  wisdom,  and  whatever  one  may  think  of  his  principles,  this 
fact,  that  was  so  long  the  ideal  of  intelligence  and  security,  gives 
Xenophon  a  historical  importance  which  no  change  of  opinions  can 
ever  justly  deny  him.  The  world  will  never  learn  anything  by  shut- 
ting its  eyes  to  facts,  past  or  present. 


V. 

THE  DEATH-BED  OF  CYRUS  THE  ELDER. 

FROM  THE  CYROP^DIA,  BOOK  VIII.,  CHAP.  VII. 

After  he  had  thus  spent  some  considerable  time,  Cyrus,  now  in  a  very 
advanced  age,  takes  a  journey  into  Persia,  which  was  the  seventh  from  the 
acquisition  of  his  empire,  when  his  father  and  mother  had  probably  been 
for  some  time  dead.  Cyrus  made  the  usual  sacrifices,  and  danced  the 
Persian  dance,  according  to  the  custom  of  his  country,  and  distributed  to 
every  one  presents,  as  usual.  Then,  being  asleep  in  the  royal  palace,  he 
had  the  following  dream.  There  seemed  to  advance  towards  him  a  person 
with  more  than  human  majesty  in  his  air  and  countenance,  and  to  say  to 
him  :  "  Cyrus,  prepare  yourself,  for  you  are  now  going  to  the  gods  ! " 
After  this  appearance  in  his  dream  he  awaked,  and  seemed  assured  that 
his  end  drew  near.  Therefore,  taking  along  with  him  the  victims,  he  sacri- 
ficed on  the  summit  of  a  mountain  (as  is  the  custom  in  Persia)  to  Jove 
paternal,  the  Sun,  and  the  rest  of  the  gods,  accompanying  the  sacrifices 
with  this  prayer  : 

"  O  Jove,  Paternal  Sun,  and  all  ye  gods  !  receive  these  sacrifices,  as  the 
completion  of  many  worthy  and  handsome  actions  ;  and  as  grateful  acknowl- 
edgments for  having  signified  to  me,  both  by  the  victims,  by  celestial  signs, 
by  birds,  and  by  omens,  what  became  me  to  do,  and  not  to  do.  And  I  abun- 
dantly return  you  thanks,  that  I  have  been  sensible  of  your  care  and  protec- 
tion ;  and  that,  in  the  course  of  my  prosperity,  I  never  was  exalted  above 
what  became  a  man.  I  implore  you  now  to  bestow  all  happiness  on  my 
children,  my  wife,  my  friends,  and  my  country  ;  and  for  myself,  that  I  may 
die  as  I  have  always  lived." 

When  he  had  finished  his  sacrifices  and  prayer  he  returned  home,  and 
finding  himself  disposed  to  be  quiet,  he  lay  down.  At  a  certain  hour  proper 
persons  attended,  and  offered  him  to  wash.  He  told  them  that  he  had  rested 
very  well.  Then,  at  another  hour,  proper  officers  brought  him  his  supper; 
but  Cyrus  had  no  appetite  to  eat,  but  seemed  thirsty,  and  drank  with 
pleasure.  And  continuing  thus  the  second  and  third  days,  he  sent  for  his 
sons,  who,  as  it  happened,  had  attended  their  father,  and  were  then  in 
Persia.  He  summoned  likewise  his  friends,  and  the  magistrates  of  Persia. 
When  they  were  all  met,  he  began  in  this  manner  : 

"  Children,  and  all  of  you,  my  friends,  here  present !  the  conclusion  of  my 
life  is  now  at  hand,  which  I  certainly  know  from  many  symptoms.  You 
ought,  when  I  am  dead,  to  act  and  speak  of  me  in  everything  as  a  happy 
man  ;  for,  when  I  was  a  child,  I  seemed  to  have  received  advantage  from 
what  is  esteemed  worthy  and  handsome  in  children  ;  so  likewise,  when  I  was 


EXTRACT  FROM  THE    CYROP^DIA.  589 

a  youth,  from  what  is  esteemed  so  in  young  men  ;  so.  when  I  came  to  be  a 
man,  from  what  is  esteemed  worthy  and  handsome  in  men.  And  I  have 
always  seemed  to  observe  myself  increase  with  time  in  strength  and  vigour, 
so  that  I  have  not  found  myself  weaker  or  more  infirm  in  my  old  age  than 
in  my  youth.  Neither  do  I  know  that  I  have  desired  or  undertaken  any- 
thing in  which  I  have  not  succeeded.  By  my  means  my  friends  have 
been  made  happy,  and  my  enemies  enslaved  ;  and  my  country,  at  first 
inconsiderable  in  Asia,  I  leave  in  great  reputation  and  honour.  Neither  do 
I  know  that  I  have  not  preserved  whatever  I  acquired.  And  though,  in 
time  past,  all  things  have  succeeded  according  to  my  wishes,  yet  an  appre- 
hension lest,  in  process  of  time,  I  should  see,  hear,  or  suffer  some  difficulty, 
has  not  suffered  me  to  be  too  much  elated,  or  too  extravagantly  delighted. 
Now  if  I  die,  I  leave  you,  children,  behind  me,  (whom  the  gods  have  given 
me,)  and  I  leave  my  country  and  my  friends  happy.  Ought  not  I  therefore, 
in  justice,  to  be  always  remembered,  and  mentioned  as  fortunate  and  happy  ? 
I  must  likewise  declare  to  whom  I  leave  my  kingdom,  lest  that  being  doubtful 
should  hereafter  raise  dissensions  among  you.  Now,  children,  I  bear  an 
equal  affection  to  you  both  ;  but  I  direct  that  the  elder  should  have  the 
advising  and  conducting  of  affairs,  as  his  age  requires,  and  it  is  probable  he 
has  more  experience.  And  as  I  have  been  instructed  by  my  country  and 
yours  to  give  place  to  those  elder  than  myself,  not  only  brothers,  but  fellow- 
citizens,  both  in  walking,  sitting,  and  speaking  ;  so  have  I  instructed  you, 
from  your  youth,  to  show  a  regard  to  your  elders,  and  to  receive  the  like 
from  such  as  were  inferior  to  you  in  age  ;  receive  then  this  disposition  as 
ancient,  customary,  and  legal.  Do  you  therefore,  Cambyses,  hold  the  king- 
dom as  allotted  you  by  the  gods,  and  by  me,  so  far  as  it  is  in  my  power. 
To  you,  Tanoaxares,  I  bequeath  the  satrapy  of  the  Medes,  Armenians,  and 
Cadusians  ;  which  when  I  allot  you,  I  think  I  leave  your  elder  brother  a 
larger  empire,  and  the  title  of  a  kingdom,  but  to  you  a  happiness  freer  from 
care  and  vexation  :  for  I  do  not  see  what  human  satisfaction  you  can  need  ; 
but  you  will  enjoy  whatever  appears  agreeable  and  pleasing  to  men.  An 
affection  for  such  things  as  are  difficult  to  execute,  a  multitude  of  pains,  and 
an  impossibility  of  being  quiet,  anxiety  from  an  emulation  of  my  actions, 
forming  designs  yourself  and  having  designs  formed  against  you  :  these  are 
things  which  must  more  necessarily  attend  a  king  than  one  in  your  station  ; 
and  be  assured  these  give  many  interruptions  to  pleasure  and  satisfaction. 
Know,  therefore,  Cambyses,  that  it  is  not  the  golden  sceptre  which  can  pre- 
serve your  kingdom  ;  but  faithful  friends  are  a  prince's  truest  and  securest 
sceptre.  But  do  not  imagine  that  men  are  naturally  faithful  (for  then  they 
would  appear  so  to  all,  as  other  natural  endowments  do),  but  every  one  must 
render  others  faithful  to  himself  :  and  they  are  not  to  be  procured  by  vio- 
lence, but  rather  by  kindness  and  beneficence.  If  therefore  you  would  con- 
stitute other  joint  guardians  with  you  of  your  kingdom,  whom  can  you  better 
begin  with  than  him  who  is  of  the  same  blood  with  yourself  ?  and  fellow- 
.citizens  are  nearer  to  us  than  strangers,  and  those  who  live  and  eat  with  us, 
than  those  that  do  not.  And  those  who  have  the  same  original,  who  have 
been  nourished  by  the  same  mother,  and  grown  up  in  the  same  house,  and 
beloved  by  the  same  parents,  and  who  call  on  the  same  father  and  mother, 
are  not  they,  of  all  others,  the  nearest  to  us?  Do  you  not  therefore  render 
those  advantages  fruitless,  by  which  the  gods  unite  brothers  in  affinity  and 
relation  ;  but  to  those  advantages  add  other  friendly  offices,  and  by  that 
means  your  friendship  will  be  reciprocally  solid  and  lasting.     The  taking 


59°  XENOPHON. 

care  of  a  brother  is  providing  for  oneself.  To  whom  can  the  advancement 
of  a  brother  be  equally  honourable,  as  to  a  brother  ?  Who  can  show  a  regard 
to  a  great  and  powerful  man  equal  to  his  brother?  Who  will  fear  to  injure 
another,  so  much  as  him  whose  brother  is  in  an  exalted  station  ?  Be  there- 
fore second  to  none  in  submission  and  good-will  to  your  brother,  since  no 
one  can  be  so  particularly  serviceable  or  injurious  to  you.  And  I  would 
have  you  consider  how  you  can  hope  for  greater  advantages  by  obliging  any 
one  so  much  as  him?  Or  whom  can  you  assist  that  will  be  so  powerful  an 
ally  in  war?  Or  what  is  more  infamous  than  want  of  friendship  between 
brothers  ?  Whom  of  all  men,  can  we  so  handsomely  pay  regard  to  as  to  a 
brother  ?  In  a  word,  Cambyses,  your  brother  is  the  only  one  you  can  advance 
next  to  your  person  without  the  envy  of  others.  Therefore,  in  the  name  of 
the  gods,  children,  have  regard  for  one  another,  if  you  are  careful  to  do  what 
is  acceptable  to  me.  For  you  ought  not  to  imagine,  you  certainly  know, 
that  after  I  have  closed  this  period  of  human  life,  I  shall  no  longer  exist : 
for  neither  do  you  now  see  my  soul,  but  you  conclude,  from  its  operations, 
that  it  does  exist.  And  have  you  not  observed  what  terrors  and  apprehen- 
sions murderers  are  inspired  with  by  those  who  have  suffered  violence  from 
them  ?  What  racks  and  torture  do  they  convey  to  the  guilty  ?  Or  how  do 
you  think  honours  should  have  continued  to  be  paid  to  the  deceased,  if  their 
souls  were  destitute  of  all  power  and  virtue  ?  No,  children,  I  can  never  be 
persuaded  that  the  soul  lives  no  longer  than  it  dwells  in  this  mortal  body, 
and  that  it  dies  on  its  separation  ;  for  I  see  that  the  soul  communicates 
vigour  and  motion  to  mortal  bodies  during  its  continuance  in  them.  Neither 
can  I  be  persuaded  that  the  soul  is  divested  of  intelligence  on  its  separation 
from  this  gross,  senseless  body  ;  but  it  is  probable  that  when  the  soul  is 
separated,  it  becomes  pure  and  entire,  and  then  is  more  intelligent.  It  is 
evident  that,  on  man's  dissolution,  every  part  of  him  returns  to  what  is  of 
the  same  nature  with  itself,  except  the  soul  ;  that  alone  is  invisible,  both 
during  its  presence  here,  and  at  its  departure.  And  you  may  have  observed 
that  nothing  resembles  death  so  much  as  sleep  ;  but  then  it  is  that  the  human 
soul  appears  most  divine,  and  has  a  prospect  of  futurity ;  for  then  it  is  pro- 
bable that  the  soul  is  most  free  and  independent.  If  therefore  things  are  as 
I  think,  and  that  the  soul  leaves  the  body,  having  regard  to  my  soul,  comply 
with  my  request.  But  if  it  be  otherwise,  and  that  the  soul  continuing  in  the 
body  perishes  with  it,  let  nothing  appear  in  your  thoughts  or  actions  criminal 
or  impious,  for  fear  of  the  gods,  who  are  eternal,  whose  power  and  inspection 
extend  over  all  things,  and  who  preserve  the  harmony  and  order  of  the 
universe  free  from  decay  or  defect,  whose  greatness  and  beauty  is  inexplic- 
able !  Next  to  the  gods,  have  regard  to  the  whole  race  of  mankind  in  per- 
petual succession  :  for  the  gods  have  not  concealed  you  in  obscurity  ;  but 
there  is  a  necessity  that  your  actions  should  be  conspicuous  to  the  world. 
If  they  are  virtuous,  and  free  from  injustice,  they  will  give  you  power  and 
interest  in  all  men  ;  but  if  you  project  what  is  unjust  against  each  other,  no 
man  will  trust  you  ;  for  no  one  can  place  a  confidence  in  you,  though  his 
inclination  to  it  be  ever  so  great,  when  he  sees  you  unjust,  where  it  most 
becomes  you  to  be  a  friend.  If  therefore  I  have  not  rightly  instructed  you 
what  you  ought  to  be  to  one  another,  learn  it  from  those  who  lived  before 
our  time,  for  that  will  be  the  best  lesson.  For  there  are  many  who  have 
lived  affectionate  parents  to  their  children,  and  friends  to  their  brothers  ; 
and  some  there  are  who  have  acted  the  opposite  part  towards  each  other. 
Whichsoever  of  these  you  shall  observe  to  have  been  most  advantageous, 


CYRUS    THE    YOUNGER:   FROM    THE  ANABASIS.  591 

you  will  do  well  in  giving  it  the  preference  in  your  choice.  But  perhaps  this 
is  sufficient  as  to  these  matters.  When  I  am  dead,  children,  do  not  enshrine 
my  body  in  gold,  nor  in  silver,  nor  anything  else  ;  but  lay  it  in  the  earth  as 
soon  as  possible  ;  for  what  can  be  more  happy  than  to  mix  with  the  earth, 
which  gives  birth  and  nourishment  to  all  things  excellent  and  good  ?  And 
as  I  have  always  hitherto  borne  an  affection  for  men,  so  it  is  now  most 
pleasing  to  me  to  incorporate  with  that  which  is  beneficial  to  men.  Now," 
said  he,  "  it  seems  to  me  that  my  soul  is  beginning  to  leave  me,  in  the  same 
manner  as  it  is  probable  it  begins  its  departure  with  others.  If  therefore 
any  of  you  are  desirous  of  touching  my  right  hand,  or  willing  to  see  my  face 
while  it  has  life,  come  near  to  me  :  for,  when  I  shall  have  covered  it,  I 
request,  of  you,  children,  that  neither  yourselves,  nor  any  others,  would  look 
on  my  body.  Summon  all  the  Persians  and  their  allies  before  my  tomb,  to 
rejoice  for  me  ;  that  I  shall  be  then  out  of  danger  of  suffering  any  evil, 
whether  I  shall  be  with  the  gods,  or  shall  be  reduced  to  nothing.  As  many 
as  come,  do  you  dismiss  with  all  those  favours  that  are  thought  proper  for  a 
happy  man.  And,"  said  he,  *'  remember  this  as  my  last  and  dying  words. 
If  you  do  kindnesses  to  your  friends,  you  will  be  able  to  injure  your  enemies. 
Farewell,  dear  children,  and  tell  this  to  your  mother  as  from  me.  And  all 
you,  my  friends,  both  such  of  you  as  are  here  present,  and  the  rest  who  are 
absent — farewell  !  "  Having  said  this,  and  taken  every  one  by  the  right 
hand,  he  covered  himself,  and  thus  expired. 

THE  VICTORY  AND  DEATH   OF  CYRUS  THE  YOUNGER. 

FROM    THE    ANABASIS. BOOK    I.,  CHAP.  VIII. 

It  was  now  about  the  time  of  day  when  the  market  is  usually  crowded, 
the  army  being  near  the  place  where  they  proposed  to  encamp,  when  Patagyas, 
a  Persian,  one  of  those  whom  Cyrus  most  confided  in,  was  seen  riding  towards 
them  full  speed,  his  horse  all  in  a  sweat,  and  he  calling  to  every  one  he  met, 
both  in  his  own  language  and  in  Greek,  that  the  king  was  at  hand  with  a  vast 
army,  marching  in  order  of  battle ;  which  occasioned  a  general  confusion 
among  the  Greeks,  all  expecting  he  would  charge  them  before  they  had  put 
themselves  in  order  :  but  Cyrus,  leaping  from  his  car,  put  on  his  corselet, 
then, mounting  his  horse,  took  his  javelins  in  his  hand,  ordered  all  the  rest  to 
arm,  and  every  man  to  take  his  post :  by  virtue  of  which  command  they 
quickly  formed  themselves,  Clearchus  on  the  right  wing  close  to  the  Eu- 
phrates, next  to  him  Proxenus,  and  after  him  the  rest  :  Menon  and  his  men 
were  posted  on  the  left  of  the  Greek  army.  Of  the  Barbarians,  a  thousand 
Paphlagonian  horse,  with  the  Greek  targeteers,  stood  next  to  Clearchus  on 
the  right :  upon  the  left  Ariaeus,  Cyrus's  lieutenant-general,  was  placed  with 
the  rest  of  the  Barbarians  ;  they  had  large  corselets  and  cuirasses,  and  all  of 
them  helmets  but  Cyrus,  who  placed  himself  in  the  centre  with  six  hundred 
horse,  and  stood  ready  for  the  charge,  with  his  head  unarmed  :  in  which 
manner,  they  say,  it  is  also  customary  for  the  rest  of  the  Persians  to  expose 
themselves  in  a  day  of  action  :  all  the  horses  in  Cyrus's  army  had  both  front- 
lets and  breast-plates,  and  the  horsemen  Greek  swords. 

It  was  now  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  and  no  enemy  was  yet  to  be  seen  ; 
but  in  the  afternoon  there  appeared  a  dust  like  a  white  cloud  which  not  long 
after  spread  itself  like  a  darkness  over  the  plain  !  when  they  drew  nearer, 
the  brazen  armour  flashed,  and  their  spears  and  ranks  appeared,  having  on 
their  left  a  body  of  horse  armed  in  white  corselets,  (said  to  be  commanded 


592  XE  NOP  HON. 

by  Tissaphernes)  and  followed  by  those  with  Persian  bucklers,  besides  heavy- 
armed  men  with  wooden  shields,  reaching  down  to  their  feet,  (said  to  be 
Egyptians)  and  other  horse,  and  archers,  all  which  marched  according  to 
their  respective  countries,  each  nation  being  drawn  up  in  a  solid  oblong 
square  ;  and  before  them  were  disposed,  at  a  considerable  distance  from  one 
another,  chariots  armed  with  scythes  fixed  aslant  at  the  axle-trees,  with 
others  under  the  body  of  the  chariot,  pointing  downwards,  that  so  they  might 
cut  asunder  everything  they  encountered,  by  driving  them  among  the  ranks 
of  the  Greeks  to  break  them  ;  but  it  now  appeared  that  Cyrus  was  greatly 
mistaken  when  he  exhorted  the  Greeks  to  withstand  the  shouts  of  the  Bar- 
barians ;  for  they  did  not  come  on  with  shouts,  but  as  silently  and  quietly  as 
possible,  and  in  an  equal  and  slow  march.  Here  Cyrus  riding  along  the 
ranks  with  Pigres  the  interpreter,  and  three  or  four  others,  commanded 
Clearchus  to  bring  his  men  opposite  to  the  centre  of  the  enemy,  (because 
the  king  was  there,)  saying,  "If  we  break  that,  our  work  is  done";  but 
Clearchus  observing  their  centre,  and  understanding  from  Cyrus  that  the 
king  was  beyond  the  left  wing  of  the  Greek  army,  (for  the  king  was  so  much 
superior  in  number,  that,  when  he  stood  in  the  centre  of  his  own  army,  he 
was  beyond  the  left  wing  to  that  of  Cyrus,)  Clearchus,  I  say,  would  not 
however  be  prevailed  on  to  withdraw  his  right  from  the  river,  fearing  to  be 
surrounded  on  both  sides  ;  but  answered  Cyrus  he  would  take  care  all  should 
go  well. 

Now  the  Barbarians  came  regularly  on  ;  and  the  Greek  army  standing  on 
the  same  ground,  the  ranks  were  formed  as  the  men  came  up  ;  in  the  mean 
time,  Cyrus  riding  at  a  small  distance  before  the  ranks,  surveying  both  the 
enemy's  army  and  his  own,  was  observed  by  Xenophon,  an  Athenian,  who 
rode  up  to  him,  and  asked  whether  he  had  anything  to  command  :  Cyrus, 
stopping  his  horse,  ordered  him  to  let  them  ail  know  that  the  sacrifices  and 
victims  promise  success. 

While  he  was  saying  this,  upon  hearing  a  horse  running  through  the  ranks, 
he  asked  him  what  it  meant  ?  Xenophon  answered,  that  the  word  was  now 
giving  for  the  second  time  ;  Cyrus,  wondering  who  should  give  it,  asked 
him  what  the  word  was:  the  other  replied,  "Jupiter  the  preserver,  and 
victory";  Cyrus  replied,  "I  accept  it,  let  that  be  the  word,"  after  which  he 
immediately  returned  to  his  post,  and  the  two  armies  being  now  within  three 
or  four  stadia  of  each  other,  the  Greeks  sung  the  pgean,  and  began  to  advance 
against  the  enemy  ;  but  the  motion  occasioning  a  small  fluctuation  in  the 
line  of  battle,  those  who  were  left  behind  hastened  their  march,  and  at  once 
gave  a  general  shout,  as  their  custom  is  when  they  invoke  the  god  of  war, 
and  all  ran  forward,  striking  their  shields  with  their  pikes  (as  some  say)  to 
frighten  the  enemy's  horses  :  so  that,  before  the  Barbarians  came  within 
reach  of  their  darts,  they  turned  their  horses  and  fled,  but.  the  Greeks  pur- 
sued them  as  fast  as  they  could,  calling  out  to  one  another  not  to  run,  but  to 
follow  in  their  ranks  ;  some  of  the  chariots  were  borne  through  their  own 
people  without  their  charioteers,  others  through  the  Greeks,  some  of  whom, 
seeing  them  coming,  divided  ;  while  others,  being  amazed,  like  spectators  in 
the  Hippodrome,  were  taken  unawares,  but  even  these  were  reported  to  have 
received  no  harm,  neither  was  there  any  other  Greek  hurt  in  the  action, 
except  one  upon  the  left  wing,  who  was  said  to  have  been  wounded  by  an 
arrow. 

Cyrus  seeing  the  Greeks  victorious  on  their  side,  rejoiced  in  pursuit  of  the 
enemy,  and  was  already  worshipped  as  king  by  those  about  him  ;  however, 


ARES     (LUDOVICI). 
( The  God  of  War.) 


594  XENOPHON. 

he  was  not  so  far  transported  as  to  leave  his  post  and  join  in  the  pursuit : 
but,  keeping  his  six  hundred  horse  in  a  body,  observed  the  king's  motions, 
well  knowing  that  he  was  in  the  centre  of  the  Persian  army,  for  in  all  Bar- 
barian armies  the  generals  ever  place  themselves  in  the  centre,  looking  upon 
that  post  as  the  safest,  on  each  side  of  which  their  strength  is  equally  divided  ; 
and  if  they  have  occasion  to  give  out  any  orders,  they  are  received  in  half 
the  time  by  the  army.  The  king,  therefore,  being  at  that  time  in  the  centre 
of  his  own  battle,  was,  however,  beyond  the  left  wing  of  Cyrus  ;  and,  when 
he  saw  none  oppose  him  in  front,  nor  any  motion  made  to  charge  the 
troops  that  were  drawn  up  before  him,  he  wheeled  to  the  left  in  order  to 
surround  their  army  ;  whereupon  Cyrus,  fearing  he  should  get  behind  him, 
and  cut  off  the  Greeks,  advanced  against  the  king,  and  charging  with  his 
six  hundred  horse  broke  those  who  were  drawn  up  before  him,  put  the  six 
thousand  men  to  flight,  and,  as  they  say,  killed  Artaxerxes,  their  commander, 
with  his  own  hand. 

These  being  broken,  and  the  six  hundred  belonging  to  Cyrus  dispersed  in 
the  pursuit,  very  few  were  left  about  him,  and  those  almost  all  persons  who 
used  to  eat  at  his  table  :  however,  upon  discovering  the  king  properly 
attended,  and  unable  to  contain  himself,  immediately  cried  out,  "  I  see  the 
man  !  "  then  ran  furiously  at  him,  and, striking  him  on  the  breast,  wounded 
him  through  his  corselet,  (as  Ctesias  the  physician  says,  who  affirms  that  he 
cured  the  wound,)  having,  while  he  was  giving  the  blow,  received  a  wound 
under  the  eye,  from  somebody,  who  threw  a  javelin  at  him  with  great  force  ; 
at  the  same  time,  the  king  and  Cyrus  engaged  hand  to  hand,  and  those  about 
them,  in  defence  of  each.  In  this  action  Ctesias  (who  was  with  the  king) 
informs  us  how  many  fell  on  his  side  ;  on  the  other,  Cyrus  himself  was 
killed,  and  eight  of  his  most  considerable  friends  lay  dead  upon  him.  When 
Artapates,  who  was  in  the  greatest  trust  with  Cyrus  of  any  of  his  sceptred 
ministers,  saw  him  fall,  they  say,  he  leaped  from  his  horse,  and  threw  himself 
about  him  ;  when  (as  some  say)  the  king  ordered  him  to  be  slain  upon  the 
body  of  Cyrus  ;  though  others  assert  that,  drawing  his  scimitar,  he  slew 
himself ;  for  he  wore  a  golden  scimitar,  a  chain,  bracelets,  and  other 
ornaments  which  are  worn  by  the  most  considerable  Persians  ;  and  was  held 
in  great  esteem  by  Cyrus,  both  for  his  affection  and  fidelity. 

HELLENICA.     ''THE  FINAL  DEFEAT  OF  ATHENS." 

BOOK    II.,    CHAP.    II. 

At  Athens,  where  the  Paralus  arrived  in  the  night,  the  calamity  was  told, 
and  a  scream  of  lamentation  ran  up  from  the  Piraeus  through  the  long  walls 
into  the  city,  one  person  repeating  the  news  to  another  ;  insomuch  that  no 
single  soul  that  night  could  take  any  rest,  not  merely  for  lamenting  those 
who  were  lost,  but  much  more  for  reflecting  what  themselves  in  all  pro- 
bability were  soon  to  suffer — the  like  no  doubt  as  themselves  had  inflicted 
upon  the  Melians,  when  they  had  reduced  by  siege  that  colony  of  the  Lace- 
daemonians, on  the  Istians  also,  and  Scioneans,  and  Toroneans,  and  ^ginetse, 
and  many  other  people  in  Greece.  The  next  day  they  summoned  a  general 
assembly,  in  which  "  it  was  resolved  to  barricade  all  their  harbours  excepting 
one,  to  repair  their  walls,  to  fix  proper  watches,  and  prepare  the  city  in  all 
respects  for  a  siege."     All  hands  accordingly  were  immediately  at  work. 

Lysander,  who  now  from  the  Hellespont  was  come  to  Lesbos  with  two 
hundred  sail,  took  in  and  re-settled  the  cities  in  that  island,  and  especially 


THE   SIEGE    OF  ATHENS:  FROM    THE  HELLENICA.  595 

Mitylene.  He  also  sent  away  to  the  towns  of  Thrace  ten  ships  commanded 
by  Eteonicus,  who  reduced  everything  there  into  subjection  to  the  Lace- 
daemonians. But  immediately  after  the  fight  at  ^gos-potamos  all  Greece 
revolted  from  the  Athenians,  excepting  Samos.  At  Samos  the  people, 
having  massacred  the  nobility,  held  the  city  for  the  Athenians. 

In  the  next  place,  Lysander  sent  notice  to  Agis  at  Decelea,  and  to  Lace- 
dsemon,  that  "  he  is  sailing  up  with  two  hundred  ships."  The  Lacedaemonians 
immediately  took  the  field  with  their  own  force,  as  did  the  rest  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesians,  except  the  Argives,  upon  receiving  the  order  circulated  by  Pau- 
sanias  the  other  king  of  Lacedaemon.  When  they  were  all  assembled,  he 
marched  away  at  their  head,  and  encamped  them  under  the  walls  of  Athens, 


SOLDIERS   BUILDING   A   WALL. 

in  the  place  of  exercise  called  the  Academy.  But  Lysander,  when  come  up 
to  vEgina,  collected  together  all  the  ^ginetae  he  could  possibly  find,  and 
replaced  them  in  their  city.  He  did  the  same  to  the  Melians,  and  to  the 
other  people  who  formerly  had  been  dispossessed.  In  the  next  place,  having 
laid  Salamis  waste,  he  stationed  himself  before  the  Piraeus  with  a  hundred 
and  fifty  ships,  and  prevented  all  kind  of  embarkations  from  entering  that 
harbour. 

The  Athenians,  thus  besieged  both  by  land  and  sea,  and  destitute  of  ships, 
of  allies,  and  of  provisions,  were  miserably  perplexed  how  to  act.  They 
judged  they  had  nothing  to  expect  but  suffering  what  without  provocation 
themselves  had  made  others  suffer,  when  they  wantonly  tyrannized  over  petty 
states,  and  for  no  other  reason  in  the  world  than  because  they  were  con- 
federate with  the  state  of  Lacedaemon.  From  these  considerations,  after 
restoring  to  their  full  rights  and  privileges  such  as  were  under  the  sentence 
of  infamy,  they  persevered  in  holding  out ;  and  though  numbers  began  to 
die  for  want  of  meat,  they  would  not  bear  any  motion  of  treating.  But  when 
their  corn  began  totally  to  fail,  they  sent  ambassadors  to  Agis,  offering  "  to 
become  confederates  with  the  Lacedaemonians,  reserving  to  themselves  the 
long  walls  and  the  Piraeus,"  and  on  these  terms  would  accept  an  accom- 
modation. Yet  Agis  ordered  them  to  repair  to  Lacedaemon,  since  he  himself 
had  no  power  to  treat.  When  the  ambassadors  had  reported  this  answer  to 
the  Athenians,  they  ordered  them  to  go  to  Lacedaemon.  But  when  they 
were  arrived  at  Seliasia  on  the  frontier  of  Laconia,  and  the  ephori  were 
informed  "  they  were  to  offer  no  other  proposals  than  had  been  made  by 
Agis,"  they  sent  them  an  order  "  to  return  to  Athens,  and  when  they  heartily 
desired  peace,  to  come  again  with  more  favourable  instructions."  When 
therefore  the  ambassadors  returned  to  Athens,  and  had  reported  these  things 


THE   SURRENDER   OF  ATHENS.  597 

to  the  State,  a  universal  despondency  ensued  ;  "  slavery,"  they  judged, 
"  must  unavoidably  be  their  portion  ;  and  whilst  they  were  sending  another 
embassy  numbers  would  die  of  famine."  No  one  durst  yet  presume  to 
advise  the  demolition  of  the  wails  ;  since  Archestratus,  who  had  only  hinted 
in  the  senate  that  "  it  would  be  best  for  them  to  make  peace  on  such  terms 
as  the  Lacedaemonians  proposed,"  had  immediately  been  thrown  into  prison. 
But  the  Lacedaemonians  proposed  that  *'  each  of  the  long  walls  should  be 
demolished  to  the  length  of  ten  stadia  ";  and  a  decree  had  been  passed  that 
"  such  a  proposal  should  never  be  debated." 

In  this  sad  situation,  Theramenes  offered  to  the  general  assembly  that 
"  if  they  would  let  him  go  to  Lysander  he  could  inform  them,  at  his  return, 
whether  the  Lacedaemonians  insisted  on  the  demolition  of  the  walls  with  a 
view  entirely  to  enslave  them,  or  by  way  of  security  only  for  their  future  be- 
haviour." He  was  ordered  to  go  ;  and  he  stayed  more  than  three  months 
with  Lysander,  waiting  till  a  total  want  of  provision  should  necessitate  the 
Athenians  to  agree  to  any  proposal  whatever.  But  on  his  return  in  the 
fourth  month,  he  reported  to  the  general  assembly  that  **  Lysander  had  de- 
tained him  all  this  time,  and  now  orders  him  to  go  to  Lacedaemon,  since  he 
had  no  power  to  settle  the  points  of  accommodation,  which  could  only  be 
done  by  the  ephori."  Upon  this  he  was  chosen  with  nine  others  to  go  am- 
bassador-plenipotentiary to  Lacedaemon,  Lysander  sent  Aristotle,  an 
Athenian,  but  under  sentence  of  exile,  in  company  with  other  Lacedaemo- 
nians, to  the  ephori,  to  assure  them  that  "  he  had  referred  Theramenes  to 
them,  who  alone  were  empowered  to  make  peace  and  war."  When  therefore 
Theramenes  and  the  other  ambassadors  were  arrived  at  Sellasia,  and  were 
asked — "  What  instructions  they  had  ? " — their  answer  was, — "  They  had  full 
powers  to  make  a  peace."  Upon  this  the  ephori  called  them  to  an  audi- 
ence ;  and  on  their  arrival  at  Sparta  they  summoned  an  assembly,  in  which 
the  Corinthians  and  Thebans  distinguished  themselves  above  all  others, 
though  several  joined  in  their  sentiments.  They  averred  that  ''  the  Athen- 
ians ought  to  have  no  peace  at  all,  but  should  be  utterly  destroyed."  The 
Lacedemonians  declared,  "  they  would  never  enslave  a  Grecian  city  that 
had  done  such  positive  service  to  Greece  in  the  most  perilous  times."  Ac- 
cordingly they  granted  a  peace  on  condition  "  they  should  demolish  the 
long  walls  and  the  Piraeus,  should  deliver  up  all  their  ships  except  twelve, 
should  recall  their  exiles,  should  have  the  same  friends  and  the  same  foes 
with  the  Lacedaemonians,  and  follow  them  at  command  either  by  land  or 
sea."  Theramenes  and  his  colleagues  returned  to  Athens  with  these  condi- 
tions of  peace.  At  their  entering  the  city  a  crowd  of  people  flocked  about 
them,  fearing  they  had  been  dismissed  without  anything  done  :  for  their 
present  situation  would  admit  of  no  delay  at  all,  such  numbers  were  perish- 
ing by  famine.  On  the  day  following,  the  ambassadors  reported  the  terms 
on  which  the  Lacedaemonians  grant  a  peace.  Theramenes  was  their  mouth 
on  this  occasion,  and  assured  them  "  they  had  no  resource  left,  but  to  obey 
the  Lacedaemonians  and  demolish  the  walls."  Some  persons  spoke  against, 
but  a  large  majority  declaring  for  it,  it  was  resolved  "  to  accept  the 
peace." 

In  pursuance  of  this,  Lysander  stood  into  the  Piraeus,  and  the  exiles  re- 
turned into  the  city.  They  demolished  the  walls  with  much  alacrity,  music 
playing  all  the  time,  since  they  judged  this  to  be  the  first  day  that  Greece 
was  free. 


BOOK  v.— THE  ORATORS. 
CHAPTER  I.— THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  ISOCRATES. 

I. — The  Difference  between  Ancient  and  Modern  Notions  of  the  Function  of  Elo- 
quence. Our  Theories  Mainly  Derived  from  Roman  Declamation.  The  Greek 
Methods  Different.  II. — Development  of  Oratory  Among  the  Greeks.  The  Influ- 
ence of  the  Sophists  ;  the  Varying  Opinions  concerning  these  Teachers.  Their 
Instruction  in  Philosophy,  Rhetoric,  and  Physics.  III. — The  Growth  of  Dialectic  in 
Sicily.  The  Early  Teachers,  and  Their  Modification  of  the  Greek  Prose  Style. 
Its  Imitation  of  Poetical  Models,  Compared  with  Euphuism.  IV. — Antiphon,  An- 
dokides,  Lysias ;  Isocrates  and  his  Artificial  Style.  His  Political  Yearnings. 
Isasos.  The  Diversity  of  Athenian  Politics  Expressed  in  the  Oratory  of  Isocrates 
and  in  his  Cunning  Art.     Its  Literary  Quality. 

I. 

THE  Greek  tragedies  and  histories  which  we  have  discussed  above 
make  very  clear  the  prominence  that  oratory  held  among  the 
Athenians.  Yet,  as  was  said  before  with  regard  to  the  speeches  of 
Thucydides,  we  mean  something  different  from  the  Greek  conception 
of  oratory,  when  we  make  mention  of  modern  eloquence.  There  are 
signs  that  oratory  is  out  of  favor  with  us.  Just  as  poets  no  longer  go 
about  reciting  their  compositions,  orators  have  felt  the  influence  of 
the  printing-press,  and  for  every  thousand  who  stand  in  a  hot  hall  and 
hear  them,  there  are  ten  or  a  hundred  thousand,  at  least,  who  read  the 
speeches  in  the  next  morning's  paper.  Hence  we  notice  a  change  in 
an  orator's  method  when  we  compare  this  with  what  we  know  of  a 
century  ago.  Passages  which  might  give  a  hearer  a  momentary  thrill 
are  cold  and  ineffectual  in  type,  and  there  is  a  remote,  old-fashioned 
flavor  about  appeals  to  passion  which  are  less  effectual  than  reasonable 
statements  and  explanation.  This  change,  if  it  does  actually  exist,  is 
simply  an  indication  of  the  decay  of  the  Roman  influence  and  of  its 
giving  ground  before  the  sounder  spirit  of  the  Greeks.  The  Roman 
orators — Cicero,  for  example — were  apt  to  indulge  in  violent  outbursts 
of  rhetorical  passion  unknown  to  their  celebrated  predecessors,  and 
of  a  kind  that  would  be  impossible  in  any  modern  forensic  discussion. 
Instances  of  this  will  be  found  later.  Yet  in  Rome  at  the  Augustan 
age,  the  question  with  regard  to  the  relative  merits  of  the  Attic  moder- 
ation, and  of  the  later  Asiatic  exaggeration   had  been  decided  in  the 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  IDEAS  OF  ELOQUENCE.  599 

favor  of  the  first,  along  with  the  general  interest  in  Greek  things.  Even 
with  this  decision,  however,  the  Romans  were  not  wholly  Hellenized  ; 
not  every  one  who  wishes  can  become  a  Greek,  and  it  was  impossible 
for  the  Romans  to  acquire  by  effort  all  that  their  happier  models  had 
by  nature.  What  is  the  property  of  only  a  small  class — as  was  the  case 
with  Roman  eloquence,  that  belonged  only  to  a  few  trained  patricians — 
can  never  rival  that  which  is  a  part  of  the  whole  life  of  an  eager  peo- 
ple. To  be  sure,  modern  art  and  letters  rest  on  a  different  notion,  but 
it  is  perhaps  safe  to  say  that  these  owe  their  greatest  glory  to  the  ex- 
ceptions frorri  the  conventional  rule.  The  Roman  Senate  demanded 
something  very  unlike  that  which  was  required  by  the  Athenian  pop- 
ulace :  a  quality,  namely,  that  the  Romans  themselves  called  ^r^t^zV^j, 
a  sort  of  aristocratic  dignity,  similar  to  the  remote  formality  which  has 
buried  much  of  the  eloquence  of  the  last  century  under  thick  dust.  In 
books  of  so-called  British  eloquence,  and  in  the  American  speeches, 
familiar  to  boyhood,  this  quality  is  prominent.  We  all  know  the 
majestic  style,  echoes  of  it  still  survive  in  the  speeches  uttered  on 
Commencement  Day  by  men  who  have  ceased  even  to  think  them- 
selves young  ;  we  all  know  the  florid,  pompous  phraseology, — not  un- 
like a  layer  of  polished,  colored  marble — the  artificially  constructed 
sentences,  the  sonorous  paragraphs.  All  these  have  in  their  day  done 
good  work,  but  their  time  is  past. 

This  form  of  eloquence  drew  its  life  not  merely  from  the  study  and 
deliberate  imitation  of  Roman  models,  although  their  influence,  like 
that  of  all  the  branches  of  Roman  literature,  was  very  great,  but  also 
in  good  measure  from  the  reappearance  of  similar  conditions  in  modern 
times,  one  aristocracy  being  very  much  like  another,  all  being  slaves 
of  similar  conventionalities.  Eloquence  dies  hard,  but  it  is  none  the 
less  mortal ;  and  its  pomp  and  majesty  will  disappear  just  as  the  dis- 
tinctive traits  of  the  etiquette,  the  poetry,  and  the  dress  of  the  last 
century  have  disappeared.  Rigid  formalities  of  fashion  survive  only 
in  a  few  ceremonials  of  courts ;  the  artificiality  which  compelled  the 
poet  to  call  a  gun,  a  deadly  tube  (even  Wordsworth  began  with  this)  has 
wholly  vanished  along  with  the  wig  which  gave  the  crowning  touch 
to  the  absence  of  nature.  Similar  unrealities  are  yet  found  at  times 
in  modern  oratory,  because  practically  oratory  is  nearly  extinct,  and 
old  fashions  survive  in  out-of-the-way  corners  and  very  great  and  rare 
ceremonies.  Now,  the  men  who  have  anything  to  say,  say  it  with 
little  conscious  striving  after  eloquence:  Prince  Bismarck  is  perhaps  a 
sufficiently  prominent  example  of  a  powerful  and  unconventional 
speaker,  and  the  reader  will  recall  others  in  England  and  America  who 
have'  abandoned  the  old-fashioned  declamation  in  favor  of  more  intel- 
ligible methods.     Every  change  in  the  direction  of  simplicity  is  away 


6oo  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 

from  the  Romans  and  leads  infallibly  towards  the  Greeks,  not  neces- 
sarily to  copying  them,  but  to  the  reproduction,  with  greater  or  less 
success,  of  somewhat  similar  results,  for  Greek  eloquence  may  be  partly 
defined  as  that  which  is  not  Roman ;  that  is  to  say,  what  is  not 
artificial,  not  unreal,  not  perfervid,  but  what  is  direct,  simple,  and 
genuine. 

This  definition  is  certainly  more  complex  than  it  may  at  first  appear, 
for  real  simplicity  is  only  to  be  acquired  with  extreme  diflficulty.  A 
long  training  is  required  to  enable  any  one  to  stand  easily  on  a  plat- 
form before  the  eyes  of  a  multitude,  and  to  put  an  argument  in  the 
most  convincing  way,  to  make  any  smooth  statement  in  writing  in 
solitude,  is  shown  by  abundant  testimony  to  be  at  least  rare  of  attain- 
ment. Certainly  Greek  eloquence  was  not  at  all  of  the  nature  of 
artless  prattle,  and  the  appearance  of  artlessness  was  obtained  only  by 
the  exercise  of  the  most  unwearying  art.  In  this  respect  Greek  oratory 
stands  alone  and  very  distinctly  different  from  modern  oratory,  for  at 
the  present  time  it  is  regarded  much  more  as  a  mere  tool  than  seriously 
as  one  of  the  fine  arts.  Many  causes  contribute  to  this  result,  the 
principal  one  of  which  we  may  take  to  be  the  general  indifference  of 
the  public  to  delicacy  and  subtlety  of  treatment.  In  comparison  with 
the  Greeks,  who  were  a  race  of  artists,  modern  people  form  a  race  of 
mechanics  who  lack  the  sensitiveness  and  delicacy  of  that  wonderful 
nation.  Our  architecture,  our  amusements,  our  pleasures,  all  prove 
this  statement,  which  is  often  flung  in  our  faces  by  angry  teachers. 
For  the  Greeks,  on  the  other  hand,  good  speaking  was  unmistakably 
a  fine  art.  Its  importance,  which  has  been  much  diminished  in  these 
later  times,  by  the  fact  that  we  read  when  they  listened,  was  then  very 
great ;  public  speaking  was  almost  the  sole  means  that  any  man  had 
for  communicating  with  his  fellows.  Ambassadors  argued  before  a 
foreign  public,  all  civic  and  municipal  affairs  were  transacted  by  word 
of  mouth,  and  thus  constant  practice  kept  continually  polished  a  taste 
which  was  already  delicate.  Yet,  not  all  the  Greeks  shared  in  this 
gift ;  it  was  Athens  alone  that  produced  the  greatest  orators.  And 
even  here  their  high  position  was  not  attained  at  once,  without  an 
effort ;  for,  whatever  enthusiasts  may  say,  not  even  at  Athens  did  the 
impossible  happen.  The  form  of  government  adopted  by  that  city 
especially  encouraged  the  pursuit  of  oratory,  and  its  general  artistic 
and  literary  interests  greatly  forwarded  it ;  so  that,  as  Cicero  says  in 
his  Brutus,  "  this  art  was  not  the  common  property  of  all  Greece,  but 
belonged  to  Athens  alone.  Who  has  ever  heard  of  Argive,  Corinthian, 
orTheban  orators?  And  I  have  never  heard  of  a  single  orator  among 
the  Lacedaemonians."  Of  the  earlier  Athenian  orators  we  have  at  the 
best  only  the  unliteral  reports  of  Thucydides,  and  of  some  not  even 


ORIGINS  OF  GREEK  ORATORS.  60 1 

this,  and  apparently  what  first  distinguished  them  was  great  ingenuity, 
boldness  of  design,  and  abundant  energy,  rather  than  the  art  which  we 
see  gradually  growing  as  time  went  on.  In  this  respect  Pericles,  if 
we  follow  the  opinion  of  antiquity,  excelled  his  predecessors,  and  what 
they  praised  in  him  was  distinctly  the  acuteness,  fullness,  and  intel- 
ligence of  his  thoughts.  It  was  after  him  that  the  art  of  oratory 
began  to  appear. 

As  Mr.  Jebb  says  in  his  Attic  Orators,  "the  intellectual  turning- 
point  came  when  poetry  ceased  to  have  a  sway  of  which  the  exclusive- 
ness  rested  on  the  presumption  that  no  thought  can  be  expressed 
artistically  which  is  not  expressed  metrically."  The  rise  of  prose 
occurred  with  the  general  awakening  of  manifold  intellectual  interest 
which  accompanied  the  Persian  wars.  Then  the  Greek  mind  broke 
away  from  its  earlier  medisevalism  with  the  consciousness  of  the 
security  of  its  national  existence  against  barbarian  force.  Athens  led 
in  the  advance  and  speedily  acquired  all  that  was  best  in  the  new 
spirit.  Fortunately,  as  an  Ionian  city,  it  possessed  the  rich  intellectual 
qualities  of  that  brilliant  race,  already  renowned  in  the  history  of  cul- 
ture, and  its  hospitality  to  intellectual  interests  attracted  leading  men 
from  every  quarter  where  the  Greek  tongue  was  spoken.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  many  came  from  other  cities,  but  it  was  Athens  that  they 
made  their  adopted  home. 

II. 

The  new  education  busied  itself  particularly  with  artistic  prose,  and 
the  most  important  manifestation  of  this  novelty  was  in  the  art  of 
speaking.  Those  who  taught  it  were  known  as  Sophists,  teachers  of 
Sophia,  wisdom,  and  their  subsequent  influence  on  Greek  culture  can 
hardly  be  overrated.  Yet  that  it  has  been  overrated,  many  would  be 
willing  to  af^rm,  for  besides  teaching  the  Greeks  how  to  argue,  they 
left  their  memory  as  a  subject  for  the  unending  discussion  of  posterity. 
There  are  men  who  find  the  Sophists  a  sufficient  cause  for  the  future 
changes  of  Greece,  and  behold  in  them  and  their  teachings  a  satis- 
factory explanation  for  the  enfeeblement  of  private  and  public  virtue. 
If  this  view  is  the  correct  one,  the  Sophist  certainly  managed  to  waste 
one  of  the  most  magnificent  opportunities  that  teachers  ever  enjoyed. 
It  is  hard  to  suppose  that  they  deliberately  decided  to  overthrow  the 
welfare  of  the  state,  and  if  we  examine  the  charges  brought  against 
them,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  their  methods  could  have  produced  such 
miserable  consequences.  The  Sophists  were,  in  fact,  men  who  brought 
to  an  eager  public  new  information  regarding  science,  and  who  pre- 
tended to  train  young  men  to  think,  speak,  and  act  as  became  Athenian 


6o2  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  ISOCRATES. 

citizens.  The  principal  accusation  made  against  them  is  that  they 
imparted  their  knowledge  for  hire.  Certainly  the  world  has  seen 
darker  crimes  than  this,  and  it  certainly  savors  of  hypocrisy  for  one 
who  teaches  or  writes  in  order  to  support  himself  to  denounce  as  a 
crime  what  he  knows  is  only  legitimate  prudence.  That  these  men 
taught  only  quibbles  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  ;  even  if  they  had 
done  so,  and  the  whole  Athenian  public  had  so  far  lost  the  control  of 
their  intelligence  which  is  commonly  adjudged  to  have  been  at  least 
respectable,  it  is  a  wide  leap  to  affirming  that  these  caused  the  ruin 
of  the  state  ;  they  may  well,  however,  have  caused  the  ruin  of  the 
quibblers. 

In  fact,  however,  it  is  unfair  to  throw  the  blame  for  the  subsequent 
loss  of  Athenian  superiority  on  any  one  class  of  the  citizens,  and  es- 
pecially to  those  whose  aim  it  undoubtedly  was  to  prepare  men  for 
their  most  important  duties.  Even  if  they  were  unwise  in  their 
methods,  it  is  hard  to  blame  the  excellence  of  their  intentions,  for 
their  design  was  to  teach  their  pupils  the  proper  conduct  of  political 
life.  For  this  nothing  was  more  important  than  the  power  of  discuss- 
ing the  various  questions  that  came  up  for  decision  ;  the  citizens  pos- 
sessed immediate  control  of  public  affairs,  and  nothing  was  more  de- 
sirable than  that  questions  should  be  presented  to  them  lucidly  and 
eloquently.  Since  it  was  necessary  that  every  course  of  action  should 
be  presented  to  the  citizens  for  their  judgment,  it  is  evident  that  men 
would  naturally  seek  the  best  means  of  commending  such  propositions 
as  they  thought  wise  with  all  the  aid  that  eloquence  could  inspire. 
No  other  course  was  possible  ;  hence  condemnation  is  idle,  for  the  in- 
evitable  deserves  neither  praise  nor  blame.  Doubtless  the  power  of 
eloquence  was  exaggerated  by  its  professors,  who  saw  in  the  few 
branches  of  the  education  that  they  taught  all  the  good  that  train- 
ing can  give,  but  while  its  limitations  are  very  clear  to  us,  we  must 
remember  how  few  at  that  time  were  the  subjects  in  which  instruction 
could  be  given,  and  thus  understand  the  excessive  importance  ascribed 
to  rhetoric.  It  may  serve  to  remind  us  of  what  we  should  always 
bear  in  mind,  the  almost  exclusively  rhetorical  character  of  Greek 
literature. 

A  comparison  of  the  intellectual  excitement  of  the  period  with  that 
which  accompanied  the  revival  of  letters  in  modern  days  may  not  be 
wholly  unprofitable,  in  spite  of  the  obvious  danger  of  reading  into  one 
of  the  parts  of  the  comparison  what  really  belongs  only  to  the  other. 
It  is  possible  to  evade  this  peril  by  noticing  simply  one  important 
agreement,  and  that  is  the  effort  made  at  both  epochs  to  attain  a  new 
and  impressive  method  of  expression.  At  the  Renaissance  this  move- 
ment was  most  marked,  and  the  whole  growth  of  modern  literature  as 


CONSERVATIVE    OPPOSITION    TO   SCIENTIFIC  EDUCATION.      603 

an  art  dates  from  the  time  when  classic  literature  was  taken  as  the 
sole  model.  In  a  similar  way  the  upheaval  of  Greece  after  the  Per- 
sian wars  was  accompanied  by  an  endeavor  to  acquire  a  new  mode  of 
utterance,  and  it  was  the  Sophists,  with  their  rare  graces,  who  held  the 
place  afterward  occupied  by  the  Humanists.  They  brought  rule  and 
lesson  into  a  field  that  had  previously  been  comparatively  uncultivated, 
and  substituted  formality  in  the  place  of  freedom  or  lawlessness.  The 
command  of  style  became  necessary  for  every  writer  as  the  token  of 
his  allegiance  to  the  new  spirit,  and  in  both  cases  a  complicated 
method  of  utterance  succeeded  to  a  simple  one,  and  men's  attention 
was  mainly  directed  rather  to  how  a  thing  was  said  than  to  what  was 
said. 

To  call  the  resemblance  a  mere  chance  coincidence  is  unwise  ;  it  is 
certainly  more  discreet  to  find  the  two  sets  of  facts  the  results  of  sim- 
ilar causes,  and  to  see  that  a  general  necessity  of  improving  expression 
is  an  essential  part  of  intellectual  change.  If  the  new  authority  of  the 
Sophists  had  only  this  ground,  they  deserve  to  be  acquitted  of  causing 
the  subsequent  overthrow  of  Greek  freedom.  Elegance  of  style  is  not 
so  efficacious  as  that  charge  would  imply,  and  in  fact  it  is  in  this  case 
nothing  more  than  a  sign  of  great  upheaval,  when  every  one's  aim  was 
to  secure  a  form  of  utterance  that  should  match  the  new  dignity  and 
scope  of  human  thought.  It  was  not  the  only  time  in  the  history  of 
the  world  that  the  form  has  seemed  most  essential,  or  that  undue 
blame  has  followed  extravagant  praise. 

Every  important  change  in  education  is  sure  of  opposition  from  con- 
servatives. The  decay  of  scholasticism  appeared  a  serious  blow  in  the 
eyes  of  many  who  regarded  it  as  the  fountain  of  wisdom,  and  even  now 
there  are  very  many  teachers  of  high  repute  who  look  upon  any  ten- 
dency in  favor  of  scientific  instruction  as  but  pernicious  degradation 
of  youthful  intelligence.  The  sneer  of  Aristophanes  with  regard  to 
the  length  of  a  flea's  jump  still  finds  an  echo  in  the  hearts  of  college 
presidents  who  would  like  to  confine  modern  thought  in  the  narrow 
bounds  that  were  deemed  sufficient  before  science  existed  ;  and  from 
their  denunciations  enough  could  be  gathered  to  prove  that  science 
was  as  dangerous  a  foe  to  modern  progress  as  Sophistics  was  ever  held 
to  be  to  the  ancient.  Yet  that  the  statements  of  the  Sophists  were 
always  wise  is  as  unlikely  as  that  all  modern  scientific  hypotheses  are 
infallibly  accurate.  Socrates  himself  denounced  the  study  of  physics 
as  a  wicked  waste  of  opportunity  in  comparison  with  the  investigation 
of  ethical  questions,  and  in  the  early  applications  of  logic  and  the  laws 
of  probability  we  find  much  that  the  world  properly  regards  as  child- 
ish quibbling.  That  it  was  childish  is  very  true  and  of  course  inevi- 
table, for  those  who  are  laying  the  foundations  of  a  new  science  are 


6o4  THE   EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 

exactly  in  the  condition  of  children  beginning  their  studies.  The  only- 
unpardonable  childishness  is  the  habit,  natural  though  it  be,  of  laugh- 
ing at  earlier  blunders. 

Of  the  philosophical  and  physical  innovations  there  will  be  occasion 
to  speak  later  ;  in  oratory  we  fail  to  find  anything  which  the  world 
has  agreed  to  call  degeneracy.  The  new  instruction  in  this  old  art 
came  broadly  from  two  quarters — from  Ionian  Hellas  a  more  general 
culture;  and  from  Sicily,  dialectic  training.  From  wherever  they 
came,  they  were  welcomed  most  warmly;  the  arrival  in  any  city  of 
one  of  the  great  Sophists  was  regarded  as  an  occasion  of  special  re- 
joicing, and  they  had  abundant  opportunity  for  indulging  in  their 
favorite  crime  of  charging  for  their  instruction.  The  names  of  the  first 
Sophists  have  been  handed  down  to  us  along  with  many  tributes  of 
gratitude  for  their  services  in  behalf  of  culture.  Among  the  earliest 
of  these  was  Protagoras  of  Abdera,  who  came  to  Athens  when  about 
forty  years  old,  in  the  year  444.  B.C.,  and  gave  instruction  in  the  proper 
use  of  language,  and  also  in  the  conduct  of  an  argument.  Hippias  of 
Elis  taught  many  subjects  of  general  interest,  physics,  astronomy,  and 
learned  investigations  of  many  kinds,  touching  in  their  turn  upon 
questions  of  grammar  and  prosody.  Prodicus  of  Keos  investigated  the 
exact  meanings  of  words  with  a  care  previously  unknown.  What  we 
know  of  the  rest  of  his  work  is  certainly  not  of  an  inflammatory  or 
dangerous  nature  ;  the  choice  of  Hercules  between  vice  and  virtue  is 
quoted  by  Xenophon  in  his  Memorabilia  as  an  allegory  narrated  by 
Prodicus.     Euripides  and  Isocrates  are  said  to  have  been  pupils  of  his. 

in. 

In  Sicily  the  art  of  dialectic  had  grown  up  under  congenial  condi- 
tions. We  have  seen  how  much  comedy  drew  from  that  island  ;  and  the 
same  quick-witted  vivacity  that  gave  life  to  that  amusement  made  it- 
self felt  in  the  early  growth  of  serious  prose.  Syracuse  and  Athens  had 
passed  through  very  similar  political  experiences  ;  both  cities  had  seen 
the  rule  of  an  aristocracy,  succeeded  by  a  tyranny,  which  was  itself 
replaced  by  a  democracy.  In  the  western  city,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
tyrants  had  encouraged  literature,  and  the  resemblance  of  the  tastes 
of  its  inhabitants  to  those  of  the  Athenians  was  often  noted  by  ancient 
writers.  The  material  prosperity  and  equivalent  political  position  of 
both  cities  do  in  fact  almost  imply  a  wider  similarity.  The  active 
trade  of  Sicily  and  the  confusion  that  followed  the  dynastic  changes 
gave  an  opportunity  for  rhetorical  development  which  soon  made  its 
way  to  Athens.  The  establishment  of  the  art  of  rhetoric  is  ascribed 
to  Corax  of  Syracuse,  who  prepared  a  set  of  rules  for  forensic  speak- 


THE  RHETORIC  OF  GORGIAS  AND  HIS  FOLLOWERS.  605 

ing,  to  which  is  due  the  further  credit  of  being  the  first  theoretical 
Greek  book  on  any  branch  of  art.  Of  its  contents  it  is  only  known 
that  it  held  rules  for  the  division  of  a  speech  into  five  parts :  the  in- 
troduction, narrative,  arguments,  subsidiary  remarks,  and  peroration. 
The  introduction  was  to  contain  such  remarks  as  should  serve  to  put 
the  listeners  in  good  humor,  and  among  the  arguments  that  of  gen- 
eral probability  was  commended.  Thus,  if  a  weak  man  is  accused  of 
an  assault,  he  can  point  out  the  obvious  unlikelihood  ;  while  a  strong 
man,  in  such  a  case,  would  point  out  the  unlikelihood  of  his  com- 
mitting the  offense  when  the  presumption  against  him  was  so  strong. 
We  are  evidently  studying  the  infancy  of  the  art. 

Among  his  pupils  were  Tisias  and  Empedocles,  both  of  whom 
acquired  fame  as  orators  and  teachers  of  oratory,  but  the  most  cele- 
brated was  Gorgias,  born  about  485  B.C.,  at  Leontini,  in  Sicily.  He 
was  chosen  by  his  fellow-townsmen  to  head  an  embassy  that  was  sent 
to  Athens  in  427  B.C.,  to  ask  aid  in  their  war  with  Syracuse.  The 
impression  that  he  made  was  very  great ;  for  he  was  a  master  of  a 
form  of  prose  that  was  new  to  their  ears.  The  possession  of  a  certain 
definite  style  was  the  most  marked  thing  in  the  rhetoric  of  Gorgias ; 
everything  else  he  appears  to  have  disregarded,  but  to  Greek  prose  he 
gave  a  distinctive  form.  Only  a  fragment  of  this  is  left,  but  it  is 
enough,  when  added  to  the  descriptions  of  his  traits  that  are  to  be 
found  in  later  writers,  to  make  it  clear  that  he  modelled  his  prose  upon 
the  current  style  of  poetry,  as  Aristotle  said  in  his  Rhetoric.  He  used 
poetical  words ;  he  formed  compounds  with  all  the  freedom  of  a  lyric 
or  dithyrambic  poet,  and,  more  than  this,  he  gave  his  sentences  a  dis- 
tinct rhythmical  form,  with  the  different  clauses  balancing  one  another, 
so  that  the  whole  effect  upon  the  hearer  was  of  a  new  and  delightful 
art,  not  verse,  and  still  less  the  language  of  common  life.  His  devices 
were  most  subtle :  sentences  were  made  of  equal  length,  they  were 
given  a  similar  form,  the  same  sounds  were  echoed  in  other  words  at 
the  end  or  turning-point  of  the  corresponding  phrases,  and  at  once 
Greek  prose  received  new  life.  How  curiously  this  new  style  matched 
the  poetry  cannot  of  course  be  made  clear  in  any  translation ;  but  we 
can  readily  infer  its  probability  from  a  glance  at  English  prose.  Not 
only,  as  the  late  Mark  Pattison  has  pointed  out,  is  the  stanza,  as 
employed  by  Spenser,  the  analogue  of  the  prose  sentence  of  Hooker, 
Jeremy  Taylor,  or  Milton,  but  the  brief  couplet  of  Pope  corresponds 
to  the  neat,  compact  prose  sentences  of  his  contemporaries.  Going 
further  back  to  the  early  appearance  of  artistic  prose  among  the 
Elizabethan  Euphuists,  we  may  describe  it  as  something  not  wholly 
unlike  the  style  of  Gorgias,  infinitely  cruder  and  harsher,  yet  dis- 
tinguished by  the  same  very  distinct   cadences  and   balancing,  with 


6o6  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 

alliteration  marking  the  time  as  distinctly  as  the  beat  of  the  foot.  Its 
artifices  corresponded  closely  to  those  common  in  the  verse  of  the 
period  with  its  abundant  antitheses  and  profuse  alliteration:  such,  for 
example,  as  are  to  be  found  in  Surrey's  Description  of  Spring: 

"  The  soote  season,  that  bud  and  bloom  furth  brings. 
With  green  hath  clad  the  hill  and  eke  the  vale. 
The  nightingale  with  feathers  new  she  sings ; 
The  turtle  to  her  mate  hath  told  her  tale. 
Summer  is  come,  for  every  spray  now  springs. 
The  hart  hath  hung  his  old  head  on  the  pale ; 
The  buck  in  brake  his  winter  coat  he  flings  ; 
The  fishes  flete  with  new-repaired  scale  ; 
The  adder  all  her  slough  away  she  slings ; 
The  swift  swallow  pursueth  the  files  smale  ; "  etc. 

Awkward  and  numb  as  these  lines  are  with  their  clumsy  imitation 
of  Petrarch's  grace,  it  is  yet  possible  to  trace  some  of  the  qualities  of 
what,  as  Euphuism,  Marianism,  or  Gongorism,  prevailed  over  the  w^hole 
of  Europe,  in  these  more  than  obvious  alliterations.  Not  all  its  cha- 
racteristics are  to  be  found  in  these  few  lines,  for  Euphuism  was  marked 
by  much  more  copious  antithesis,  and  perpetual  balancing  of  phrases, 
assonances,  and  other  delights  of  the  ear ;  it  was  with  those  aids  that 
the  early  formal  prose  endeavored  to  make  its  way  as  a  companion 
of  the  carefully  constructed  verse  which  abounded  with  the  artificial 
charms  of  all  mediaeval  art.  In  Petrarch  we  find  many  instances  of 
his  imitation  of  the  devices  of  the  Provencal  poets,  and  what  he  did 
became  a  model  for  succeeding  writers  of  verse.  In  order  to  compete 
with  this  formidable  rival,  prose  had  to  show  that  it  was  no  less  rich 
in  artifice, — hence  we  find  it  arraying  itself  with  all  sorts  of  fantastic 
trickeries  and  refinements.  These  it  borrowed  from  many  diverse 
sources,  of  which  this  mediaeval  alliteration  was  but  one  ;  the  cunning 
inventions  of  Spanish  writers  were  of  especial  influence  in  the  forma- 
tion of  Euphuism,  but  in  all  the  forms  that  the  single  spirit  assumed 
we  may  recognize  the  attempt  to  make  a  prose  corresponding  to  the 
verse,  and  to  let  a  careful  construction  closely  imitate  the  effect  of 
rhyme.  In  Euphuism  this  result  was  attained  by  curipus  employment 
of  antithesis  and  balance  of  phrases,  as  in  these  lines :  "  And  if  I  were 
as  able  to  perswade  thee  to  patience,  as  thou  wert  desirous  to  exhort 
me  to  pietie,  or  as  wise  to  comfort  thee  in  thine  age,  as  thou  willing  to 
instruct  me  in  my  youth?  thou  shouldst  now  with  lesse  griefe  endure 
thy  late  losse,  and  with  little  care  leade  thy  aged  life.  Thou  weepest 
for  the  death  of  thy  daughter,  and  I  laugh  at  the  folly  of  the  father, 
for  greater  varietie  is  there  in  the  minde  of  the  mourner,  than  bitter- 
nesse  in  the  death  of  the  deceased,"  etc.,  etc.  This  bears  a-curious 
resemblance  to  the  few  bits  that  we  have  left  of  the  writing  of  Gorgias, 


RESEMBLANCE  BETWEEN  SOPHISTICS  AND  EUPHUISM. 


607 


and  it  is  interesting  to  notice  that  in  both  ancient  and  modern  times 
formal  prose  began  with  arts  not  unlike  those  that  ruled  the  poetry. 
The  resemblance  between  the  Sicilian  sophist  and  Lily  is  very  close : 
similar  conditions  produced  similar  results. 

It  is  to  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  introduction  of  the  Egyptian 
papyrus  furnished  writers  with  a  cheap  and  convenient  material  for  the 


o°q'*o''o''o     o^o     o°Q*c>°a'*o°o''o 


,  <^o  ^        '^o°°'*o°o*c'^o    **c    '-'o*    o°3    '^i^a 


BOOKCASE   AND    WRITING   MATERIALS. 


reception  and  preservation  of  writing,  and  that  thus  an  opportunity 
was  offered  for  a  form  of  literature  that  did  not  depend  on  the  memory 
for  preservation  and  transmission.  We  are  told  that  Polycrates  of 
Samos  and  Peisistratus  of  Athens  were  the  first  to  form  libraries,  but 
it  is  probable  that  these  collections  were  long  beyond  the  means  of 
private  citizens,  because  it  is  not  till  much  later  that  we  hear  of  the 


6o8  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  ISOCRATES. 

books  gathered  by  Euripides.  Only  then,  doubtless,  had  they  become 
cheap  enough  for  more  modest  purses,  and  a  reference  of  Aristophanes 
in  the  Frogs  indicates  an  abundance  of  books  towards  the  end  of  the 
Peloponnesian  war. 

IV. 

In  Greece  the  polish  that  was  given  to  prose,  and  that  made  itself 
felt  immediately  in  the  oratory,  was  much  admired,  and  it  spread 
rapidly  among  those  who  were  interested  in  the  new  learning.  We 
find  Plato,  when  he  introduced  Agathon,  the  tragedian,  into  his  Sym- 
posium, lets  him  talk  quite  in  the  manner  of  Gorgias ;  and  we  hear 
that  the  rhetorician's  pupils,  P.olus  and  Alcidamas,  outdid  their  master 
in  affectation  and  extravagant  refinement.  The  first  of  the  orators  to 
combine  the  recently  introduced  rhetoric  with  the  accustomed  elo- 
quence was  Antiphon,  in  the  deme  of  Rhamnus  in  Attica,  who  was  born 
about  480  B.C.,  who  was  the  first  in  time  of  the  ten  great  Attic  orators. 
Thucydides  in  his  history  speaks  of  him  in  terms  of  warm  praise  as 
"  a  man  second  to  none  of  the  Athenians  of  his  day  in  respect  of 
virtue,  who  had  proved  himself  most  able  to  devise  measures  and  to 
express  his  views ;  and  who,  though  he  did  not  come  forward  in  the 
assembly  of  the  people,  nor,  when  he  could  help  it,  in  any  other  scene 
of  public  debate,  but  was  eyed  with  suspicion  by  the  populace  on 
account  of  his  reputation  for  cleverness,  yet  was  most  competent  of 
all  to  help  those  engaged  in  a  controversy,  whether  in  a  court  of  justice 
or  before  a  popular  assembly..  And  he,  too,  when  the  Four  Hundred 
had  fallen,  and  was  ill-treated,  seems  to  me  to  have  made  the  best 
defense  of  all  men  up  to  my  time,  when  tried  for  his  life  on  the  charge 
of  having  aided  in  establishing  this  government."  His  speech,  how- 
ever, did  not  save  him,  and  in  41 1  B.C.  he  was  put  to  death,  his  property 
was  confiscated,  and  his  descendants  were  deprived  of  citizenship. 
Unfortunately,  this  speech  which  Thucydides  praises  so  highly  has 
not  come  down  to  us,  yet  we  have  fifteen  orations  that  have  been 
ascribed  to  him ;  three  of  which  deal  with  actual  legal  cases,  while  the 
others  are  but  rhetorical  exercises  concerning  imaginary  law-suits.  Of 
the  three  which  we  call  the  sincere  ones,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
they  were  composed  for  the  use  of  other  people,  a  practice  which  may 
be  regarded  as  equivalent  to  the  modern  custom  of  employing  a  lawyer 
for  the  defense  of  the  citizen's  legal  rights.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the 
surprise  with  which  the  antagonist  who  trusted  to  his  own  powers 
must  have  heard  his  antagonist  reciting  an  ingenious  oration  composed 
by  this  master  of  the  art.  The  success  of  this  innovation  may  be 
readily  conjectured,  and  it  is  proved  by  the  existence  of  what  may  be 


COMPARISON  OF  AN  TIP  HON  AND    THUCYDIDES.  609 

called  the  fictitious  orations  that  were  designed  for  the  training  of 
pupils.  It  is  known  that  Antiphon  gave  instruction  in  rhetoric,  and 
it  was  doubtless  for  the  use  of  his  pupils  that  he  prepared  a  manual  of 
the  art.  These  speeches,  written  for  practice  after  the  fashion  set  by 
Protagoras  and  Gorgias,  were  most  ingenious  expositions  of  opposing 
arguments,  and  by  the  fact  that  they  appeared  as  tetralogies,  with  two 
speeches  on  each  side,  preserved  them  from  becoming  mere  orations 
for  the  demolition  of  men  of  straw.  Antiphon  was  always  arguing 
against  a  good  pleader.  All  the  orations,  the  real  as  well  as  the 
fictitious  ones,  deal  with  murder-cases.  Not  all  the  arguments  em- 
ployed would  be  of  weight  in  a  modern  court-room,  but  what  deter- 
mines the  value  of  an  argument  is  its  suitability  to  the  tribunal  sitting 
in  judgment,  and  at  Athens  at  this  time  distinctions  were  drawn 
between  different  kinds  of  guilt  after  a  fashion  now  extinct.  The 
style  of  Antiphon  is  full  of  interest,  and  in  some  respects  it  bears  a 
likeness  to  that  of  Thucydides.  The  two  men  are  the  most  important 
representatives  of  what  is  called  the  austere  style,  which  was  distin- 
guished from  the  smooth  and  middle  styles,  represented  by  Isocrates 
and  Demosthenes,  respectively,  which  were  the  divisions  of  the  new 
rhetoric.  The  likeness  between  the  famous  historian  and  the  orator 
lies,  for  one  thing,  in  a  similar  effort  to  give  adequate  expression  to 
subtle  thought.  Thucydides  frequently  employs  the  persistent  an- 
tithesis that  we  find  in  Antiphon,  the  continual  subtle  division  of  a 
thought  into  all  its  meanings  and  connotations,  which  is  what  Antiphon 
also  employs,  and  both  have  a  rugged,  sturdy  quality  that  shows  that 
they  were  exposed  to  the  same  influences.  Both  exhibit  similar 
restrained  vehemence,  and  it  *is  in  this  dignity  and  self-control  that 
Antiphon,  when  we  compare  him  with  the  later  orators,  holds  to  them 
a  position  not  unlike  that  which  ^schylus  holds  in  relation  to  his 
successors. 

Of  Andocides,  the  next  in  the  list  of  ten,  there  is  less  to  be  said, 
for  his  importance  is  greater  to  history  than  to  the  study  of  liter- 
ature. He  was  curiously  connected  with  the  mutilation  of  the  Hermes, 
an  event  that  agitated  Athens  just  before  the  sailing  of  the  Sicilian 
expedition.  For  guilt  in  this  affair,  which,  in  connection  with  the  prof- 
anation of  the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  had  all  the  horror  of  a  Nihilistic 
outbreak,  he  was  compelled  to  leave  Athens.  He  supported  himself 
during  his  banishment  by  carrying  on  business,  and  at  length  returned 
under  a  general  amnesty.  He  appears  to  have  held  positions  of  im- 
portance, for  he  was  sent  to  Sparta  to  negotiate  concerning  peace. 
His  subsequent  career  is  uncertain.  One  story  says  that  he  was  again 
banished,  which  would  give  roundness  to  the  general  melancholy  of 
his  career,  but  this  is  mercifully  doubted.     But  three  speeches  of  his 


6io  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SO  CRATES. 

are  left  :  one  with  regard  to  this  very  peace,  which  is  wise  and  sensible. 
Another,  on  his  return,  was  intended  to  aid  him  in  procuring  the  re- 
moval of  certain  disabilities  under  which  he  lay.  The  third,  on  the 
Mysteries,  relates  to  the  accusation  brought  against  him,  of  profaning 
those  holy  rites.  A  fourth,  against  Alcibiades,  is  regarded  as  ungen- 
uine.  The  speeches  ascribed  to  him  are  smooth  and  simple,  with  no 
excess  of  ornament  or  of  novelty.  He  is  not  a  man  who  instinctively 
occurs  to  the  mind  of  any  one  who  is  thinking  of  the  masters  of 
oratory. 

Lysias  was  a  man  of  a  different  sort,  whose  influence  on  oratory  was 
very  great.  When  poetry  and  sculpture  were  fading  away  with  the 
overthrow  of  the  Athenian  power,  the  mastery  of  prose  took  their 
place  and  reached  its  highest  development.  To  the  attainment  of 
this  result  Lysias  contributed  in  a  very  marked  degree.  The  some- 
what formal  style  of  the  early  oratory  was  modified  by  him  into  a 
vivid,  simpler  picturesqueness  that  bore  closer  resemblance  to  the  lan- 
guage of  common  speech.  In  his  hands  oratory  ceased  to  be  some- 
thing remote  and  solemn,  it  became  part  of  human  life,  and  it  is  per- 
haps instructive  to  notice  that  it  lost  none  of  its  power  by  this 
change. 

The  exact  date  of  the  birth  of  Lysias  is  uncertain  ;  it  was  probably 
about  the  year  459  B.C.  He  was  the  son  of  Cephalos,  a  Syracusan  who 
settled  at  Athens  on  the  invitation  of  Pericles,  and  here  Lysias  was 
born.  When  fifteen  years  old,  he  went  to  Thurii,  in  Magna  Graecia,  with 
his  eldest  brother,  and  there  it  is  said  that  he  studied  rhetoric  under 
Tisias,  already  mentioned  as  the  pupil  of  Corax.  When  the  Athenian 
expedition  set  out  against  Sicily,  he  with  others  was  charged  with  At- 
ticising,  and  compelled  to  return  to  Athens.  This  was  in  412  B.C.  The 
next  few  years  he  passed  there  without  interruption,  possibly  continu- 
ing his  rhetorical  studies  and  composing  some  of  the  artificial  pieces 
included  among  his  works  ;  in  404  B.C.,  however,  his  wealth  brought  him 
under  the  ill-will  of  the  Thirty,  he  was  robbed  of  his  property,  and 
with  difficulty  escaped  secretly  to  Megara.  His  brother  was  put  to 
death.  Lysias  remained  in  exile  for  about  a  year,  until  the  overthrow 
of  the  Thirty,  when  he  returned  to  Athens,  and  was  granted  citizen- 
ship there.  From  this  time,  403  B.C.,  until  380,  he  was  busily  employed 
as  a  writer  of  speeches  for  the  use  of  others  in  the  courts  of  law.  Of 
these  he  is  said  to  have  composed  no  less  than  two  hundred,  more 
than  twice  the  number  ascribed  to  any  other  Attic  orator.  A  story 
runs  that  he  composed  a  defense  for  Socrates  at  his  trial  in  399  B.C.,  but 
that  the  philosopher  declined  to  use  it.  The  only  one  that  he  wrote  for 
his  own  use  was  the  oration  against  Eratosthenes,  one  of  the  detested 
Thirty  Tyrants  and  the  murderer  of  his  brother  Polemarchus.     This  is 


LYSIAS—HIS  ORATION  AGAINST  ERATOSTHENES.  6ii 

one  of  the  great  speeches  of  antiquity,  not  only  for  the  calm  earnest- 
ness with  which  Lysias  recites  his  own  personal  grievances  against  a 
cruel  despot,  when  he  holds  his  hand  and  lets  the  simplest  narration 
of  facts  fill  the  hearer  with  indignation,  and  then  for  the  seriousness 
and  warmth  of  his  denunciation  of  a  political  system  under  which  such 
injustice  was  possible.  Here  are  his  concluding  words,  appealing  first 
to  those  who  had  remained  at  Athens  under  the  oligarchy,  and  then 
to  the  democratic  exiles  who  had  held  the  Peiraeus : 

I  wish,  before  I  go  down,  to  recall  a  few  things  to  the  recollection  of 
both  parties,  the  party  of  the  town  and  the  party  of  the  Peiraeus  ;  in  order 
that,  in  passing  sentence,  you  may  have  before  you  as  warnings  the  calam- 
ities which  have  come  upon  you  through  these  men. 

And  you,  first,  of  the  town  —  reflect  that  under  their  iron  rule  you  were 
forced  to  wage  with  brothers,  with  sons,  with  citizens  a  war  of  such  a  sort 
that,  having  been  vanquished,  you  are  the  equals  of  the  conquerors,  whereas, 
had  you  conquered,  you  would  have  been  the  slaves  of  the  tyrants.  They 
would  have  gained  wealth  for  their  own  houses  from  the  administration;  you 
have  impoverished  yours  in  the  war  with  one  another  ;  for  they  did  not 
deign  that  you  should  thrive  along  with  them,  though  they  forced  you  to  be- 
come odious  in  their  company  ;  such  being  their  consummate  arrogance 
that,  instead  of  seeking  to  win  your  loyalty  by  giving  you  partnership  in  their 
prizes,  they  fancied  themselves  friendly  if  they  allowed  you  a  share  in  their 
dishonours.  Now,  therefore,  that  you  are  in  security,  take  vengeance  to  the 
utmost  of  your  power  both  for  yourselves  and  for  the  men  of  the  Peiraeus  ; 
reflecting  that  these  men,  villains  that  they  are,  were  your  masters,  but  that 
now  good  men  are  your  fellow-citizens, —  your  fellow-soldiers  against  the 
enemy,  your  fellow-counsellors  in  the  interest  of  the  state  ;  remembering,  too, 
those  allies  whom  these  men  posted  on  the  Acropolis  as  sentinels  over  their 
despotism  and  your  servitude.  To  you — though  much  more  might  be  said — 
I  say  this  only. 

But  you  of  the  Peiraeus  —  think,  in  the  first  place,  of  your  arms  —  think 
how,  after  fighting  many  a  battle  on  foreign  soil,  you  were  stripped  of  those 
arms,  not  by  the  enemy,  but  by  these  men  in  time  of  peace  ;  think,  next,  how 
you  were  warned  by  public  criers  from  the  city  bequeathed  to  you  by  your 
fathers,  and  how  your  surrender  was  demanded  of  the  cities  in  which  you 
were  exiles.  Resent  these  things  as  you  resented  them  in  banishment  ;  and 
recollect,  at  the  same  time,  the  other  evils  that  you  have  suffered  at  their 
hands  ;  —  how  some  were  snatched  out  of  the  market-place  or  from  temples 
and  put  to  a  violent  death  ;  how  others  were  torn  from  children,  parents,  or 
wife,  and  forced  to  become  their  own  murderers,  nor  allowed  the  common 
decencies  of  burial,  by  men  who  believed  their  own  empire  to  be  surer  than 
the  vengeance  from  on  high. 

And  you,  the  remnant  who  escaped  death,  after  perils  in  many  places,  after 
wanderings  to  many  cities  and  expulsion  from  all,  beggared  of  the  necessa- 
ries of  life,  parted  from  children,  left  in  a  fatherland  which  was  hostile  or  in 
the  land  of  strangers,  came  through  many  obstacles  to  the  Peiraeus.  Dan- 
gers many  and  great  confronted  you  ;  but  you  proved  yourselves  brave  men; 
you  freed  some,  you  restored  others  to  their  country. 

Had  you  been  unfortunate  and  missed  those  aims,  you  yourselves  would 
now  be  exiles,  in  fear  of  suffering  what  you  suffered  before.      Owing  to  the 


6l2 


THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  ISOCRATES. 


character  of  these  men,  neither  temples  nor  altars,  which  even  in  the  sight 
of  evil-doers  have  a  protecting  virtue,  would  have  availed  you  against 
wrong  ;  —  while  those  of  your  children  who  are  here  would  have  been  en- 
during the  outrages  of  these  men,  and  those  who  are  in  a  foreign  land,  in 
the  absence  of  all  succour,  would,  for  the  smallest  debt,  have  been  enslaved. 
I  do  not  wish,  however,  to  speak  of  what  might  have  been,  seeing  that 
what  these  man  have  done  is  beyond  my  power  to  tell;  and  indeed  it  is  a  task 
not  for  one  accuser  or  for  two,  but  for  a  host. 

Yet  is  my  indignation  perfect  for  the  temples  which  these  men  bartered 
away  or  defiled  by  entering  them  ;  for  the  city  which  they  humbled  ;  for  the 
arsenals  which  they  dismantled  ;  for  the  dead,  whom  you,  since  you  could 
not  rescue  them  alive,  must  vindicate  in  their  death.  And  I  think  that  they 
are  listening  to  us,  and  will  be  aware  of  you  when  you   give  your  verdict, 

deeming  that  such  as  absolve  these  men 
have  passed  sentence  upon  them,  and  that 
such  as  exact  retribution  from  these  have 
taken  vengeance  in  their  names. 

I  will  cease  accusing.     You  have  heard, 
seen,  suffered  :  you  have  them  :  judge. 

In  this  extract,  as  in  almost  all  of  the 
thirty-four  speeches  that  have  come 
down  to  us  either  complete  or  in  large 
fragments,  it  is  easy  to  notice  the  ab- 
sence of  exaggeration  which  forms  one 
of  the  most  characteristic  traits  of  Ly- 
sias.  Instead  of  exaggerating  he  re- 
strains himself,  and  by  the  delicacy  of 
his  touch  he  won  great  praise  from  the 
critics  of  both  Greece  and  Rome.  Cicero 
frequently  speaks  of  him,  and  always 
with  the  highest  praise.  He  commends 
his  elegance  and  refinement,  and  yet 
without  denying  him  vigor ;  he  says 
LYsiAs.  that  while  it  is  doubtful  whether  Lysias 

could  ever  have  reached  the  heights  of 
Demosthenes,  he  was  almost  a  second  Demosthenes,  or,  what  is  the 
same  thing,  almost  a  perfect  orator.  All  who  mention  him  call  especial 
attention  to  the  marvelous  grace  and  accuracy  of  his  style,  a  point  con- 
cerning which  it  is  not  easy  for  us  to  form  an  independent  opinion.  Yet 
we  may  see  that  his  language  was  plain  and  eminently  persuasive,  that 
he  helped  to  save  oratory  from  sinking  beneath  excess  of  ornament 
and  convention,  and  that  his  exquisite  taste  hastened  the  development 
of  the  purest  eloquence. 

His  later  speeches  were  mostly  written  for  others,  who  were  contes- 
tants in  public  or  private  law-suits,  and  in  them  we  notice  the  same 


METHOD    OF  LYSI AS— OPINIONS  OF  HIS  CONTEMPORARIES.      613 

sober  but  convincing  art.  Fragments  of  two  public  orations  remain 
bearing  his  name,  one  uttered  at  the  Olympic  festival  in  388  B.C. ;  the 
other  is  a  funeral  oration  over  Athenians  who  had  been  sent  to  sup- 
port Corinth,  but  its  genuineness  is  doubted.  Ancient  critics  were 
cooler  in  their  praise  of  the  set  orations  of  Lysias. 

In  the  Phaedrus  of  Plato  we  find  Socrates  ridiculing  what  pretends 
to  be  an  extract  from  one  of  the  minor  works  of  Lysias,  the  genuine- 
ness of  which  is  doubted  by  many  competent  authorities,  and  express- 
ing some  contempt  for  the  art  of  that  rhetorician,  whom  he  places 
much  lower  than  Isocrates,  a  young  follower  of  Socrates,  for  whose 
future  the  highest  hopes  are  expressed.  The  writing  of  Lysias  that  is 
here  laughed  at  is  a  discussion  on  love,  and  is  certainly  not  a  fair  rep- 
resentative of  his  best  work,  and  although  Socrates  applauds  his  polish 
and  clearness,  he  is  amply  justified  in  affirming  that 

"  Nobler  far  is  the  serious  pursuit  of  the  dialectician,  who  finds  a  congenial 
soil,  and  there  with  knowledge  engrafts  and  sows  words  which  are  able  to 
help  themselves  and  him  who  planted  them,  and  are  not  unfruitful,  but  have 
in  them  seeds  which  may  bear  fruit  in  other  natures  nurtured  in  other  ways 
—  making  the  seed  everlasting,  and  the  possessors  happy  to  the  utmost  ex- 
tent of  human  happiness." 

To  be  sure,  Socrates  says  that  oratory  depends  much  more  on  the 
natural  genius  of  the  speaker  than  on  any  rules,  yet  he  blames  Lysias 
for  seeming  to  write  off  freely  just  what  came  into  his  head. 

If  Plato  blamed  Lysias  justly  for  his  early  writings,  he  was  but  a  false 
prophet  concerning  Isocrates,  for  however  full  of  promise  that  orator 
may  have  appeared  in  his  youth,  in  his  later  years  he  certainly  did  not 
incline  in  the  direction  of  greater  naturalness.  He  was  born  in  436  B.C., 
more  than  twenty  years  after  Lysias,  at  Athens ;  his  philosophical 
studies,  by  which  apparently  Socrates  was  flattered,  did  not  prevent 
him  from  making  eloquence  the  chief  occupation  of  his  life.  He  helped 
to  give  it,  however,  a  new  direction  toward  questions  of  statesman- 
ship, instead  of  confining  it, as  his  predecessors  had  been  inclined  to 
do,  to  the  narrower  limits  of  the  courts.  Lysias  had,  however,  pre- 
ceded him  in  a  fashion  already  established  by  the  detested  Sophists, 
who  used  to  take  advantage  of  the  assemblage  of  citizens  at  the  great 
games  from  all  quarters  of  Greece,  to  deliver  orations  which  should 
illustrate  the  excellence  of  the  speakers  in  their  favorite  art,  as  well  as 
convey  sound  political  instruction.     Of  Gorgias  we  are  told  that 

"  His  speech  at  Olympia  dealt  with  the  largest  of  political  questions.  See- 
ing Greece  torn  by  faction,  he  became  a  counsellor  of  concord,  seeking  to 
turn  the  Greeks  against  the  barbarians,  and  advising  them  to  take  for  the 
prizes  of  their  arms  not  each  other's  cities,  but  the  land  of  the  barbarians." 


6i4 


THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 


He  found  admirers,  too,  for  at  Delphi  there  stood  his  golden  statue 
in  the  temple  where  he  had  "  thundered  his  Pythian  speech  from  the 
altar."  Hippias  had  also  spoken  at  Olympia.  When  Lysias  pro- 
nounced his  oration,  he  gave  sound  advice  to  his  listeners,  urging  them 
to  unite  against  the  dangers  that  threatened  them  from  the  East  and 
from  Sicily,  and  it  was  to  enforce  the  same  wise  lesson  that  Isocrates  pro- 
nounced his  famous  Panegyric  in  380  B.C.  That  the  oration  was  actu- 
ally delivered  by  Isocrates  is  more  than  doubtful,  because  lack  of  voice 
and  a  certain  shyness  prevented  him  from  speaking  in  public,  but  the 

speech  was  published  as  a  sort  of 
political  pamphlet  to  discuss  the  ex- 
isting state  of  affairs.  He  begins  by 
recommending  Athens  and  Sparta 
to  set  aside  their  long-lived  jealousies, 
and  although  Sparta  is  at  present  the 
more  powerful,  yet  some  compromise 
is  advisable  in  view  of  the  historical 
glory  of  its  rival  ;  the  two  united 
should  begin  a  war  against  Persia, 
their  old  and  relentless  foe.  His  elo- 
quence failed,  however,  to  accomplish 
any  practical  result  ;  the  future  vic- 
tories of  Greece  were  wrought  by  the 
action  of  the  keen  intelligence  of  that 
country,  not  by  force  of  arms.  As 
Isocrates  himself  said  in  this  oration  : 

**  Athens  has  so  distanced  the  world  in 

power   of   thought  and  speech  that  her 

disciples   have   become   the  teachers   of 

ISOCRATES.  all   other   men.     She   has  brought  it  to 

pass  that  the  name  of  Greece  should  be 

thought  no  longer  a  matter  of  race  but  a  matter  of  intelligence  ;  and  should 

be  given  to  the  participators  in  our  culture  rather  than  to  the  sharers  of 

our  common  origin." 

The  hopes  which  Isocrates  expressed  in  this  speech  were  not  daunted 
by  failure.  For  nearly  forty  years  he  sought  for  a  leader  who  should 
guide  Greece  to  victory,  and  he  continually  urged  this  remedy  for  her 
woes.  He  brought  to  the  aid  of  his  purpose  a  wonderful  mastery  of 
the  oratorical  art.  His  ideas,  if  few,  were  distinct,  and  he  expressed 
them  with  wonderful  skill.  No  one  of  the  great  orators  was  more  suc- 
cessful in  weaving  a  web  of  artificial  grace,  in  achieving  the  mastery  of 
a  flawless  style.  As  we  have  seen,  he  was  regarded  as  the  leading  rep- 
resentative of  what  was  called  the   middle  style,  which  was  character- 


REFINEMENT  OF  GREEK  PROSE.  615 

ized  by  keen  consciousness  of  the  value  of  rhythm  and  harmony.  He 
thus  welded  the  earlier  efforts  of  Gorgias  and  men  like  him  with  the 
work  of  the  orators  who  had  spoken  before  him.  Yet  while  successful  in 
what  he  aimed  at,  the  result  is  cloying  ;  one  too  often  inclines  to  notice 
his  workmanship  instead  of  being  led  by  it  insensibly  to  adherence  to 
what  he  says,  and  it  becomes  in  time  a  fatal  objection  to  an  artificial 
method,  so  that  the  reader  admires  the  method  rather  than  the  work 
done.  The  result  is  that  Isocrates  is  marking  time,  with  astounding 
accuracy,  to  be  sure,  yet  without  advancing,  while  the  other  orators 
are  marching  forward.  Yet  this  remark,  though  it  applies  to  the  final 
value  of  Isocrates  as  a  man,  in  no  way  affects  the  importance  of  the 
final  polish  that  he  gave  to  Greek  prose.  He  completed  its  gradual 
growth  toward  subtlety  and  refinement,  leaving  it  a  perfect  instru- 
ment. Indirectly,  too,  these  qualities  of  his  style  acted  on  Latin  prose, 
and  later  his  influence  worked  on  modern  prose,  for  at  the  time  of  the 
Renaissance,  when  men  were  impatient  to  find  a  new  method  of  ex- 
pression to  take  the  place  of  the  aridities  of  mediaevalism,  Isocrates  was 
much  read — fortunately  for  himself,  his  Greek  was  readily  intelligible 
— and  found  admirers  and  imitators  among  men  hungry  for  beauty 
and  artificiality. 

It  was  not  by  his  orations  alone  that  Isocrates  established  his  au- 
thority ;  after  writing  speeches  for  the  law  courts  for  a  few  years,  he 
abandoned  that  means  of  support,  for  which  he  ever  after  expressed 
considerable  contempt,  and  founded  a  school  for  rhetorical  and  polit- 
ical instruction.  This  proved  a  great  success  ;  he  numbered  among  his 
pupils  many  illustrious  names,  and  doubtless  his  instruction  was  one 
of  the  most  important  intellectual  inspirations  of  the  time.  Mean- 
while he  composed  his  orations,  in  which  he  was  never  tired  of  urging 
the  need  of  Greek  unity ;  he  commended  the  old  democracy  of  Solon 
and  the  pristine  virtue  of  that  remote  time,  but  such  advice  was  of 
course  without  effect.  Even  eloquence  could  not  bring  back  the  days 
of  Grecian  glory.  Isocrates  lived  until  his  ninety-eighth  year,  388  B.C., 
and  the  story  ran  that  on  hearing  the  melancholy  news  of  the  defeat 
of  the  Greeks  by  Philip  at  Chaeroneia,  he  starved  himself  to  death. 
Milton,  it  will  be  remembered,  in  his  sonnet  to  the  Lady  Margaret 

Ley,  says : 

"  as  that  dishonest  victory 
At  Chaeroneia,  fatal  to  liberty, 
Killed  with  report  that  old  man  eloquent." 

But  this  picturesque  anecdote  is  generally  doubted,  for  the  battle  was 
in  fact  the  fulfillment  of  the  aged  orator's  hopes  that  Greece  should 
find  a  leader  against  Persia,  and  there  survives  a  letter  of  his  in  which 
he  expresses  his  content  with  the  altered  condition  of  affairs. 


6i6  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 

As  has  been  already  indicated,  the  orations  of  Isocrates  deal  with 
important  questions  of  statesmanship,  although  with  but  little  novelty 
in  his  advice  ;  what  never  fails  him  is  the  desire  for  artistic  perfection. 
Out  of  the  genuine  works  of  his  which  were  known  to  antiquity, 
twenty-one  speeches  and  nine  letters  have  come  down  to  us,  very 
nearly  all.  Fifteen  of  these  discourses  were  composed  for  readers,  and 
were  of  the  nature  of  political  pamphlets  in  oratorical  form,  like  the 
Panegyrikos  mentioned  above  ;  this  and  two  others,  the  Areopagitikos 
and  the  Panathenaikos,  are  the  most  famous.  In  the  Areopagitikos 
he  pleads  in  defense  of  the  old  democracy  when  license  was  not  con- 
founded with  freedom ;  in  the  Panathenaic  oration  he  defends  himself 
from  some  of  the  accusations  that  "vulgar  Sophists "  had  brought 
against  him,  and  celebrates  at  some  length  the  glory  of  Athens.  It  is 
certainly  a  marvelous  production  for  a  man  over  ninety  years  old,  and 
is  exceptional  for  the  plainness  of  its  style.  Curious  are  the  Busiris 
and  the  Encomium  on  Helen  as  examples  of  his  purely  perfunctory 
treatment  of  set  subjects,  like  the  exercises  of  the  Sophists.  By  the 
side  of  these  efforts  he  regarded  writers  of  speeches  for  the  courts,  doll- 
makers  in  comparison  with  Pheidias,  but  possibly  even  the  doll-makers 
would  not  have  seen  Athens  overthrown  with  half  the  complacency  of 
this  artist  in  words,  who  survives  after  all  simply  as  an  accomplished 
rhetorician. 

What  the  reader  will  have  noticed  is  the  striking  growth  of  artificial 
oratory  among  the  Athenians  during  this  period  ;  and  the  spread  of 
this  custom  marks  a  wide  contrast  with  the  earlier  literary  sincerity. 
Doubtless  the  poets  had  sung  imaginary  woes  with  more  attention  to 
the  form  of  expression  than  to  the  reality  of  their  words,  but  in  what 
has  reached  us  we  are  struck  by  the  apparent  reality  of  the  verse. 
From  this  time  on  we  shall  have  frequent  occasion  to  observe  the 
growth  of  a  quality  in  literature  that  is  very  remote  from  life.  It  is 
hard,  however,  to  see  how  this  unreality  was  to  be  avoided.  Readiness 
and  smoothness  of  speech  were  not  to  be  acquired  without  practice, 
and  it  was  only  on  imaginary  cases  that  this  could  be  had.  Obviously 
men  would  be  averse  to  intrusting  the  defense  of  their  lives  or  their 
property  to  inexperienced  advocates,  and  only  by  showing  how  well 
they  could  defend  men  of  straw,  could  orators  be  chosen  to  defend 
men  of  flesh  and  blood.  Teachers,  too,  had  to  give  proof  of  the  excel- 
lence of  their  method  ;  it  was  incumbent  upon  them  to  show  how 
harmonious  and  rhythmical  were  the  sentences  that  they  could  form, 
and  as  specimens  of  their  skill  they  spoke  on  subjects  that  could 
offend  no  one.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  main  work  of  the 
advocates  was  preparing  speeches  for  the  use  of  other  people,  it  becomes 
evident  that  the  capacity  to  assume  emotions  was  a  most  desirable 


GROWING  ARTIFICIALITY  OF  ORATORY.  617 

quality,  so  that  he  who  was  most  eloquent  about  acknowledged  trifles 
showed  a  superiority  to  those  who  betrayed  less  quick  sympathy  by 
responding  only  to  more  serious  demands. 

The  result  is  obvious :  on  one  side,  oratory  improved  from  the  con- 
stant practice  which  it  received,  but,  on  the  other,  there  is  to  be 
noticed  a  distinct  sacrifice  of  matter  to  form,  a  continual  disposition 
to  regard  literature  as  an  art,  as  something  foreign  to  real  life.  Elo- 
quence, after  attaining  its  greatest  height  when  employed  by  Demos- 
thenes, sank  into  an  elegant  accomplishment,  and  being  the  principal 
object  of  intellectual  interest,  when  the  political  life  of  Greece  died  it 
became  a  mere  amusement,  a  sort  of  intellectual  jugglery.  Already 
in  Isocrates  we  see  eloquence  dangerously  near  this  condition,  and  the 
exercise  of  ingenuity  and  cleverness  resting  on  a  slender  basis,  for 
instead  of  being  one  flower  of  education,  it  was  almost  the  whole  of 
education  for  this  race.  In  him  we  see  a  mind  apparently  almost 
equally  divided  about  the  relative  importance  of  two  members  of  a 
well-balanced  period,  and  the  proper  course  of  statesmanship,  and  he 
shows  in  the  bud  the  future  development  of  all  this  oratory  into  a 
splitting  of  straws  and  the  most  approved  form  of  literary  trifling. 
Yet  Isocrates  must  not  bear  too  much  odium  for  belonging  to  the 
losing  side.  That  test  would  condemn  Aristophanes,  and  Demosthenes 
himself  would  have  to  be  denied  our  admiration  if  that  were  to  be  given 
only  to  success.  Nothing  is  more  unwise  than  the  danger  which  besets 
an  advocate  of  letting  respect  for  one  set  of  qualities  blind  him  to 
another,  and  nothing  is  more  common.  Every  one  of  the  tragedians 
has  suffered  from  it  in  turn,  and  it  would  be  well  to  preserve  the  orators 
from  a  like  fate,  which  after  all  gives  us  more  insight  into  their  com- 
mentators than  into  the  men  whom  they  may  happen  to  discuss. 

The  political  advice  that  Isocrates  gave  was  something  that  recom- 
mended itself  to  him  as  one  who  observed  the  incompetence  of  Sparta  ; 
all  his  keen  intellectual  sympathies  inclined  him  to  set  a  high  store  on 
Athens,  and  he  continually  strove  to  establish  a  pan-Hellenic  union  in 
which  that  city  should  renew  its  former  prominence.  He  endeavored 
to  unite  Greece  against  a  common  foe,  and  certainly  he  showed  insight 
in  detecting  the  weakness  of  Persia.  By  attacking  that  country  he 
hoped  that  all  the  existing  and  destructive  intestine  jealousies  might 
be  welded  into  a  harmonious  spirit  of  conquest,  and  that  Greece  might 
become  a  mighty  unit.  So  far  his  counsel  was  wise.  The  magnificent 
strength  of  Greece,  as  shown  in  its  earlier  wars  with  Persia,  warranted 
him  in  making  this  effort,  which  was  made  only  more  desirable  by  the 
present  distracted  state  of  the  country.  What  he  failed  to  detect  was 
the  dangers  threatening  from  the  growth  of  the  Macedonian  power. 
Indeed,   he   was  unconsciously  a   powerful    ally  of    Philip;    with  no 


6i8  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 

knowledge  of  what  he  was  doing,  like  the  great  section  of  the  Athenian 
populace  whose  mouthpiece  he  was,  he  was  preparing  for  the  Mace- 
donian supremacy  when  he  urged  his  fellow-citizens  not  to  strive  for 
temporal  power,  but  to  content  themselves  with  glory  from  the  past 
and  undeniable  intellectual  ascendancy  in  the  future.  He  thus  indi- 
cated what  was  to  be  the  position  of  Athens  in  the  period  then  open- 
ing, the  spirit  that  survived  when  the  material  power  of  that  city 
was  gone,  but  its  mind  remained  and  controlled  later  civilizations. 
This  disposition  to  lay  aside  all  claim  to  temporal  power  is  most  clearly 
marked  in  the  letter  of  Isocrates  to  Philip  after  the  peace  of  346  B.C., 
when  that  king  had  secured  his  position  as  champion  of  the  Amphic- 
tyonic  assembly.  Here  the  orator  urges  Philip  to  put  himself  at  the 
head  of  united  Greece  and  to  undertake  his  old  hobby,  namely,  to 
overthrow  the  Persian  empire  and  free  the  Asiatic  Greeks.  He  accepts 
without  a  murmur  the  degradation  of  his  country. 

As  might  be  expected,  this  resignation  of  ancient  glory  was  counter- 
balanced by  a  keen  love  of  the  undoubted  literary  superiority  of 
Greece,  and  he  was  not  unaware  of  the  extent  to  which  he  had  helped 
to  further  this.  It  was  not,  however,  a  single  man  whom  we  are 
studying,  but  one  who  expresses  a  momentous  change  in  the  Athenian 
people.  The  delight  in  letters  that  we  observe  in  him  was  something 
more  than  a  personal  quality;  it  is  not  a  mere  vain  old  man  whom  we 
have  before  us,  eloquent  and  conscious  of  his  eloquence,  with  certain 
limited  notions  of  political  wisdom,  but  rather  a  picture  of  a  large  part 
of  his  contemporaries;  that  is  his  value  as  a  representative.  Just  as  a 
medical  student  does  not  need  to  dissect  everybody  to  know  human 
anatomy,  so  we  may  find  in  Isocrates  the  specimen  of  the  majority  of 
his  citizens,  just  as  Demosthenes  is  the  vivid  example  of  the  impotent 
opposition. 

The  excellence  of  his  art  is  the  very  quality  in  which  Athens  was 
supreme,  and  his  love  for  one  is  closely  bound  up  with  his  love  of  the 
other.  All  the  charm  of  letters  awaits  the  student  of  his  smooth  and 
harmonious  prose,  at  the  same  time  that  the  pages  expose  the  estab- 
lishment of  literary  art.  We  have  seen  hitherto  abundant  instances 
of  the  same  tendency,  in  Menander  and  in  Xenophon  ;  here  the  work 
is  accomplished  for  oratory,  and  in  the  dullness  of  Isocrates's  compre- 
hension of  the  perils  that  threatened  Greece  we  may  see  a  vivid 
instance  of  the  fault  that  always  threatens  extreme  prepossession  in 
favor  of  literary  form.  And  while  Isocrates  is  significant  as  the  fore- 
runner of  the  direction  in  which  the  Hellenic  race  was  moving,  his 
direct  authority  over  later  times  can  scarcely  be  exaggerated.  The 
early  growth  of  the  art,  of  which  he  was  perhaps  the  most  brilliant 
example,  is  tolerably  clear,  and  its  subsequent  history  is  almost  with- 


QUALITIES  OF    THE    ORATORY  OF  ISOCRATES—IS^EOS.  619 

out  a  cloud.  Almost  every  literary  accomplishment  belonged  to  him  ; 
he  cultivated  every  flower  of  rhetoric,  and  it  is  an  ungrateful  world 
that  now  rends  this  man  whose  faults  are  obvious,  when  it  has  learned 
from  him  the  power  of  literary  charm.  But  as  he  won  all  the  fame 
that  belonged  to  the  period  in  which  he  lived,  he  now  suffers  for  the 
deeds  or  rather  for  the  words  of  a  whole  people.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered, however,  that  those  who  are  attacking  him  are  really  assaulting 
artificial  literature,  and  that  literature  becomes  artificial  when  public 
life  becomes  stagnant.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  Greece  that  when  every- 
thing else  failed  them   they  held  true  to  things  of  the  intellect. 

Among  the  pupils  of  Isocrates  was  Isaeos,  a  native  of  Chalcis  in 
Euboea,  who  lived  in  Athens  from  420  B.C.  till  348  B.C.,  and  devoted  him- 
self to  the  practice  of  the  law,  without  mingling  at  all,  as  all  his  pre- 
decessors had  done,  in  political  questions.  This  rigid  exercise  of  a 
profession  and  the  abandonment  of  politics  indicate  the  beginning  of 
a  change  in  Greek  life.  Henceforth  the  Athenians  ceased  being  above 
all  things  citizens.  Isaeos  is  said  to  have  been  a  pupil  of  Isocrates, 
but  his  style  bears  much  more  likeness  to  that  of  Lysias,  who,  it  will 
be  remembered,  was  a  leader  in  forensic  cases.  Sixty-four  speeches, 
fifty  of  which  were  held  to  be  genuine,  are  mentioned  by  ancient 
writers ;  of  these  eleven  and  a  large  fragment  of  another  have  reached 
us,  although  fifty  are  said  to  have  survived  to  the  middle  of  the  ninth 
century.  All  of  these  deal  with  law-cases,  and  most  of  them  with 
questions  of  inheritance.  While  for  many  years  they  have  been 
studied  as  examples  of  the  greater  influence  of  Lysias,  tempered  by 
that  of  Isocrates,  they  have  for  modern  students  of  comparative  juris- 
prudence distinct  value  for  the  light  that  they  throw  on  the  Athenian 
laws.  Then,  too,  he  has  another  most  important  claim  on  the  reader's 
attention  as  the  teacher  of  the  greatest  orator  of  Greece,  and  so  of  the 
world,  namely,  Demosthenes.  Fortunately  we  have  left  much  of  the 
work  of  the  predecessors  of  this  wonderful  man,  enough  at  least  to 
show  us  by  what  successive  steps  the  Greek  language  grew  up  to  the 
condition  of  a  rich,  fluent  instrument,  how  the  prose  freed  itself  from 
awkwardnesses  and  at  last  acquired  a  full  and  varied  harmony;  how 
the  art  of  argument  learned  simplicity  and  vigor.  It  was  when  this 
perfection  had  been  attained  that  the  greatest  orator  spoke,  and  for- 
tunately for  once  in  studying  the  success  of  a  Greek  master  we  do  not 
have  to  conjecture  the  gradual  growth  of  his  art :  we  can  trace  it  from 
one  speaker  to  another,  and  thus  get  one  more  proof  that  every  com- 
plex form  of  expression  is  the  result  of  long  experiment  and  not  of 
sudden  inspiration. 

In  saying  that  among  the  Greeks  oratory  became  one  of  the  fine 
arts,  more  is  implied  than  at   first  appears,  and   certainly  a  great  dis- 


620  THE  EARLY  ORATORS  AND  I  SOCRATES. 

tinction  is  noted  between  ancient  and  modern  eloquence,  for  the 
changes  that  are  now  affecting  public  speaking  are  not  at  all  in  this 
direction.  The  modern  orator  has  abandoned  a  style  which  is  indi- 
cated if  not  precisely  defined  when  it  is  called  bombastic,  but  he  is  yet 
far  from,  and  probably  will  never  acquire,  the  wonderful  complexity  of 
the  art  as  it  delighted  the  Athenians.  At  present  the  ideal  of  the 
world  is  more  nearly  scientific  than  artistic  perfection,  which  was  the 
ideal  of  the  Greeks,  and  the  keen  interest  that  that  race  took  in  the 
accomplishment  of  its  aims  has  become  subordinate  to  the  importance 
of  the  aims  themselves.  The  English-speaking  races — and  the  Ger- 
mans show  the  same  defect — lack  the  extreme  sensitiveness  to  form 
that  distinguished  the  Greeks.  We  try  to  atone  for  the  dullness  of 
our  ears  by  devising  a  conventional  formality  which  shall  be  observed, 
just  as  a  conventional  system  of  mourning  at  times  suffices  for  an  ex- 
pression of  grief.  To  the  Athenians,  to  the  more  cultivated  Greeks  in 
general,  an  oratorical  contest  was  a  source  of  enjoyment  not  unlike 
that  which  musical  people  know  at  a  good  concert.  The  proper  use 
of  language,  the  position  and  gestures  of  the  orator,  his  pronunciation, 
accent,  and  tone  of  voice,  were  all,  as  it  were,  separate  instruments 
producing  a  complete  harmony  to  which  we  are  deaf.  Any  one  who 
will  compare  the  coarse  work  tolerated  in  our  theaters  with  the  ex- 
quisite grace  and  dignity  of  the  Theatre  Fran^ais  will  understand  the 
nature  of  the  difference  between  the  eloquence  of  Greece  and  that  of 
other  races,  and  the  complexity  of  the  art  which  grew  up  under  the 
most  refining  care  of  Isocrates  to  be  the  mode  of  utterance  for  the  last 
of  the  public-spirited  citizens  of  Athens.  If  Isocrates  could  defend 
making  two  contradictory  statements  about  the  same  thing  by  main- 
taining that  his  second  account  was  well  expressed  and  very  oppor- 
tune, we  may  be  prepared  to  find  that  Greek  orations  have  as  little  of 
the  quality  of  affidavits  as  do  a  poet's  love-sonnets.  The  possibility 
of  the  substitution  of  fictitious  embroidery  in  the  place  of  facts  indi- 
cates very  clearly  the  constantly  besetting  danger  of  eloquence, 
whether  in  prose  or  rhyme,  when  it  once  becomes  an  art.  This  lax- 
ity— and  Demosthenes  himself  furnishes  instances  of  it— is  the  inevi- 
table result  of  extreme  attention  to  mere  effect,  and  without  great 
care  for  effect  artistic  eloquence  can  not  flourish. 

Yet  while  the  artistic  oratory  of  the  Greeks  runs  the  risk  of  paying 
for  its  vividness  by  inexactness,  it  yet  shares  with  what  we  may  call 
the  scientific  oratory  of  modern  speakers  in  a  healthy  aversion  to' mock 
eloquence,  to  exaggerated  declamation.  In  other  words,  the  finest  art 
will  be  the  simplest,  and  Demosthenes  will  leave  behind  him  the  arti- 
ficiality of  Isocrates  as  certainly  as  he  will  avoid  the  exaggerations  of 
Roman  oratory.     This  simplicity  that  he  will  attain  through  his   mas- 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF    TRUE  ELOQUENCE. 


621 


tery  of  method  and  the  fervor  of  his  spirit,  is  like  the  unrhetorical 
directness  of  a  few  modern  speakers  who  agree  with  Pascal  in  thinking 
that  true  eloquence  knows  nothing  of  eloquence.  The  resemblance  is 
like  that  between  the  physiology  of  the  sense  of  hearing  and  the  theory 
of  music,  or  that  which  is  beginning  to  be  recognized,  the  physiology 
of  the  sense  of  sight  and  painting,  or  the  gradual  discovery  of  modern 
literature  that  there  is  nothing  more  solemn  or  impressive  than  the 
facts  of  life.  In  short,  everywhere  the  results  of  true  science  will  be 
found  to  coincide  with  the  results  of  true  art. 


ATHENA     WRITING. 


CHAPTER  II.— DEMOSTHENES. 

I. — The  Life  of  Demosthenes.  His  Early  Speeches.  II. — His  Opposition  to  Phihp 
of  Macedon.  The  Divided  Condition  of  the  Greei<s.  The  Position  of  Demos- 
thenes. His  Various  Efforts  to  Arouse  his  Fellow-Countrymen.  The  Olynthiac 
Orations.  III. — Attacks  Made  upon  Him.  The  Further  Development  of  the  Long 
Struggle  between  Athens  and  Philip  ;  the  King's  Success.  IV. — Last  Years  of  De- 
mosthenes. V. — Qualities  of  his  Eloquence.  Hopelessness  of  his  Position.  Con- 
temporary Orators,  Pliopion,  Hypereides,  etc.  The  Later  History  of  Oratory. 
VI, — Extracts. 

I. 

DEMOSTHENES  was  born  in  the  year  385  B.C.  at  Athens,  where 
his  father  was  a  rich  citizen,  the  owner  of  two  factories.  When  he 
was  seven  years  old  his  father  died,  leaving  a  property  of  about  fourteen 
talents  in  the  charge  of  guardians.  These  men  were  faithless  or  in- 
competent, and  when  Demosthenes  came  of  age  he  found  himself  the 
possessor  of  something  less  than  two  talents  ;  he  thus  entered  life  a 
poor  man.  He  first  obtained  occupation  in  the  law-courts,  preparing 
himself  for  the  duties  of  this  profession,  it  is  said,  under  Isaeos.  Such 
is  the  statement,  and  it  is  borne  out  by  the  resemblance  of  the  style  of 
Demosthenes  to  that  of  his  reputed  teacher.  It  is  probable  in 
itself  that  Demosthenes  should  have  chosen  for  a  teacher  a  man  who 
stood  at  the  head  of  the  profession  he  was  himself  proposing  to  adopt, 
rather  than  that  he  should  place  himself  under  a  man  so  far  removed 
from  practical  experience  as  Isocrates.  Demosthenes  was  not  strong, 
and  kept  himself  aloof  from  the  usual  athletic  sports  of  young  Athen- 
ians, devoting  himself  to  study.  It  is  said,  but  very  possibly  without 
authority,  that  he  copied  out  the  history  of  Thucydides  eight  times 
and  that  he  knew  it  by  heart,  an  exercise  which  it  is  unlikely  that  Isoc- 
rates would  have  commended.  Other  anecdotes  have  reached  us  that 
bear  witness  to  an  indefatigable  enthusiasm  such  as  young  men  in 
Athens  and  elsewhere  seldom  show  except  for  physical  training.  We 
are  free  to  doubt  the  stories  of  his  living  in  a  cellar  with  half  of  his 
head  shaved,  to  make  it  impossible  for  him  to  mingle  with  his  kind  while 
he  pursued  his  studies  ;  even  the  pebbles  in  his  mouth  with  which  he 
is  said  to  have  mysteriously  overcome  his  defective  pronunciation — a 
homoeopathic  remedy — are  possibly  more  of  the  nature  of  gossip  than 
of  history.     The  true  residuum  of   these  reports  we  may  take  to  be 


DEMOSTHENES. 
(Statue  in  the  Vatican.) 


624  DEMOSTHENES. 

an  indifference  to  the  customary  pleasures  of  his  contemporaries  and 
unwearying  zeal  in  the  study  of  oratory.  He  had  many  difificulties  to 
overcome :  his  physical  weakness,  a  feeble  voice,  a  defective  pronunci- 
ation were  all  obstacles,  and  especially  to  one  who  intended  to  speak 
before  the  fastidious  Athenians,  who  regarded  an  orator  as  something 
like  an  actor,  from  whom  they  demanded  a  flawless  illustration  of  the 
combined  graces  of  speech,  presence,  and  action.  Yet  Demosthenes 
overcame  these  obstacles  by  persistent  labor.  What  supported  him 
was  not  an  instinctive  courage  that  made  the  overcoming  of  his  diffi- 
culties merely  an  agreeable  exercise  ;  far  from  it,  he  was  timid  and 
nervous,  but  it  was  the  quality  of  this  defect  that  filled  him  with  the 
fire  of  a  resistless  energy.  Isocrates,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
shy  and  weak  of  voice,  was  able  to  content  himself  with  cultivating 
flowers  of  rhetoric,  but  Demosthenes  was  animated  by  a  very  different 
spirit.  Moreover,  circumstances  almost  compelled  him  to  a  more  active 
part  in  life.  He  brought  suit  against  his  guardians  for  the  recovery  of 
his  squandered  inheritance,  and  won  his  case.  He  was  also  successful 
in  his  work  in  behalf  of  others,  to  which  his  poverty  impelled  him,  and 
his  sincerity  and  energy  won  him  many  friends  who  aided  him  in  vari- 
ous ways.  Thus,  the  actor  Satyros  gave  him  instruction  in  declama- 
tion ;  he  was  an  apt  pupil,  he  learned  from  the  actors  how  to  hold 
himself,  what  gestures  to  make,  how  to  use  his  voice,  and  speedily  se- 
cured a  reputation  as  an  overtrained  artificial  speaker.  His  adversaries 
taunted  him  with  his  midnight  studies  ;  they  said  that  his  orations 
smelt  of  oil.  "Yes,"  said  Demosthenes,  "my  lamp  and  yours  are 
witnesses  of  very  different  actions." 

It  was  when  thus  prepared  by  study  and  experience  as  a  speaker, 
that  Demosthenes  made  his  appearance  as  a  political  adviser.  The 
occasion  was  the  proposal  of  one  Septines,  in  the  year  355  B.C.,  when 
Demosthenes  was  thirty  years  old,  to  reform  the  law  concerning  immu- 
nities from  contribution  to  the  civic  expenses,  such  as  the  theatrical 
performances  and  maintenance  of  the  fleet,  etc.  Hitherto  the  festi- 
vals had  been  supported  by  rich  men,  and  immunity  from  them  had 
been  a  reward  granted  certain  families  as  a  token  of  gratitude  for  ben- 
efits to  the  state.  Septines  proposed  to  abolish  these  immunities  for 
all  except  the  descendants  of  Harmodius  and  Aristogeiton  and  to  for- 
bid them  in  the  future.  The  position  that  Demosthenes  took  was 
very  characteristic  :  he  pointed  out  the  danger  that  threatened  Athens 
from  the  bribes  of  foreigners,  and  urged  the  inadvisability  of  choos- 
ing that  time  for  discontinuing  public  generosity  to  deserving  citi- 
zens, and  to  break  with  its  old  custom  of  rewarding  worthy  actions. 
This  appeal  to  the  memory  of  what  Athens  had  been  and  done  in  her 
nobler  days  was  one  that   Demosthenes  often  made,  and   with  good 


POLITICAL  POSITION  OF  DEMOSTHENES.  625 

reason,  yet  he  avoided  the  error  of  crying  for  the  past ;  he  demanded 
a  revival  of  the  spirit,  not  a  galvanized  imitation  of  the  days  of  Solon, 
as  Isocrates  had  done.  In  another  way  he  ran  counter  to  the  advice 
of  that  amiable  rhetorician,  in  declining  to  urge  the  Greeks  to  make 
war  on  the  Persians.  When  the  whole  country  was  disturbed  with 
anxiety  concerning  the  movements  of  their  old  foes,  in  354  B.C.,  Demos- 
thenes in  his  speech  on  the  Symmories,  or  Navy  Boards,  pointed  out 
the  unlikelihood  of  serious  danger,  and  the  impossibility  that  the  Greeks 
should  combine  for  any  aggressive  war.  What  would  have  been 
at  any  time  difficult  was  now  impossible,  and  any  effort  to  accomplish 
union  would  have  simply  resulted  in  showing  the  outside  world  their 
internal  weakness.  "  The  head  and  front  of  your  determination  con- 
sists in  a  frame  of  mind  such  that  each  man  among  you  shall  be  will- 
ing and  eager  to  do  his  duty.  Whenever  you  have  been  united  in 
your  aims  and  each  individual  has  regarded  the  task  of  execution  as 
devolving  upon  himself,  nothing  has  ever  slipped  from  your  grasp.  On 
the  other  hand,  whenever  you  have  formed  a  determination,  and  then 
looked  at  one  another,  each  expecting  his  neighbor  to  act  while  he 
was  to  remain  idle,  everything  has  failed  you."  He  further  went  on 
to  advise  concerning  the  reform  of  the  navy,  but  it  was  many  years  be- 
fore a  change  was  made.  With  regard  to  the  general  question  of  hos- 
tility to  Persia,  he  was  more  successful,  although  he  attacked  one  of 
the  strongest  of  Athenian  prejudices.  In  the  next  year,  353  B.C.,  he  ut- 
tered two  orations.  For  the  Megalopolitans,  and  For  the  Liberty  of  the 
Rhodians.  In  the  first  of  them  Demosthenes  supported,  but  appa- 
rently in  vain,  the  demand  of  Megalopolitans  for  aid  in  their  war 
against  Sparta,  and  he  pointed  out  clearly  the  peril  of  even  indirectly 
encouraging  the  aggressive  Spartans  ;  and  in  the  other  oration  he  de- 
fended the  Rhodians  against  the  ill-favor  of  the  Athenians,  who  were 
glad  to  see  an  old  enemy  defeated,  even  though  it  was  defending  dem- 
ocratic against  oligarchic  principles. 

II. 

The  great  work  of  Demosthenes,  however,  was  in  opposition  to 
Philip  of  Macedon,  who  was  slowly  devising  the  plans  that  were  to 
bring  Greece  into  his  power.  Gradually  this  neighboring  country  had 
been  acquiring  civilization,  the  first  steps  being  taken  under  Archelaus 
the  First,  from  413  to  399  B.C.,  who,  as  will  be  remembered,  had 
brought  Euripides  and  Agathon  to  his  court,  and  had  tried  to  tempt 
Socrates  thither.  On  his  death,  however,  the  country  had  relapsed 
into  comparative  barbarism,  and  even  its  temporary  polish  had  been  but 
superficial.     Philip,  before  he  succeeded  to  the  throne  in  359  B.C.,  had 


626  DEMOSTHENES. 

spent  three  years  at  Thebes  as  a  hostage,  and  had  there  observed  at- 
tentively the  tactics  of  the  great  Epaminondas,  and  the  first  use  he 
made  of  his  position  was  to  strengthen  the  miHtary  power  of  his  coun- 
try. His  method  was  full  of  craft.  The  Greek  colonies  hemmed  his 
way  to  the  water,  and  the  yEgean  was  controlled  by  three  powers, 
Athens,  Amphipolis,  and  Olynthus  :  he  steadily  pursued  his  course, 
of  isolating  his  enemies  and  conquering  by  detail.  He  thus  acquired 
Amphipolis,  Potidaea,  and  estranged  Olynthus. 

The  indifference  of  the  Greeks  to  his  persistent,  if  well-veiled,  ad- 
vance, is  not  wholly  unaccountable.  In  the  first  place,  the  majority 
held  the  barbarian  in  supreme  contempt,  and  were  accustomed  to  fear 
only  the  Persians.  This  new  foe  who  was  rapidly  growing  strong  on 
their  northern  frontier  was  an  object  of  no  interest  to  them,  especially 
at  the  moment  when  the  general  concern  for  affairs  of  state  was  giving 
way  before  private  self-seeking.  Then  it  is  not  impossible  that  the 
old-time  zeal  of  Archelaus  for  Greek  men  of  letters  blinded  the  eyes 
of  the  cultivated  Athenians  to  the  dangers  that  his  successor  was  plot- 
ting. They  were  very  conscious  of  the  weaknesses  of  the  Athenian 
democracy,  and  were  averse  to  thinking  ill  of  a  country  where  philoso- 
phers and  writers  were  so  highly  thought  of.  Moreover,  the  cosmo- 
politanism which  was  one  side  of  the  new  culture,  and  one  that  was 
going  to  have  a  vast  influence  in  later  times,  already  inclined  educated 
men  to  shut  their  minds  against  this  danger,  and  to  regard  interna- 
tional jealousies  as  trivial  matters.  In  time,  too,  the  number  of  Philip's 
adherents  was  increased  by  his  liberal  bribes. 

The  first  and  almost  the  only  one  to  see  the  future  peril  was  Demos- 
thenes, and  the  rest  of  his  life  may  be  almost  described  as  a  protracted 
struggle  with  Philip,  who  soon  recognized  in  the  orator  his  most  for- 
midable antagonist.  Yet  even  he,  indomitable  as  he  was  when  his 
eyes  were  opened,  was  slow  in  arriving  at  his  ^determination  ;  in  his 
speech  against  Septines,  in  354  B.C.,  he,  to  be  sure,  mentioned  the  loss 
of  Potidaea  and  Pydna,  and  asked  if  the  men  who  had  given  up  those 
two  places  had  not  acted  from  hopes  of  largess  from  the  king,  but  else- 
where he  made  almost  no  mention  of  Philip,  or,  if  he  spoke  of  him, 
did  so  without  expressing  any  real  anxiety.  In  time,  however,  matters 
came  more  nearly  to  a  crisis.  When  word  reached  Athens  in  the  year 
before  that  Philip  was  advancing  on  the  Thracian  Chersonese,  an  arma- 
ment was  voted,  although  nothing  followed  the  brief  spasm  of  energy. 
The  next  year,  351  B.C.,  Demosthenes  astounded  Athens  by  an  oration 
in  which  he  besought  the  people  to  break  at  once  with  their  old  leaders 
and  to  face  the  dangers  which  he  pointed  out.  The  oration  in  which 
he  did  this  is  called  the  First  Philippic.  It  was  not  Philip  alone  that 
he  attacked ;  it  was  the  Athenian  people,  whose  remissness   he  was 


DEMOSTHENES'    OPPOSITION    TO  PHILIP.  627 

ever  spurring  by  rigid  and  unanswerable  proof  of  the  necessity  of  im- 
mediate action,  by  appeals  to  their  former  readiness,  by  comparison  of 
this  apathy  with  the  energy  of  their  sleepless  foe.  All  this  is  poured 
forth  with  the  most  burning  eagerness,  with  a  succession  of  swift,  im- 
pressive sentences  that  leave  no  manner  of  argument  untouched. 

*'  Philip,"  he  says,  "  is  not  a  man  to  rest  satisfied  with  conquests  won,  he 
is  ever  enlarging  his  circle,  and  whilst  we  wait  and  fold  our  hands,  he 
encloses  us  on  all  sides  with  his  toils.  When  then,  Athenians,  will  you  do 
your  duty  ?  For  what  are  you  waiting  ?  For  necessity  ?  Then  what  are 
we  to  think  of  present  affairs  ?  To  my  mind,  the  strongest  necessity  a  free 
man  knows  is  shame  for  his  cause.  Or,  tell  me,  do  you  prefer  to  stroll  about 
and  ask  one  another.  Is  there  any  news  ?  Why,  what  newer  thing  could 
there  be  than  a  Macedonian  subjugating  Athenians,  and  controlling  the 
affairs  of  Greece  ?  Is  Philip  dead  ?  No,  he  is  only  ill.  Dead  or  ill,  what 
difference  does  it  make  to  you  ?  If  anything  should  befall  him  you  will  soon 
raise  up  another  Philip  for  yourselves." 

Yet  eloquent  as  the  speech  was,  it  failed  to  accomplish  any  consid- 
erable good  ;  a  small  fleet  of  four  or  five  ships  was  sent  to  the  Cher- 
sonese under  an  incompetent  commander,  and  that  was  all.  The 
Athenians  persisted  in  their  indifference  to  Philip,  and  continued  to 
reserve  all  their  fears  for  the  Persian  king.  They  were  awakened  only 
when  it  was  too  late.  We  know  but  little  of  what  Philip  did  in  the 
next  two  years.  When  next  we  hear  of  him,  he  was  preparing  to 
seize  Olynthus,  and  the  people  of  that  town  appealed  to  Athens  for  aid. 
The  three  Olynthiacs,  as  they  are  called,  deal  with  this  crisis.  They 
were  spoken  in  350  or  349  B.C.,  their  date  and  the  order  of  their  utter- 
ance being  uncertain.  The  embassy  of  the  Olynthians  succeeded  in 
persuading  the  Athenians  to  send  a  small  force  of  some  thirty  galleys 
and  two  thousand  mercenary  troops,  a  miserably  insufficient  force;  and 
a  second  appeal  was  sent  which  brought  a  larger  number,  still  of  mer- 
cenaries, and  under  the  command  of  a  worthless  man. 

In  the  first  oration  Demosthenes  tried  to  point  out  how  good  an 
opportunity  awaited  the  Athenians  to  revenge  themselves  on  Philip. 
If  they  will  only  do  their  duty  they  will  be  able  to  overthrow  him ;  for 
his  weakness  needs  only  defeat  to  come  to  light.  He  describes  him  as 
a  wicked,  arrogant,  ungenerous  despot.  But  only  firm  and  swift  action 
will  prevail  against  him  : 

''  If  he  is  ever  trying  to  outdo  the  past,  and  you  never  boldly  take  hold  of 
anything,  what  result  can  be  expected  ?  In  heaven's  name,  is  there  any  one 
so  foolish  as  not  to  know  that  if  we  are  remiss  the  war  will  soon  be  here  ? 
And  then,  Athenians,  we  shall  be  like  men  who  borrow  readily  at  high  rates 
of  interest,  and  after  a  brief  season  of  well-being  lose  even  their  capital.  So, 
I  am  afraid  that  we  may  at  last  have  paid  a  high  price  for  our  indifference, 
that  our  easy  ways  may  in  time  enforce  upon  us  many  a  hard  and  disagree- 
able task,  and  that  even  our  homes  may  be  imperilled." 


62  8  DEMOSTHENES. 

What  Demosthenes  was  really  desiring  was  that  the  sum  set  aside 
as  the  Festival  Fund,  moneys  by  which  the  Athenians  really  bribed 
themselves  to  sloth,  should  be  devoted  to  this  war,  but  there  was  a 
rule  forbidding  even  the  direct  proposal  of  this  plan,  and  the  orator 
could  only  hint  at  it.  If  the  sum  could  be  obtained  troops  could  be 
sent  in  two  divisions, — one  to  defend  Olynthus,  while  the  other  made 
a  diversion  in  Macedon. 

In  the  Second  Olynthiac  he  repeats  very  much  the  same  arguments, 
pointing  out  the  disgrace  that  would  follow  the  abandonment  of  their 
allies,  and  urging  every  argument  to  awaken  the  Athenians  from  their 
apathy.  He  points  to  the  dishonesty  on  which  Philip's  success  rests, 
and  affirms  that  the  consequent  weakness  will  make  itself  apparent 
when  war  is  declared.  Then  he  turns  upon  the  Athenians  and  points 
out  their  notorious  shortcomings,  their  incessant  wrangling  without 
action,  a  most  lamentable  contrast  to  their  old-time  energy  as  well  as 
to  Philip's  unceasing  efforts  : 

"  Here  we  remain  sitting  still  and  doing  nothing,  and  the  sluggard  cannot 
command  the  services  of  his  friends,  much  less  of  the  gods.  No  wonder 
that  he  who  marches  and  toils  in  person,  who  is  on  hand  everywhere,  and 
never  misses  an  opportunity  or  lets  a  season  go  by,  should  get  the  better  of 
us  who  postpone,  pass  votes,  and  ask  questions.  This  does  not  surprise 
me.  .  .  What  does  surprise  me  is  that  you,  Athenians,  who  in  old  days  upheld 
the  cause  of  Greece  against  the  Lacedsemonians,  who  declined  many  chances 
of  selfish  profit,  who  contributed  of  your  own  substance,  and  bore  the  brunt 
of  danger  in  the  field — and  all  in  defense  of  the  common  rights — that  you 
now  hesitate  to  serve  and  to  contribute  to  preserve  your  own  possessions." 

.  In  the  Third  Olynthiac  Demosthenes  speaks  in  a  severer  tone. 
Before  this  he  had  presented  grounds  for  hope,  now  he  mingles  solemn 
warning  with  his  suggestions  of  the  probability  of  success.  An  excel- 
lent chance  remains,  if  only  it  be  taken,  and  aid  be  at  once  sent 
Olynthus.  Yet  this  is  to  be  done  rather  as  a  matter  of  defense  of  the 
allies  than  with  any  expectation  of  punishing  Philip ;  the  time  for 
punishing  him  is  gone.  And  in  order  to  do  this  it  is  not  necessary  to 
pass  new  laws,  for  there  were  enough  laws  already,  but  to  repeal  such 
as  are  mischievous,  like  that  forbidding  any  other  application  of  the 
Festival  Fund.  This  is  the  only  practical  means  of  doing  anything; 
resolutions  are  of  no  use;  if  they  had  been  Philip  would  have  been 
punished  long  ago.  Then  he  draws  a  most  vivid  picture  of  the  Athens 
of  old  times  and  of  the  Athens  of  his  own  time  : 

"  For  forty-five  years  our  fathers  ruled  over  a  willing  Greece  ;  they  brought 
into  the  Acropolis  more  than  10,000  talents  ;  the  king  of  Macedon  paid  them 
that  submission  which  a  barbarian  owes  to  the  Greeks  ;  they  built  many 
glorious  trophies  in  memory  of  their  victories  by  land  and  sea  ;  they  alone 


EXTRACTS  FROM    THE    THIRD   OLYNTHIAC.  629 

of  all  men  have  left  an  inheritance  of  renown  which  envy  cannot  blast." 
Now,  on  the  other  hand,  "  when  we  might  have  held  our  own  in  security, 
and  have  been  umpires  of  the  claims  of  others,  we  have  been  robbed  of  our 
territory,  and  have  spent  more  than  1500  talents  with  no  result ;  the  allies 
whom  we  gained  in  war  have  been  lost  to  us  in  peace  through  those  leaders  ; 
we  have  trained  into  greatness  our  enemy  and  rival.  If  not,  I  would  ask 
any  one  to  come  forward  and  tell  me  whence  but  from  the  heart  of  Athens 
Philip  has  drawn  his  strength.  But,  I  hear  it  said,  things  abroad  may  be 
bad,  yet  domestic  affairs  are  better.  What  are  the  proofs  ?  The  parapets 
that  we  whitewash,  the  road  that  we  repair,  the  fountains  and  such  trumpery  ? 
Look  at  the  men  whose  rule  has  produced  these  fruits.  They  have  exchanged 
beggary  for  wealth,  obscurity  for  fame  ;  some  have  built  private  houses  that 
are  finer  than  the  public  buildings,  and  as  Athens  has  been  degraded  they 
have  been  exalted." 

The  reason  of  the  change  he  finds  to  be  the  aversion  of  private 
citizens  to  public  duty  and  the  great  power  of  politicians : 

"  At  present  they  control  the  disposal  of  emoluments  ;  all  business  goes 
through  their  hands.  You,  the  masses  of  the  people,  emasculated,  robbed  of 
treasures  and  of  allies,  are  reduced  to  the  condition  of  servants  and  supernu- 
meraries, happy  if  your  friends  grant  you  festival  moneys,  and  get  up  special 
proce§sions,  and,  to  crown  your  manly  conduct,  you  are  grateful  for  being 
offered  what  is  really  yours.  Meanwhile,  they  pen  you  up  within  the  walls  of 
the  city,  and  conduct  you  to  your  pleasures,  making  you  gentle  and  docile.  It 
appears  to  me  impossible  that  high  and  generous  sentiments  can  be  inspired 
by  mean  and  contemptible  actions.  Men's  sentiments  must  bear  the  exact 
impress  of  their  habits."  [A  phrase  that  reminds  one  of  Thucydides.]  By 
returning  to  the  old  ways,  choosing  action  rather  than  discussion,  good  may 
yet  be  done.  Certainly  the  scraps  of  money  that  are  given  you  for  your 
pleasures  are  of  no  use.  [And  here  he  made  one  of  the  best  of  his  many  brief, 
stinging  comparisons] :  "  Just  as  the  sick  man's  diet  neither  gives  him  strength 
nor  permits  him  to  die,  so  these  gifts  that  are  made  to  you  are  not  enough 
to  be  of  any  real  use  or  to  allow  you  to  turn  to  something  else  in  despair.". 

Once  more  his  eloquence  had  no  practical  result — indeed,  eloquence 
only  truly  flourishes  when  nothing  is  done  by  it ;  the  knowledge  of 
this  fact  alone  produces  it — and  Philip  advanced  on  the  doomed  city. 
One  more  appeal  for  aid  came  from  it ;  the  Athenians  at  last  sent  off 
a  goodly  number  of  citizens  this  time,  but  they  were  too  late.  Baffling 
winds  detained  them,  and  before  their  arrival  Olynthus  had  fallen 
before  the  wiles  rather  than  the  arms  of  the  Macedonians.  Philip 
razed  that  city  and  its  thirty-two  allied  towns,  and  sold  10,000  inhab- 
itants into  slavery.  This  tragic  event  created  the  greatest  excitement 
in  Greece,  but  even  yet,  although  this  was  the  beginning  of  the  down- 
fall of  Grecian  freedom,  its  full  import  was  not  recognized.  The 
severity  of  his  treatment  of  Olynthus  completely  broke  the  spirit  of 
the  timid  and  decided  the  hesitating.  Yet  it  did  not  suffice  to  show 
all-  the  Greeks  the  full  extent  of  the  peril  that  threatened  them.  It 
was  very  evident,  however,  that  something  had  to  be  done. 


630  DEMOSTHENES. 


III. 


During  the  time  that  these  momentous  events  were  taking  place, 
Demosthenes  had  been  the  object  of  the  severest  attacks  from  the 
party  that  was  opposed  to  his  aggressive  policy,  and  every  means  was 
taken  to  overthrow  his  considerable  influence.  The  most  formidable 
assault  was  made  in  the  year  348  B.C.  by  a  certain  Meidias,  an  old  foe  of 
Demosthenes,  whose  anger  had  been  newly  kindled  by  the  orator's 
opposition  to  the  Euboean  war,  which  he  regarded  as  an  indirect  assist- 
ance to  Philip  by  distracting  the  Greeks  from  more  important  events. 
In  that  year  Demosthenes  had  taken  upon  himself  the  duty  of  pro- 
viding the  chorus  for  his  tribe  at  the  Great  Dionysia,  and  Meidias 
undertook  to  thwart  him  in  every  way  in  his  power.  At  last,  after 
trying  to  secure  beforehand  an  unfavorable  opinion  from  the  dramatic 
judges,  he  wholly  lost  his  temper  and  slapped  the  face  of  Demosthenes 
before  the  whole  theater.  Demosthenes  brought  suit  against  him  for 
contempt  of  the  festival,  and  his  speech  of  accusation  has  come  down 
to  us.  It  is  full  of  severe  indignation  and  not  unnatural  wrath-;  it  is 
interesting,  as  everything  must  be  interesting  that  throws  light  on  this 
remarkable  man,  and  as  a  specimen  of  the  violent  invective  in  which 
ancient  orators  indulged.  It  shows,  too,  the  persecution  which  dogged 
the  steps  of  a  prominent  Athenian,  but  it  is  far  less  important  than  the 
great  political  activity  of  Demosthenes.  This  was  evidently  his  own 
opinion,  for  without  pushing  the  case  to  its  end  he  dropped  the  matter 
in  347  B.C.,  and  became  a  member  of  the  embassy  that  was  sent  to 
•Philip  to  arrange  a  peace. 

That  he  who  had  so  eagerly  encouraged  fighting  with  Macedon 
should  now  be  anxious  to  arrange  a  peace  was  no  inexplicable  incon- 
sistency ;  for  an  attempt  to  unite  all  the  Greeks  into  a  confederacy  had 
failed,  and  time  was  needed  for  new  preparations.  It  was  now  that 
we  find  Demosthenes  coming  across  his  future  antagonist  ^schines, 
the  orator  who  was  to  be  the  mouthpiece  of  all  the  opposition  to  his 
proposals.  This  man,  born  393  B.C.,  of  an  old  Athenian  family  that 
had  been  ruined  in  the  Peloponnesian  war,  had  known  a  chequered 
experience,  as  usher  in  his  father's  school  and  as  an  actor,  besides 
holding  a  position  in  the  service  of  Eubulos  and  Aristophon,  two 
enemies  of  Demosthenes.  He  had  also  served  with  credit  as  a  soldier. 
Six  years  earlier  than  Demosthenes  he  made  his  appearance  as  a  public 
orator,  a  position  for  which  he  was  fitted  by  his  knowledge  of  law  and 
his  powerful  and  well-trained  voice.  He  possessed  by  nature  an  equip- 
ment that  was  denied  his  greater  rival.  At  first  he  was  an  enthusiastic 
opponent  of  Philip;  gradually,  however,  his  lack  of  principle  enrolled 


THE  EMBASSY  OF  TEN— PHILIP   GETS  A  FOOTHOLD  IN  GREECE.  631 

him  among  the  supporters  of  that  powerful  monarch.  The  steps  by 
which  he  fell  away  are  not  clear  ;  it  is  not  impossible  that  mere  jealousy 
of  Demosthenes  may  have  hastened  his  downfall. 

This  embassy  of  ten,  which  included  ^schines  and  Demosthenes, 
found  Philip  full  of  promises  and  apparent  amiability.  Demosthenes, 
his  readier  rival  tells  us,  was  overcome  with  embarrassment  and  made 
a  complete  failure  when  he  tried  to  address  Philip.  Modesty  was 
never  a  failing  of  ^Eschines,  and  he  made  a  long  speech  in  which  he 
proved  from  mythical  and  actual  history  that  Athens  had  a  clear  title 
to  Amphipolis,  an  argument  that  must  have  amused  Philip,  who  had 
just  made  recent  history  and  become  the  owner  of  that  city.  The 
terms  of  peace  the  ambassadors  brought  back  were  the  maintenance 
of  the  present  condition  of  things,  this  condition  being  made  more  pal- 
atable by  a  vague  promise  of  great  services.  When  the  question  came 
for  debate  by  the  assemblies  of  the  people,  it  was  found  that  two  allies 
of  the  Athenians  were  especially  excluded,  the  Phocians  and  the  town 
of  Halus  in  Thessaly.  ^^schines  urged  the  acceptance  of  the  treaty 
subject  to  this  omission ;  Demosthenes  urged  the  exclusion  of  this 
clause.  The  Macedonian  plenipotentiaries  refused  to  admit  this  ex- 
clusion which  was  voted  by  the  assembly,  and  the  Athenians  let  them- 
selves be  persuaded  by  Philocrates  and  ^schines,  two  of  the  ambas- 
sadors to  Macedon,  to  play  into  Philip's  hand.  They  said  that  he 
would  protect  the  Phocians  and  degrade  Thebes,  the  old  rival  of 
Athens,  and  their  words  were  believed.  More  mystifications  followed  ; 
the  men  sent  to  receive  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  from  Philip  and 
his  allies  were  singularly  inert  and  remiss,  while  that  king  was  steadily 
approaching  Thermopylae.  Demosthenes  was  laughed  at  when  he 
pointed  out  the  imminence  of  the  danger,  and  the  Athenians  found  it 
easier  to  trust  Philip's  words  than  his  actions.  The  upshot  of  the 
whole  matter  was  that  the  Phocians,  who,  like  all  Greece,  were  torn  by 
intestine  dissensions,  gave  up  Thermopylae  to  Philip.  This  pass,  where 
alone  resistance  could  be  made  to  his  march  into  the  heart  of  Greece, 
was  now  his,  and,  one  might  almost  say,  was  thrust  into  his  hands  by 
the  Athenians,  who  let  themselves  be  hoodwinked  and  cajoled  into 
refusing  to  help  to  defend  it.  The  opposing  Phocian  towns,  twenty- 
two  in  number,  were  dismantled,  the  inhabitants  were  scattered  among 
the  villages  and  compelled  to  pay  a  heavy  tribute,  as  well  as  deprived 
of  their  horses  and  weapons.  More  than  this,  the  rights  of  the  Pho- 
cians in  the  Amphictyonic  Council  were  transferred  to  Philip,  and  the 
right  of  precedence  in  consulting  the  oracle  was  transferred  from 
Athens  to  him.  He  was  also  chosen  to  preside  at  the  Pythian  games  in 
346  B.C.  By  this  important  change,  Philip  was  received  into  the  Hel- 
lenic commonwealth  at  the  religious  center,  a  step  which   must  have 


632  DEMOSTHENES. 

been  extremely  gratifying  to  his  ambition,  as  well  as  most  impressive 
to  his  friends  and  foes.  Those  who  tacitly  or  openly  encouraged  him 
now  had  some  justification  for  their  confidence.  Hopes  of  a  united 
Greece  under  him  as  leader  became  more  common,  as  we  may  see 
from  the  letter  in  which  Isocrates  urged  Philip  to  assume  this  position. 
Yet  the  Athenians,  although  they  had  done  so  much  to  bring  about 
his  success,  were  for  the  most  part  recalcitrant  now  that  their  eyes 
were  at  last  fairly  opened.  They  refused  to  send  any  representatives 
to  the  Pythian  games,  and  the  greatest  opposition  was  aroused  when 
Philip  sent  ambassadors  to  demand  recognition  of  what  had  been  done. 
Many  patriots  demanded  that  this  be  indignantly  refused,  but  Demos- 
thenes, in  his  speech  On  the  Peace,  delivered  toward  the  end  of  346  B.C., 
gave  wiser  counsel.  He  pointed  out  that  he  had  been  constant  in  his 
warnings  against  Philip,  and  that  he  had  only  exercised  a  careful  judg- 
ment, but  that  now,  these  opportunities  being  lost,  there  was  nothing 
for  them  to  do  but  to  resign  themselves  to  the  existing  state  of  affairs. 
Any  other  conduct  would  expose  them  to  attack  from  the  combined 
forces  of  the  Amphictyonic  union,  and  it  would  be  madness  to  go  to 
war  for  "  the  shadow  of  Delphi."  This  oration,  although,  as  is  evident 
from  its  nature,  it  lacks  the  accustomed  fire  and  energy,  belongs  to  a 
series  in  which  Demosthenes  tried  to  make  clear  the  new  dangers  that 
threatened  to  call  forth  a  final  struggle  between  Athens  and  Philip. 
Isocrates  represents  those  who  were  ready  to  kiss  the  hands  of  their 
conqueror.  Demosthenes  was  trying  to  form  a  party  that  should  de- 
pose the  lukewarm  or  hostile  from  power,  and  form  a  great  Greek 
union  against  Philip.  A  pretext  was  not  long  wanting  ;  Philip  began 
his  persistent  intrigues  in  the  Peloponnesus,  and  Demosthenes  went  to 
Messene  and  Argos  to  countermine  his  plots.  It  was  in  the  Second 
Philippic,  spoken  at  Athens  in  344  B.C.,  that  he  relentlessly  branded  the 
dishonesty  of  the  king,  and  once  more  denounced  his  hollow  promises, 
this  time  to  protect  those  two  cities  against  Sparta.  It  was  apparently 
in  discussing  the  matters  brought  up  by  the  Messenian  and  Argive 
envoys  that  the  speech  was  made,  in  which  he  warns  the  Athenians  to 
be  on  their  guard  and  to  be  ready  to  combine  with  the  other  Greeks 
against  Philip. 

Under  the  inspiration  of  his  glowing  words,  and  strengthened  by  the 
obvious  march  of  events,  the  patriotic  party  was  growing  in  Athens 
to  such  an  extent  that  in  343  B.C.  Hyperides,  another  orator,  was  able 
to  impeach  Philocrates,  a  creature  of  Philip's,  and  to  have  him  con- 
demned in  his  exile  to  death.  At  about  the  same  time  Demosthenes 
brought  charges  against  ^schines  for  treacherous  conduct  on  the 
occasion  of  his  second  embassy.  The  whole  story  is  told  in  the  ora- 
tion On  the*  Embassy,  in  which  the  at  the  best  dubious  conduct  of 


DEMOSTHENES'   OPPOSITION    TO  PHILIP.  633 

vEschines  is  exposed  at  great  length.  It  was  not  because  he  made 
peace  that  Demosthenes  accused  him,  but  because  he  made  a  dis- 
graceful and  ruinous  peace.  All  of  the  conduct  of  ^schines  is  set  in 
a  light  that  makes  a  favorable  judgment  difificult.  .^schines  made  an 
answer  and  managed  to  escape  conviction,  but  by  a  very  meager  vic- 
tory, having  a  majority  of  only  thirty  votes. 

For  a  short  season  the  Athenians  blocked  some  of  Philip's  moves,  but 
in  341  B.C.  he  began  to  make  himself  felt  in  theThracian  Chersonese,  a 
region  of  vital  importance  to  Athens  because  it  commanded  its  sup- 
plies of  grain  from  the  Black  Sea.  Difficulties  arose  between  the  sub- 
jects of  Macedon  in  that  quarter  and  Diopeithes,  the  Athenian  gen- 
eral, whose  recall  was  demanded  by  the  party  of  Philip  in  Athens.  In 
his  speech  On  the  Chersonese,  Demosthenes  presented  the  absolute 
necessity  of  maintaining  their  position  in  that  place.  The  Third  Phil- 
ippic, spoken  a  few  months  later,  repeated  the  same  advice,  and  brought 
out  fully  the  proposal  that  Athens  should  take  up  arms  and  place  her- 
self at  the  head  of  a  Hellenic  league.  Yet  she  must  remember  that 
the  work  will  not  be  done  by  others : 

"  If  you  think  that  Chalcidians  or  Megarians  will  save  Greece,  while  you 
shrink  from  the  contest,  you  are  mistaken.  .  .  .  The  task  is  yours  :  it  is  the 
privilege  won  and  bequeathed  to  you  by  your  ancestors  at  the  cost  of  many 
great  dangers." 

And  with  that  wide-sweeping  observation  and  wisdom  which  is  one 
of  his  most  striking  qualities,  he  affirms  that  the  change  from  the 
earlier  spirit  is  not  a  mere  accident. 

"  Once  there  was  in  the  heart  of  the  people  something  which  is  not  to  be 
found  now,  something  which  overcame  the  wealth  of  Persia  and  kept  Greece 
free,  which  was  never  conquered  in  battle  by  land  or  sea." 

This  was  a  hatred  of  bribery. 

"  Now  those  old  principles  have  been,  as  it  were,  sold  in  open  market  and 
new  ones  have  been  imported,  by  which  Greece  has  been  brought  to  miser- 
able weakness.  And  what  are  these  ?  Envy,  if  a  man  has  accepted  a  bribe; 
ridicule,  if  he  confesses  it  ;  pardon,  if  his  guilt  is  proved  ;  hatred  of  those 
who  condemn  him  ;  all  usual  accompaniments  of  corruption." 

The  Athenians  were  now  fully  aroused,  and  for  some  time  Philip 
failed  of  his  usual  success.  Demosthenes  was  now  the  acknowledged 
leader  of  the  state,  and  his  dauntless  and  indefatigable  energy  blocked 
the  Macedonians  at  almost  every  step.  He  carried  his  influence  else- 
where into  Greece,  encouraging  and  directing  the  patriotic  party 
wherever  it  appeared,  and  at  the  same  time  wisely  directing  matters  at 
home.     At  last  his.  old  proposal  regarding  the  disposition  of  the  Festi- 


634  DEMOSTHENES. 

val  Fund  for  military  purposes  was  carried,  and  a  wiser  system  of  tax- 
ation introduced.  Unfortunately,  however,  a  new  Sacred  War  began, 
apparently  in  a  great  measure  under  the  instigation  of  ^schines,  and 
Philip  found  this  an  opportunity  to  enter  Greece  under  the  pretext  of 
protecting  religion.  No  sooner  had  he  got  inside  Thermopylae  than  he 
seized  Elatea  and  acquired  possession  of  the  passes  leading  into 
Boeotia.  The  excitement  that  this  event  produced  in  Athens  will  be 
found  in  the  famous  oration  on  The  Crown,  of  which  mention  is  made 
below.  There  he  recounts  with  sober  satisfaction  how,  still  unbroken, 
he  succeeded  in  persuading  Thebes  and  Athens  to  forget  their  old  an- 
tagonism and  side  by  side  to  face  Philip  at  Chseronea,  where  the  free- 
dom of  Greece  was  overthrown. 

IV. 

Although  after  his  victory  Philip  was  master  of  the  whole  country, 
he  treated  Athens  with  great  forbearance,  declining  to  impose  a  Mace- 
donian garrison  and  letting  her  retain  her  municipal  independence. 
Demosthenes  gave  his  whole  attention  to  internal  affairs,  awaiting 
Philip's  death  as  a  possible  opportunity  for  regaining  freedom.  The 
most  important  event  of  his  later  years  was  his  great  oratorical  duel  with 
-^schines,  in  330  B.C.,  when, six  years  after  Philip's  death,  Alexander's 
power  made  revolution  hopeless,  and  ^schines  chose  that  time  for  a 
deliberate  attack  on  his  rival.  In  336  B.C.  Ctesiphon  had  proposed  that 
a  golden  crown  should  be  given  to  Demosthenes  as  a  reward  for  his 
services  in  behalf  of  the  state,  a  measure  that  y^schines  at  once 
opposed  on  various  technical  grounds.  For  six  years,  however,  he 
delayed  bringing  the  matter  before  the  courts,  until  the  final  victory 
of  the  Macedonian  power  seemed  to  assure  his  success.  Stripped  of 
its  technicalities,  the  speech  against  Ctesiphon  was  simply  an  indict- 
ment of  the  whole  career  of  Demosthenes  before  a  large  number  of 
Athenians  and  foreigners  who  were  assembled  in  view  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  occasion.  The  reply  of  Demosthenes  was  an  account  and 
explanation  of  his  whole  conduct ;  how  eloquent  and  complete  it  was 
the  extract  given  below  will  serve  to  show.  His  speech  is  the  master- 
piece of  the  world's  oratory,  and  his  victory  was  complete,  ^schines, 
whose  oration  possesses  great  merit,  failed  to  receive  one-fifth  of  the 
votes,  and  in  consequence  he  left  Athens,  betaking  himself  to  Rhodes, 
where,  it  is  said,  he  opened  a  school  of  elocution.  The  story  runs 
that  there  he  once  recited  to  his  pupils  the  oration  of  Demosthenes 
On  the  Crown,  and  when  they  expressed  their  admiration  he  asked 
them,  "What   if  you  had  heard  the  beast  himself  speak  it?" 

Five  years  later  Demosthenes  was  accused  of  malversation  of  moneys 


iESCHINES. 
{Marble  Statue  from  Herculaneum.) 


636  DEMOSTHENES. 

and  was  found  guilty.  The  whole  story  reaches  us  in  a  confused  state, 
and  modern  opinion  inclines  in  favor  of  his  innocence,  mainly  from  the 
dif^culty  of  believing  that  a  man  of  so  lofty  character  could  have  been 
guilty  of  the  vulgar  crime  of  receiving  a  bribe.  At  the  worst,  it  is 
held,  he  received  a  sum  of  money  from  Harpalus,  a  defaulting  treasurer 
of  Alexander's,  to  serve  as  the  foundation  of  a  war  fund  for  future 
use.  Whatever  the  exact  state  of  the  case  may  have  been,  Demos- 
thenes was  condemned  to  prison,  whence,  however,  he  managed  to  make 
his  escape,  and  as  Plutarch  relates  "  he  might  often  be  seen  sitting  on 
the  shores  of  Troezen  and  ^Egina,  gazing  towards  Attica  with  tear-filled 
eyes."  In  323  B.C.,  when  Alexander  died  and  there  seemed  a  chance  for 
Greece  to  throw  off  its  yoke,  Demosthenes  was  recalled  to  Athens,  a 
galley  was  sent  to  bring  him  back  from  vEgina,  and  a  procession  headed 
by  priests  and  archons  accompanied  him  on  his  way  to  the  city. 
Their  hopes  were  soon  destroyed  ;  the  battle  of  Crannon,  in  322  B.C.,  fol- 
lowing the  death  of  the  leading  Athenian  general  Leosthenes,  destroyed 
all  chance  of  resistance,  and  Athens  was  compelled  to  receive  a  Mace- 
donian garrison,  to  make  over  its  constitution,  and  to  surrender  the 
leading  patriotic  orators.  A  decree  was  passed  by  the  Assembly  con- 
demning Demosthenes  and  Hyperides  to  death.  Demosthenes  had 
already  fled  from  Athens,  and  was  found  by  his  pursuers — exile  hunters 
they  were  called — in  a  temple  of  Poseidon  in  Calauria.  It  was  a  former 
actor,  Archias  by  name,  who  tried  to  tempt  him  from  this  secure 
retreat,  but  Demosthenes  said,  "  Archias,  you  have  never  imposed 
upon  me  by  your  acting,  and  you  can  not  impose  upon  me  now  by  your 
promises  ";  and  when  he  was  threatened  he  said,  "  Now  you  speak  like 
a  Macedonian  oracle  ;  before,  you  were  only  acting.  Wait  a  moment 
till  I  write  a  line  to  my  friends  at  home."  Then  he  took  poison  and 
soon  died,  first  leaving  the  temple  to  avoid  polluting  it  by  his  death. 
This  was  in  322  B.C.,  when  he  was  about  sixty-two  years  old. 

Besides  what  Demosthenes  did  in  behalf  of  his  unfortunate  country, 
he  labored  as  a  jM^vate  advocate,  and  many  of  the  speeches  that  he 
wrote  in  this  caf^fty  have  come  down  to  us.  These  are  about  thirty 
in  all,  although  many  of  them  are  adjudged  spurious. .  What  is  curious 
in  these  speeches  is  the  freedom  of  invective  permitted  before  the 
courts;  this  was  a  common  quality  of  Athenian  eloquence,  although 
more  prominent  here.  Important  as  they  are  for  the  light  they  throw 
on  Athenian  law,  they  sink  into  insignificance  by  the  side  of  the  public 
orations. 

V. 

What  characterizes  the  eloquence  of  Demosthenes  in  these  greatest 
triumphs  of  his  genius  is  his  resistless  force.     Other  orators  have  been 


638  DEMOSTHENES. 

famous  for  pathos,  for  grace,  for  dignity,  for  grandeur,  for  the  vigor  of 
their  logic:  we  are  carried  away  by  him  with  but  little  chance  to 
analyze  or  describe  the  feeling  that  has  swept  us  off  our  feet.  Of 
artifice  or  conventionality  he  shows  no  trace.  All  that  art  could  fur- 
nish had  been  absorbed  by  him,  and  never  appeared  as  an  external 
accomplishment.  Rules  seem  not  to  exist  for  him.  The  venerable 
Isocrates  lived  upon  them  :  he  spent  ten  years  on  a  political  pamphlet 
that  at  once  on  its  appearance  took  the  place  in  ancient  history  that 
it  now  holds,  and  we  can  conceive  of  him  in  serious  distress  over  the 
balancing  of  sentences  and  paragraphs.  In  Demosthenes  the  quick 
question  and  answer,  the  perpetual  fire  of  suggestion,  argument, 
ridicule,  contempt  and  enthusiasm  lies  far  beyond  the  laws  of  conven- 
tional rhetoric.  The  lesson  to  be  learned  by  the  hearer  is  enforced  by 
repeated  and  vigorous  blows  ;  there  is  apparent  no  premeditated  arrange- 
ment, no  assemblage  of  arguments  into  battalions  which  sweep  forward 
in  heavy  masses  like  troops  at  a  review,  when  the  infantry  advances 
after  half  an  hour's  cannonading :  far  from  such  orderly  movement,  he 
carries  us  at  once  into  the  heat  of  a  genuine  combat  where  all  is  hot 
and  confused,  but  is  yet  under  the  control  of  a  real  commander  who 
knows  when  to  assault,  when  to  seem  to  give  ground,  and  presses  on 
irresistibly  to  victory.  Isocrates  is  always  on  parade,  anxious  that  his 
forces  keep  step  and  touch ;  Demosthenes  shines  on  the  battle-field. 
And  as,  other  things  being  equal,  it  is  the  general  who  leads  the  best 
trained  forces  that  will  win,  so  Demosthenes  maintains  order  in 
apparent  chaos  through  his  knowledge  of  all  the  technique  that  was 
painfully  acquired  by  his  predecessors.  From  Isaeos  in  particular  he 
learned  the  brevity  that  gave  his  sentences  the  swift  effect  of  musketry 
fire.  Thucydides  had  already  taught  the  serious  lesson  that  human 
fortune  was  the  inevitable  result  of  human  actions,  a  truth  that 
animated  the  whole  effort  of  Demosthenes  to  persuade  the  Athenians 
to  resume  their  former  high  position.  Yet  he  did  this  without  sharing 
their  local,  narrowing  prejudices  ;  outside  of  Athens,  he  saw  Greece  ; 
and  above  Greece,  he  saw  the  eternal  laws  of  right  that  alone  prevail. 
The  growth  of  his  perception,  the  gradual  widening  of  his  sympathies, 
may  be  clearly  observed  by  the  student  who  reads  his  orations  in  their 
chronological  order.  And  above  all  his  intellectual  force,  marvelous 
as  this  is,  stood  his  noble  moral  character  with  its  energy,  its  futile 
patriotism,  its  exalted  love  of  duty  and  of  everything  honorable.  Two 
thousand  years  afterward,  none  can  read  without  emotion  the  story 
of  the  wreck  of  Grecian  freedom  ;  apathy,  corruption,  had  prepared 
the  sad  event  ;  as  the  tragedy  moves  to  its  completion,  the  doomed 
hero's  voice  is  heard  counseling,  warning,  advising,  encouraging.  Con- 
stantly he  is  about  to  succeed  ;  one  vain  effort  is  made  after  another. 


THE  EXTINCTION  OF  ATHENIAN  FREEDOM.  639 

but  with  a  languid  force,  with  insufficient  means,  until  finally  the  play 
is  over  and  the  curtain  falls  on  the  extinction  of  Athenian  freedom. 
One  does  not  need  to  be  a  Cato  to  love  the  defeated  cause.  Yet  it  is 
to  be  borne  in  mind  that  it  is  to  the  reason  that  Demosthenes  makes 
constant  and  urgent  appeal,  and  herein  lieshisgreatest  force,  although, 
as  has  been  well  said  by  Mr.  Butcher  in  his  admirable  monograph  on 
the  great  orator,  "  thought  is  everywhere  interpenetrated  with  feeling, 
reason  is  itself  passionate."  It  is  a  lofty  intelligence  that  is  swayed, 
not  overwhelmed,  by  feeling  ;  his  intellect  is  heated  by  passion,  but 
never  to  the  point  of  bending.  The  whole  character  of  Greek  elo- 
quence makes  clear  the  superiority  of  this  method,  and  nothing  shows 
it  better  than  the  almost  imperative  rule  that  an  oration  should  not 
end  in  a  turmoil  of  excitement.  That  must  be  allayed  before  the  ter- 
mination, or  all  its  power  is  illegitimate.  The  only  exception  in  the 
history  of  Greek  eloquence  is  the  conclusion  of  the  oration  On  the 
Crown,  which  ends  with  terrible  imprecations  before  the  final  bless- 
ing ;  everywhere  else  the  rigid  control  of  the  artistic  sense  enforces  a 
calm  like  that  of  the  closing  lines  of  the  tragedies.  It  is  certainly  a 
marvelous  proof  of  the  store  that  the  Greeks  set  by  intellectual  dig- 
nity, that  they  thus  forbade  the  unfair  prominence  of  the  emotions. 

In  the  pathetic  story  of  the  powerless  efforts  of  Demosthenes  to 
arrest  the  course  of  public  affairs,  we  are  reading  more  than  a  single 
personal  tragedy,  although  he  will  fill  the  position  of  hero  in  the  mel- 
ancholy drama.  It  was  the  defeat  of  what  survived  of  the  old  spirit 
of  Athens  that  wrings  the  heart  of  the  student,  who  finds  little  conso- 
lation in  the  fact  that  it  was  inevitable,  and  but  the  natural  result  of 
division  in  the  face  of  a  superior  united  force.  While  Isocrates  was 
disposed  to  assent  to  the  new  condition  of  things,  and  at  the  same  time 
held  the  position  of  superiority  in  literary  art,  Demosthenes  preserves 
the  old  excellence  of  the  bright  days  of  Greece,  not  merely  in  his  polit- 
ical beliefs,  but  in  his  superiority  to  mere  literary  qualities.  His  won- 
derful preeminence  is  not  of  the  kind  that  text-books  can  teach,  but  is 
the  last  glow  of  that  amazing  quality  of  the  Greeks  which  defies  thor- 
ough definition.  Every  one  of  the  traits  of  Isocrates  has  been  studied, 
named,  and  classified ;  grammarians  and  rhetoricians  have  grown 
rich  on  the  exposition  of  his  art  ;  in  Demosthenes  everything  is 
subordinate  to  the  eagerness  of  his  message,  and  he  is  as  superior  to 
formal  excellence  of  expression  as  is  the  statement  of  truth  to  mere 
elegance  of  form.  The  lofty  spirit  of  courage  and  independence  that 
he  tried  to  arouse  in  his  fellow-citizens  found  its  counterpart  in  his 
impassioned  language,  just  as  the  mistaken  wisdom  of  Isocrates,  with 
its  irtcompetent  vision  of  the  real  matter  at  stake,  suited  that  orator's 
rhetorical  shallowness.     What  we  miss  to  make  the  picture  complete 


640  DEMOSTHENES. 

is  some  report  of  the  speeches  of  Phocion,  the  practical-minded  man, 
whose  personal  incorruptibility  was  rare  and  famous  ;  he  it  was  whom 
Demosthenes  called  the  cleaver  of  his  speeches.  If  we  had  what  he 
said,  we  should  doubtless  find  plainness  of  speech,  such  as  became  a 
man  who  looked  at  facts  in  the  face,  and  was  as  far  from  the  fancies 
of  Isocrates  on  the  one  hand  as  from  the  sublime  enthusiasm  of  De- 
mosthenes on  the  other.  With  all  the  evidence  before  us,  we  should 
have  a  complete  view  of  the  hopeless  division  of  the  city,  and  a  ready 
comprehension  of  its  fall.  It  was  the  glory  of  the  past  that  animated 
Demosthenes,  and  with  him  vanished  the  last  cry  of  what  mere  liter- 
ature has  never  been  able  to  repeat. 

Besides  these  orators,  who  so  well  represent  the  protracted  struggle 
before  the  final  defeat  of  Athens,  there  were  others,  of  more  or  less 
repute,  in  the  parties  that  contested  for  the  control  of  the  policy  of 
that  ill-fated  city.  Of  these,  Lycurgus,  Hyperides,  and  Dinarches 
were  included  in  the  canon  of  the  ten  Attic  orators  composed  by  the 
later  Alexandrine  critics.  The  first-named  of  these,  born  in  408  B.C., 
was  a  friend  and  supporter  of  Demosthenes.  Of  his  work  only  a  single 
oration  has  come  down  to  us,  that  against  Leocrates,  an  Athenian  who 
deserted  his  country  after  the  battle  of  Chaeronea.  This  speech  im- 
presses the  modern  reader  with  greater  respect  for  the  orator's  patriot- 
ism than  for  his  eloquence.  At  the  time  when  it  was  spoken,  how- 
ever, Athens  perhaps  stood  in  greater  need  of  patriotism  than  of  elo- 
quence, and  the  career  of  Lycurgus  gave  many  proofs  of  his  personal 
merit.  We  are  told  that  he  was  instrumental  in  securing  a  careful 
copy  of  all  the  tragedies  of  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides  for 
the  state  archives,  and,  what  was  doubtless  more  appreciated  by  his 
contemporaries,  that  he  did  faithful  service  as  treasurer  of  the  public 
funds.  He  died  in  323  B.C.  Hyperides  was  the  most  famous  of  these 
three,  and  by  some  of  the  ancients  he  was  rated  in  certain  qualities 
higher  even  than  Demosthenes,  whose  friend  he  was  for  a  long  period, 
although  finally  he  became  a  bitter  foe  and  secured  his  exile  from 
Athens.  It  is  said  that  at  last  they  became  reconciled.  Hyperides 
was  born  in  a  deme  of  Athens,  so  famous  for  the  eloquence  of  its  in- 
habitants that  one  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  Tertullian,  asserted 
that  the  children  born  in  it  talked  before  they  were  a  month  old. 
This  precocity,  if  it  ever  existed,  was  not  followed  by  dumbness  in 
later  life,  as  this  orator,  and  .^schines,  born  in  the  same  happy  con- 
ditions, clearly  show.  He  began  his  career  by  preparing  speeches  for 
parties  in  the  law  courts,  and  when  he  was  thus  fitted  by  practice  he 
made  his  appearance  as  an  orator.  He  was,  we  are  told,  a  pupil  of 
Plato  and  Isocrates,  aud  thus  received  the  best  instruction  that  the 
time  could  furnish.     By  allying  himself  with   Demosthenes,  after  the 


642  DEMOSTHENES. 

peace  between  Athens  and  Philip  in  346  B.C.,  he  became  a  leader  of  the 
patriotic  party,  and  the  two  men  held  a  bold  front  against  the  enemy 
of  their  country.  The  unfortunate  quarrel  between  them,  which  is  a 
distinct  intimation  of  the  way  in  which  matters  had  complicated  them- 
selves, resulted  favorably  for  Hyperides  and  left  him  practically  in 
the  control  of  the  state.  They  were  brought  together  again  by  com- 
mon persecution,  and  Hyperides,  like  his  illustrious  rival,  was  tracked 
by  officials  who  made  a  business  of  laying  their  hands  on  the  men  pro- 
scribed by  the  authorities.     In  322  B.C.  he  was  put  to  torture  and  killed. 

Until  very  recently  only  the  scantiest  fragments  of  the  speeches  of 
Hyperides  remained,  but  between  1847  and  1857,  a  number  of  Egyp- 
tian papyri  came  to  light  that  contained  one  whole  oration  and 
important  parts  of  others.  Unfortunately  these  do  not  illustrate  some 
of  the  qualities  for  which  he  was  most  famous,  namely,  his  wit  and 
vividness  of  speech,  and  unwearying  variety.  The  funeral  oration 
which  we  have  of  his  gave  but  little  oppKjrtunity  for  the  display  of 
such  qualities.  The  other  fragments,  however,  bear  witness  to  his 
naturalness  and  facility.  His  apparent  simplicity,  his  freedom  from 
the  chains  of  art,  survive  here,  just  as  the  grace  of  Attic  work  still 
lives  in  a  mutilated  fragment  of  sculpture. 

Dinarches,  the  third  of  these  men,  was  by  birth  a  Corinthian,  who 
acquired  considerable  fame  by  the  legal  speeches  which  he  composed 
at  Athens  after  its  subjugation  by  Macedon,  He  died  in  292  B.C. 
Such  of  his  work  as  survives  is  marked  by  no  very  vivid  qualities. 

Of  the  other  Attic  orators  the  most  important  were  Demades,  Cri- 
tias,  Callistratus,  Aristophon,  Cephisodoros,  Hegesippus,  Eubulus, 
and  Demochares.  Demades  was  an  ardent  adherent  of  the  Macedo- 
nian party  and  naturally  a  bitter  foe  of  Demosthenes.  He  was 
strongly  suspected,  and  nothing  seems  more  probable,  of  being  bribed 
by  Philip, — ten  talents  appears  to  have  been  the  sum  paid.  His  thrift 
was  perhaps  greater  than  his  eloquence,  for  he  received  another  bribe 
of  five  talents  from  the  friends  of  Demosthenes  to  secure  from  Alex- 
ander the  remission  of  the  order  to  surrender  that  orator  and  other 
patriots,  and  other  instances  of  similar  disinterestedness  in  the  way 
of  receiving  money  have  been  told.  The  man  was  a  worthless  crea- 
ture on  whom  there  is  no  other  occasion  to  dwell  than  that  these 
anecdotes,  and  they  seem  to  be  well  attested,  make  plain  the  de- 
generacy of  Athens,  and  the  hopeless  nature  of  the  struggle  which 
Demosthenes  was  forever  endeavoring  to  make.  He  appears  to  have 
possessed  a  ready  and  effective  eloquence,  that  was,  in  its  way,  some- 
times a  match  even  for  that  of  Demosthenes. 

The  various  orators — as  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  show  in  the 
cases  of  Isocrates  and  Demosthenes,  the  two   leaders — have  another 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  PHILOSOPHERS  UPON  GREEK  SOCIETY.     643 

value  than  that  which  belongs  to  them  as  masters  of  eloquence,  name- 
ly, as  expressions  of  the  divided  councils  that  then  existed  in  Athens. 
Demades  stands  for  the  party  of  corruption,  whose  grandfathers  were 
branded  with  eternal  infamy  by  Aristophanes,  and  Phocion  shows 
clearly  in  his  life  some  of  the  influences  that  had  long  been  at  work 
disintegrating  Greek  society  through  the  teachings  of  the  philoso- 
phers. The  full  extent  of  their  modification  of  the  intellectual, 
religious,  and  political  habits  of  their  countrymen  must  be  seen  below  ; 
here  it  is  possible  only  to  point  out  the  fact  that  those  leaders  of 
thought,  by  their  aristocratic  principles  and  their  cosmopolitanism, 
which  inclined  them  to  accept  the  leadership  of  Macedonia,  founded  a 
considerable  party  in  Athens,  of  which  Phocion  was  the  head.  While 
Demosthenes  looked  upon  this  party  as  a  collection  of  traitors,  they, 
in  their  turn,  regarded  him  as  an  impracticable  lover  of  the  past ; 
they  saw,  what  events  proved,  that  his  cause  was  a  hopeless  one,  and 
in  their  protracted  conflict  we  may  see  a  vivid  picture  of  the  complex- 
ities that  time  introduced  into  their  political  condition.  The  aristo- 
cratic tendencies  of  the  cultivated  classes  are  obvious  enough  :  in 
behalf  of  their  cosmopolitanism,  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that  it 
was,  as  will  be  seen,  a  principle  that  had  long  been  preached  by  the 
ablest  thinkers;  and  although  Demosthenes  speaks  of  the  Macedonians 
as  barbarians,  it  must  be  remembered  that  although  they  were  less 
cultivated  than  the  Greeks,  they  possessed  the  same  religious  beliefs, 
and  that  there  were  no  greater  linguistic  differences  between  the  two 
races  than  already  existed  between  the  Dorians  and  the  lonians. 

One  proof  of  the  influence  of  Plato  upon  Phocion  is  given  by  Plu- 
tarch in  his  life  of  this  distinguished  man,  when  he  says  that  once 
when  Phocion  was  blamed  for  letting  Nikanor  escape  after  showing 
traitorous  designs,  he  answered  that  he  felt  perfect  confidence  in 
Nikanor's  words,  and  saw  no  reason  for  suspecting  him  of  evil 
designs ;  "  whatever  the  upshot  may  be  I  had  rather  be  found  suffer- 
ing, than  committing,  injustice."  This  is  a  sentiment  that  we  shall 
find  below  to  have  been  uttered  by  Plato  in  one  of  his  dialogues,  and 
although  Plutarch  is  a  faithful  disciple  of  that  great  philosopher,  he 
draws  the  line  here  and  wonders  whether  Phocion  by  adhering  to  this 
rule  did  not  break  another  and  higher  obligation  to  his  country. 
This  incident  in  Phocion's  life  shows  at  least  the  many-sidedness  of 
the  problem  which  had  to  be  solved  by  the  contemporaries  of 
Demosthenes. 

Critias,  one  of  the  thirty  tyrants,  was  a  famous  speaker  as  well  as 
writer  of  tragic  and  elegiac  poetry.  It  was  Callistratus  whose  excel- 
lence, it  is  said,  turned  the  attention  of  the  youthful  Demosthenes  to 
public  speaking.     The  story  runs  that  Demosthenes,  on  being  asked 


644  DEMOSTHENES. 

who  was  the  greatest  orator,  said,  •'  I  am  when  one  reads  me ;  but 
CalHstratus  when  one  hears  him."  Aristophon  owes  the  preserva- 
tion of  his  name  to  its  complimentary  mention  by  Demosthenes  in 
his  oration  against  Leptines.  Cephisodoros,  a  friend  of  Isocrates, 
wrote  a  defense  of  him  against  the  attacks  of  Aristotle.  Hegesippos 
was  an  ally  of  Demosthenes.  Eubulus,  on  the  other  hand,  was  one  of 
the  bitterest  of  his  foes.  Demochares,  a  nephew  of  Demosthenes, 
was  one  of  the  more  important  of  the  later  statesmen  and  a  worthy 
supporter  of  his  uncle's  principles.  But  in  his  time  eloquence  had 
practically  ceased  to  exist  ;  yet  the  shadow  of  it  survived,  and  men 
studied  the  art  of  speech,  of  gesture,  of  oratorical  language,  in  the 
schools  of  rhetoric,  where  the  pupils  laboriously  acquired  the  faculty 
of  marking  time  and  learned  to  listen  with  rapture  to  the  sound  of 
their  own  voices.  Books  on  rhetoric  became  common,  and  during  the 
reign  of  Alexander  and  later,  orators  indulged  in  speeches  on  formal 
occasions  with  no  real  design  in  view  except  that  of  affording  delight 
in  artificial  eloquence.  This  period  is  known  as  the  time  when  what 
is  called  Asiatic  oratory  prevailed,  for  it  was  in  Asia  Minor  and  the 
adjacent  islands  that  the  art  flourished.  ^Eschines,  we  have  seen, 
established  a  school  of  the  sort  at  Rhodes  ;  Hegesias,  a  writer  of  his- 
tory, Demetrius  of  Attica  became  known  later  for  the  same  work. 
In  this  way  disappears  the  last  trace  of  the  once  magnificent 
Greek  oratory.  Its  work  was  done  when  it  ceased  to  concern  itself 
with  actualities ;  it  was  mere  rhetoric  of  the  schools  in  its  later  days, 
though  even  here  it  remained  an  important  part  of  education  and 
exerted  very  great  influence  upon  the  Romans. 

THE  SECOND  OLYNTHIAC. 

I  am  by  no  means  affected  in  the  same  manner,  Athenians  !  when  I 
review  the  state  of  our  affairs,  and  when  I  attend  to  those  speakers  who  have 
now  declared  their  sentiments.  They  insist  that  we  should  punish  Philip: 
but  our  affairs,  situated  as  they  now  appear,  warn  us  to  guard  against  the 
dangers  with  which  we  ourselves  are  threatened.  Thus  far,  therefore,  I 
must  differ  from  these  speakers,  that  I  apprehend  they  have  not  proposed 
the  proper  object  for  your  attention.  There  was  a  time  indeed,  I  know  it 
well,  when  the  state  could  have  possessed  her  own  dominions  in  security, 
and  sent  out  her  armies  to  inflict  chastisement  on  Philip.  I  myself  have 
seen  that  time,  when  we  enjoyed  such  power.  But  now,  I  am  persuaded  we 
should  confine  ourselves  to  the  protection  of  our  allies.  When  this  is  once 
effected,  then  we  may  consider  the  punishment  his  outrages  have  merited. 
But  till  the  first  great  point  be  well  secured,  it  is  weakness  to  debate  about 
our  more  remote  concernments. 

And  now,  Athenians !  if  ever  we  stood  in  need  of  mature  deliberation 
and  counsel,  the  present  juncture  calls  aloud  for  them.  To  point  out  the 
course  to  be  pursued  on  this  emergency,  I  do  not  think  the  greatest  diflfi- 


THE   SECOND   OLYNTHIAC.  645 

culty  :  but  I  am  in  doubt  in  what  manner  to  propose  my  sentiments  ;  for 
all  that  I  have  observed,  and  all  that  I  have  heard,  convinces  me  that  most 
of  your  misfortunes  have  proceeded  from  a  want  of  inclination  to  pursue 
the  necessary  measures  :  not  from  ignorance  of  them.  Let  me  entreat  you, 
that,  if  I  now  speak  with  an  unusual  boldness,  ye  may  bear  it :  considering 
only  whether  I  speak  truth,  and  with  a  sincere  intention  to  advance  your 
future  interests  :  for  you  now  see  that  by  some  orators,  who  study  but  to 
gain  3'our  favour,  our  affairs  have  been  reduced  to  the  extremity  of  distress. 

I  think  it  necessary,  in  the  first  place,  to  recall  some  late  transactions  to 
your  thoughts.  You  may  remember,  Athenians !  that  about  three  or  four 
years  since,  you  received  advice  that  Philip  was  in  Thrace,  and  had  laid 
siege  to  the  fortress  of  Hergea.  It  was  then  the  month  of  November. 
Great  commotion  and  debates  arose.  It  was  resolved  to  send  out  forty 
galleys  ;  that  all  citizens  under  the  age  of  five-and-forty  should  themselves 
embark  ;  and  that  sixty  talents  should  be  raised.  Thus  it  was  agreed  ; 
that  year  passed  away ;  then  came  in  the  months  of  July,  August,  Sep- 
tember. In  this  last  month,  with  great  difficulty,  when  the  mysteries 
had  first  been  celebrated,  you  sent  out  Charidemus,  with  just  ten  vessels 
unmanned,  and  five  talents  of  silver.  For  when  reports  came  of  the  sick- 
ness and  the  death  of  Philip  (both  of  these  were  affirmed),  you  laid 
aside  your  intended  armament,  imagining  that  at  such  a  juncture  there 
was  no  need  of  succours.  And  yet  this  was  the  very  critical  moment  :  for 
had  they  been  despatched  with  the  same  alacrity  with  which  they  were 
granted,  Philip  would  not  have  then  escaped,  to  become  that  formidable 
enemy  he  now  appears. 

But  what  was  then  done  cannot  be  amended.  Now  we  have  the  oppor- 
tunity of  another  war  :  that  war,  I  mean,  which  hath  induced  me  to  bring 
these  transactions  into  view,  that  you  may  not  once  more  fall  into  the  same 
errors.  How  then  shall  we  improve  this  opportunity  ?  This  is  the  only 
question.  For  if  you  are  not  resolved  to  assist  with  all  the  force  you  can 
command,  you  are  really  serving  under  Philip,  you  are  fighting  on  his  side. 
The  Olynthians  are  a  people  whose  power  was  thought  considerable.  Thus 
were  the  circumstances  of  affairs  :  Philip  could  not  confide  in  them  ;  they 
looked  with  equal  suspicion  upon  Philip.  We  and  they  then  entered  into 
mutual  engagements  of  peace  and  alliance  :  this  was  a  grievous  embarrass- 
ment to  Philip,  that  we  should  have  a  powerful  state  confederated  with 
us,  spies  upon  the  incidents  of  his  fortune.  It  was  agreed  that  we  should  by 
all  means  engage  this  people  in  a  war  with  him.  And  now,  what  we  all 
so  earnestly  desired  is  effected  ;  the  manner  is  of  no  moment.  What 
then  remains  for  us,  Athenians  !  but  to  send  immediate  and  effectual  suc- 
cours, I  cannot  see.  For  besides  disgrace  that  must  attend  us,  if  any  of  our 
interests  are  supinely  disregarded,  I  have  no  small  apprehensions  of  the 
consequence  (the  Thebans  affected  as  they  are  toward  us,  and  the  Phocians 
exhausted  of  their  treasures),  if  Philip  be  left  at  full  liberty  to  lead  his  armies 
into  these  territories,  when  his  present  enterprises  are  accomplished.  If 
any  one  among  you  can  be  so  far  immersed  in  indolence  as  to  sufi'er  this, 
he  must  choose  to  be  witness  of  the  misery  of  his  own  country  rather  than 
to  hear  of  that  which  strangers  suffer  ;  and  to  seek  assistance  for  himself, 
when  it  is  now  in  his  power  to  grant  assistance  to  others.  That  this  must 
be  the  consequence  if  we  do  not  exert  ourselves  on  the  present  occasion, 
there  can  scarcely  remain  the  least  doubt  among  us. 

But  as  to  the  necessity  of  sending  succours,  this,  it  may  be  said,  we  are 


646  DEMOSTHENES. 

agreed  in  ;  this  is  our  resolution.  But  how  shall  we  be  enabled  ?  that  is  the 
point  to  be  explained. — Be  not  surprised,  Athenians  !  if  my  sentiments  on 
this  occasion  seem  repugnant  to  the  general  sense  of  this  assembly. — Appoint 
magistrates  for  the  inspection  of  your  laws  :  not  in  order  to  enact  any  new 
laws  ;  you  have  already  a  sufficient  number  ;  but  to  repeal  those  whose  ill 
effects  you  now  experience,  I  mean  the  laws  relating  to  the  theatrical  funds 
(thus  openly  I  declare  it)  and  some  about  the  soldiery.  By  the  first,  the 
soldier's  pay  goes  as  theatrical  expenses  to  the  useless  and  inactive  ;  the 
others  screen  those  from  justice  who  decline  the  service  of  the  field,  and 
thus  damp  the  ardour  of  those  disposed  to  serve  us.  When  you  have  re- 
pealed these,  and  rendered  it  consistent  with  safety  to  advise  you  justly, 
then  seek  for  some  person  to  propose  that  decree,  which  you  all  are  sensible 
the  common  good  requires.  But  till  this  be  done,  expect  not  that  any  man 
will  urge  your  true  interest,  when,  for  urging  your  true  interest,  you  repay  him 
with  destruction.  Ye  will  never  find  such  zeal,  especially  since  the  conse- 
quence can  be  only  this  :  he  who  offers  his  opinion,  and  moves  for  your 
concurrence,  suffers  some  unmerited  calamity  ;  but  your  affairs  are  not  in 
the  least  advanced  ;  nay,  this  additional  inconvenience  must  arise,  that  for 
the  future  it  will  appear  more  dangerous  to  advise  you  than  even  at  present  ; 
and  the  authors  of  these  laws  should  also  be  the  authors  of  their  repeal. 
For  it  is  not  just  that  the  public  favour  should  be  bestowed  on  them,  who, 
in  framing  these  laws,  have  greatly  injured  the  community  ;  and  that  the 
odium  should  fall  on  him  whose  freedom  and  sincerity  are  of  important 
service  to  us  all.  Until  these  regulations  be  made,  you  are  not  to  think  any 
man  so  great,  that  he  may  violate  these  laws  with  impunity  ;  or  so  devoid 
of  reason  as  to  plunge  himself  into  open  and  foreseen  destruction. 

And  be  not  ignorant  of  this,  Athenians  !  that  a  decree  is  of  no  significa- 
tion, unless  attended  with  resolution  and  alacrity  to  execute  it.  For  were 
decrees  of  themselves  sufficient  to  engage  you  to  perform  your  duty;  could 
they  even  execute  the  things  which  they  enact  ;  so  many  would  not  have 
been  made  to  so  little,  or  rather  to  no  good  purpose  ;  nor  would  the  inso- 
lence of  Philip  have  had  so  long  a  date.  For  if  decrees  can  punish,  he  hath 
long  since  felt  all  their  fury.  But  they  have  no  such  power  ;  for  though 
proposing  and  resolving  be  first  in  order  ;  yet,  in  force  and  efficacy,  action 
is  superior.  Let  this  then  be  your  principal  concern  ;  the  others  you  can- 
not want,  for  you  have  men  among  you  capable  of  advising,  and  you  are  of 
all  people  most  acute  in  apprehending  ;  now,  let  your  interest  direct  you, 
and  it  will  be  in  your  power  to  be  as  remarkable  for  acting.  What  season 
indeed,  what  opportunity  do  you  wait  for,  more  favorable  than  the  present  ? 
or  when  will  you  exert  your  vigour,  if  not  now,  my  countrymen  ?  Hath  not 
this  man  seized  all  those  places  that  were  ours  ?  should  he  become  master  of 
this  country  too,  must  we  not  sink  into  the  lowest  state  of  infamy  ?  Are 
not  they  whom  we  have  promised  to  assist,  whenever  they  are  engaged  in 
war,  now  attacked  themselves  ?  Is  he  not  our  enemy  ?  is  he  not  in  posses- 
sion of  our  dominions  ?  is  he  not  a  barbarian  ?  is  he  not  every  base  thing 
words  can  express  ?  If  we  are  insensible  to  all  this,  if  we  almost  aid  his 
designs  ; — Heavens  !  can  we  then  ask  to  whom  the  consequences  are  owing  ? 
Yes,  I  know  full  well,  we  never  will  impute  them  to  ourselves.  Just  as  in 
the  dangers  of  the  field  :  not  one  of  those  who  fly  will  accuse  himself  ;  he 
will  rather  blame  the  general,  or  his  fellow-soldiers; yet  every  single  man 
that  fled  was  accessory  to  the  defeat  :  he  who  blames  others  might  have 
maintained  his  own  post ;  and  had  every  man  maintained  his,  success  must 


THE   SECOND   OLYNTHIAC.  647 

have  ensued.  Thus  then,  in  the  present  case,  is  there  a  man  whose  counsel 
seems  liable  to  objection  ?  let  the  next  rise,  and  not  inveigh  against  him, 
but  declare  his  own  opinion.  Doth  another  offer  some  more  salutary  coun- 
sel ?  pursue  it,  in  the  name  of  Heaven  !  But  then  it  is  not  pleasing.  This 
is  not  the  fault  of  the  speaker,  unless  in  that  he  hath  neglected  to  express 
his  affection  in  prayers  and  wishes.  To  pray  is  easy,  Athenians  !  and  in 
one  petition  may  be  collected  as  many  instances  of  good  fortune  as  we 
please.  To  determine  justly,  when  affairs  are  to  be  considered,  is  not  so 
easy.  But  what  is  most  useful  should  ever  be  preferred  to  that  which  is 
agreeable,  where  both  cannot  be  obtained. 

But  if  there  be  a  man  who  will  leave  us  the  theatrical  funds,  and  propose 
other  subsidies  for  the  service  of  war,  are  we  not  rather  to  attend  to  him  ? 
1  grant  it,  Athenians  !  if  that  man  can  be  found.  But  I  should  account  it 
wonderful,  if  it  ever  did,  if  it  ever  can,  happen  to  any  man  on  earth,  that, 
while  he  lavishes  his  present  possessions  on  unnecessary  occasions,  some 
future  funds  should  be  procured,  to  supply  his  real  necessities.  But  such 
proposals  find  a  powerful  advocate  in  the  breast  of  every  hearer.  So  that 
nothing  is  so  easy  as  to  deceive  one's  self  :  for  what  we  wish,  that  we 
readily  believe  :  but  such  expectations  are  oftentimes  inconsistent  with  our 
affairs.  On  this  occasion,  therefore,  let  your  affairs  direct  you  ;  then  will 
you  be  enabled  to  take  the  field ;  then  will  you  have  your  full  pay. 
And  men  whose  judgments  are  well  directed,  and  whose  souls  are 
great,  could  not  support  the  infamy  which  must  attend  them,  if  obliged 
to  desert  any  of  the  operations  of  a  war  from  the  want  of  money  :  they 
could  not,  after  snatching  up  their  arms  and  marching  against  the  Corin- 
thians and  Megareans,  suffer  Philip  to  enslave  the  states  of  Greece,  through 
the  want  of  provisions  for  their  forces.  I  say  not  this  wantonly,  to 
raise  the  resentment  of  some  among  you.  No  :  I  am  not  so  unhappily 
perverse  as  to  study  to  be  hated,  when  no  good  purpose  can  be  answered 
by  it :  but  it  is  my  opinion  that  every  honest  speaker  should  prefer  the  inter- 
est of  the  state  to  the  favour  of  his  hearers.  This  (I  am  assured,  and 
perhaps  you  need  not  be  informed)  was  the  principle  which  actuated  the 
public  conduct  of  those  of  our  ancestors  who  spoke  in  this  assembly  :  (men, 
whom  the  present  set  of  orators  are  ever  ready  to  applaud,  but  whose  exam- 
ple they  by  no  means  imitate  :)  such  were  Aristides,  Nicias,  the  former 
Demosthenes,  and  Pericles.  But  since  we  have  had  speakers,  who,  before 
their  public  appearance,  ask  you  :  What  do  you  desire  ?  What  shall  I  pro- 
pose ?  How  can  I  oblige  you  ? — the  interest  of  our  country  hath  been 
sacrificed  to  momentary  pleasure  and  popular  favour.  Thus  have  we  been 
distressed  ;  thus  have  these  men  risen  to  greatness,  and  you  sunk  into 
disgrace. 

And  here  let  me  entreat  your  attention  to  a  summary  account  of  the  con- 
duct of  your  ancestors,  and  of  your  own.  I  shall  mention  but  a  few  things, 
and  these  well-known  ;  for  if  you  would  pursue  the  way  to  happiness,  you 
need  not  look  abroad  for  leaders  ;  our  own  countrymen  point  it  out.  These 
our  ancestors,  therefore,  whom  the  orators  never  courted,  never  treated  with 
that  indulgence  with  which  you  are  flattered,  held  the  sovereignty  of 
Greece,  with  general  consent,  five-and-forty  years  ;  deposited  above  ten 
thousand  talents  in  our  public  treasury  ;  kept  the  king  of  this  country  in 
that  subjection  which  a  barbarian  owes  to  Greeks  ;  erected  monuments  of 
many  and  illustrious  actions,  which  they  themselves  achieved,  by  land  and 
sea  :  in  a  word,  are  the  only  persons  who  have  transmitted  to  posterity  such 


648  DEMOSTHENES. 

glory  as   is  superior  to  envy. — Thus  great  do  they  appear  in  the  affairs  of 
Greece. 

— Let  us  now  view  them  within  the  city,  both  in  their  public  and  private 
conduct.  And,  first,  the  edifices  which  their  administrations  have  given  us, 
their  decorations  of  our  temples,  and  the  offerings  deposited  by  them,  are 
so  numerous  and  so  magnificent,  that  all  the  efforts  of  posterity  cannot  exceed 
them.  Then,  in  private  life,  so  exemplary  was  their  moderation,  their 
adherence  to  the  ancient  manners  so  scrupulously  exact,  that  if  any  of  you 
ever  discovered  the  house  of  Aristides,  or  Miltiades,  or  any  of  the  illustrious 
men  of  those  times,  he  must  know  that  it  was  not  distinguished  by  the  least 
extraordinary  splendour.  For  they  did  not  so  conduct  the  public  business 
as  to  aggrandize  themselves  ;  their  sole  great  object  was  to  exalt  the  state. 
And  thus  by  their  faithful  attachment  to  Greece,  by  their  piety  to  the  gods, 
and  by  that  equality  which  they  maintained  among  themselves,  they  were 
raised  (and  no  wonder)  to  the  summit  of  prosperity. 

Such  was  the  state  of  Athens  at  that  time,  when  the  men  I  have  men- 
tioned were  in  power.  But  what  is  your  condition,  under  these  indulgent 
ministers  who  now  direct  us  ?  Is  it  the  same,  or  nearly  the  same  ? —  Other 
things  I  shall  pass  over,  though  I  might  expatiate  on  them.  Let  it  only 
be  observed  that  we  are  now,  as  you  all  see,  left  without  competitors  ;  the 
Lacedemonians  lost,  the  Thebans  engaged  at  home  ;  and  not  one  of  all  the 
other  states  of  consequence  sufficient  to  dispute  the  sovereignty  with  us. 
Yet,  at  a  time  when  we  might  have  enjoyed  our  own  dominions  in  security, 
and  been  the  umpires  in  all  disputes  abroad,  our  territories  have  been 
wrested  from  us  ;  we  have  expended  above  one  thousand  five  hundred 
talents  to  no  purpose  ;  the  allies  which  we  gained  in  war  have  been  lost  in 
time  of  peace  ;  and  to  this  degree  of  power  have  we  raised  an  enemy  against 
ourselves.  (For  let  the  man  stand  forth  who  can  shew  whence  Philip  hath 
derived  his  greatness,  if  not  from  us.) 

Well  !  if  these  affairs  have  but  an  unfavourable  aspect,  yet  those  within 
the  city  are  much  more  flourishing  than  ever. — Where  are  the  proofs  of 
this  ?  The  walls  which  have  been  whitened  ?  the  ways  we  have  re- 
paired ?  the  supplies  of  water  ;  and  such  trifles? — Turn  your  eyes  to  the 
men  of  whose  administration  these  are  the  fruits,  some  of  whom,  from  the 
lowest  state  of  poverty,  have  arisen  suddenly  to  affluence  ;  some  from  mean- 
ness to  renown  :  others  have  made  their  own  private  houses  much  more 
magnificent  than  the  public  edifices.  Just  as  the  state  hath  fallen,  their  pri- 
vate fortunes  have  been  raised.  And  what  cause  can  we  assign  for  this  ? 
How  is  it  that  our  affairs  were  once  so  flourishing,  and  now  in  such  disor- 
der ?  Because,  formerly,  the  people  dared  to  take  up  arms  themselves  ; 
were  themselves  masters  of  those  in  employment  ;  disposers  themselves 
'of  all  emoluments  ;  so  that  every  citizen  thought  himself  happy  to  derive 
honours  and  authority,  and  all  advantages  whatever,  from  the  people.  But 
now,  on  the  contrary,  favours  are  all  dispensed,  affairs  all  transacted,  by  the 
ministers  ;  while  you,  quite  enervated,  robbed  of  your  riches,  your  allies, 
stand  in  the  mean  rank  of  servants  and  assistants  :  happy  if  these  men 
grant  you  the  theatrical  appointments,  and  send  you  scraps  of  the  public 
meal. 

And,  what  is  of  all  most  sordid,  you  hold  yourselves  obliged  to  them  for 
that  which  is  your  own  :  while  they  confine  you  within  these  walls,  lead  you 
on  gently  to  their  purposes,  and  soothe  and  tame  you  to  obedience.  .  Nor  is 
it  possible  that  they,  who  are  engaged  in  low  and    grovelling  pursuits,  can 


650  DEMOSTHENES. 

entertain  great  and  generous  sentiments.  No  !  Such  as  their  employments 
are,  so  must  their  dispositions  prove.  And  now  I  call  heaven  to  witness, 
that  it  will  not  surprise  me  if  I  suffer  more,  by  mentioning  this  your  condi- 
tion, than  they  who  have  involved  you  in  it  !  Freedom  of  speech  you  do 
not  allow  on  all  occasions,  and  that  you  have  now  admitted  it  excites  my 
wonder. 

But  if  you  will  at  length  be  prevailed  on  to  change  your  conduct  ;  if  you 
will  take  the  field,  and  act  worthy  of  Athenians  ;  if  these  redundant  sums 
which  you  receive  at  home  be  applied  to  the  advancement  of  your  affairs 
abroad  ;  perhaps,  my  countrymen  !  perhaps  some  instance  of  consummate 
good  fortune  may  attend  you,  and  ye  may  become  so  happy  as  to  despise 
those  pittances,  which  are  like  the  morsels  that  a  physician  allows  his  pa- 
tient. For  these  do  not  restore  his  vigour,  but  just  keep  him  from  dying. 
So,  your  distributions  cannot  serve  any  valuable  purpose,  but  are  just  suffi- 
cient to  divert  your  attention  from  all  other  things,  and  thus  increase  the  in- 
dolence of  every  one  among  you. 

But  I  shall  be  asked.  What  then  !  is  it  your  opinion  that  these  sums 
should  pay  our  army  ? — And  besides  this,  that  the  state  should  be  regu- 
lated in  such  a  manner,  that  every  one  may  have  his  share  of  public  business, 
and  approve  himself  a  useful  citizen,  on  what  occasion  soever  his  aid  may 
be  required.  Is  it  in  his  power  to  live  in  peace  ?  He  will  live  here  with 
greater  dignity  while  these  supplies  prevent  him  from  being  tempted  by  in- 
digence to  anything  dishonourable.  Is  he  called  forth  by  an  emergency  like 
the  present  ?  Let  him  discharge  that  sacred  duty  which  he  owes  to  his 
country,  by  applying  these  sums  to  his  support  in  the  field.  Is  there  a  man 
among  you  past  the  age  of  service  ?  Let  him,  by  inspecting  and  conducting 
the  public  business,  regularly  merit  his  share  of  the  distributions  which  he 
now  receives,  without  any  duty  enjoined,  or  any  return  made  to  the  com- 
munity. And  thus,  with  scarcely  any  alteration,  either  of  abolishing  or  in- 
novating, all  irregularities  are  removed,  and  the  state  completely  settled,  by 
appointing  one  general  regulation,  which  shall  entitle  our  citizens  to  receive, 
and  at  the  same  time  oblige  them  to  take  arms,  to  administer  justice,  to  act 
in  all  cases  as  their  time  of  life  and  our  affairs  require.  But  it  never  hath, 
nor  could  it  have,  been  moved  by  me,  that  the  rewards  of  the  diligent  and 
active  should  be  bestowed  on  the  useless  citizen  ;  or  that  you  should  sit 
here,  supine,  languid,  and  irresolute,  listening  to  the  exploits  of  some  gen- 
eral's foreign  troops  (for  thus  it  is  at  present). — Not  that  I  would  reflect  on 
him  who  serves  you  in  any  instance.  But  you  yourselves,  Athenians!  should 
perform  those  services  for  which  you  heap  honours  upon  others  ;  and  not 
recede  from  that  illustrious  rank  of  virtue,  the  price  of  all  the  glorious 
toils  of  your  ancestors,  and  by  them  bequeathed  to  you. 

Thus  have  I  laid  before  you  the  chief  points  in  which  I  think  you  inter- 
ested. It  is  your  part  to  embrace  that  opinion  which  the  welfare  of  the 
state  in  general,  and  that  of  every  single  member,  recommends  to  your  ac- 
ceptance. 

FROM  THE  ORATION  ON  THE  CROWN. 

Such  being  the  nature  of  the  controversy,  I  beseech  you  all  alike  to  listen 
to  my  defence  to  this  accusation  with  the  fairness  which  the  laws  require. 
Those  laws,  established  long  ago  by  Solon,  who  was  your  well-wisher  and  a 
friend  of  the  people,  were  thought  by  him  not  only  to  be  binding  by  reason 


ORATION  ON    THE    CROWN.  651 

of  their  inscription,  but  because  you  were  sworn  to  observe  them.  Not  that, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  he  distrusted  you  in  so  causing  you  to  be  sworn,  but  that 
he  foresaw  that  the  accused  could  never  escape  the  enmities  and  malice 
in  which  the  strength  of  the  prosecutor,  from  being  allowed  to  speak 
first,  lies,  unless  each  one  of  the  jury,  guarding  his  probity  by  an  appeal  to 
the  gods,  should  listen  favourably  and  justly  to  what  should  be  asserted 
by  the  defence,  and  in  the  same  spirit  of  impartiality  to  both  sides  enter 
upon  an  examination  of  the  whole  cause.  Since  I  am  about  to  give,  then,  as 
it  would  seem,  an  account  as  well  of  my  whole  private  life  as  of  my  public 
career,  I  desire,  as  in  the  outset,  to  appeal  again  to  the  immortal  gods,  and 
in  presence  of  you  all  I  implore  them  first  to  direct  you  to  show  to  me 
in  this  contest  the  same  kindness  which  I  have  ever  felt  to  you  and  to  your 
city  ;  next,  that  they  will  inspire  you  so  to  pass  upon  this  prosecution  as 
shall  redound  to  your  common  credit,  and  to  the  elevation  of  the  character 
of  each  one  of  you. 

Had  ^schines  merely  followed  in  the  line  of  his  attack  the  matters  upon 
which  he  has  founded  the  prosecution,  I  could  have  readily  defended  the 
preliminary  decree  ;  but  since  he  has,  in  unmeasured  speech,  gone  over  many 
other  things,  scattering  the  foulest  abuse  upon  me,  it  is  necessary  and  proper 
that  I  should  first  briefly  reply  to  these,  lest  some  of  you,  led  astray  by  such 
foreign  matters,  might  hear  me  with  disfavor  upon  the  merits  of  the  charge 
itself. 

See  how  fairly  and  directly  I  shall  answer  all  that  this  man  has  so  slan- 
derously alleged  against  my  private  life.  If  you  have  known  me  to  be  such 
as  he  accuses  me, — and  I  have  lived  my  whole  life  among  you, — permit  not 
my  voice  to  be  heard,  no  matter  how  well  I  have  managed  public  affairs,  but 
rise  and  condemn  me  on  the  spot.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  believe  and 
know  me  to  be  better  and  of  better  descent  than  my  accuser,  and — not  to 
speak  too  presumptuously — that  I  and  mine  are  inferior  to  no  respectable 
citizens,  then  disregard  everything  which  he  has  said  about  my  public  life, 
since  it  will  be  apparent  he  has  falsified  in  everything.  I  shall  only  ask  you 
to  shew  me' now  the  same  kindness  which  you  have  always  shewn  in  the  past 
in  the  many  contests  in  which  I  have  been  engaged.  But  malicious  as  you 
are,  yEschines,  you  must  be  very  simple  to  think  I  shall  now  pass  by  all  that 
you  have  said  about  my  political  course,  and  begin  by  taking  up  your  abuse 
of  my  private  character.  I  shall  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  I  am  not  quite  so 
absurd.  I  shall  first  notice  your  falsehoods  and  slanders  about  my  public 
life  ;  and  afterwards  touch  upon  the  scurrilous  abuse  you  have  been  pouring 
out  so  freely  upon  me,  should  the  jurors  wish  to  hear  me  about  it. 

Philip,  having  thus  by  these  means  embroiled  the  cities,  puffed  up  by  the 
decrees  and  his  answers  to  them,  advanced  with  his  forces  against  Elatea 
and  took  possession  of  it,  thinking  that  happen  what  might,  you  and  the 
Thebans  would  never  be  united.  Though  you  all  know  the  alarm  which 
this  caused  to  Athens,  hear  from  me  a  few  words  about  it,  and  these  only  the 
most  necessary.  It  was  evening — A  messenger  arrived  to  inform  the  Presi- 
dents that  Elatea  was  taken.  Immediately  rising  from  supper,  some  of 
them  drove  from  their  tents  those  who  were  engaged  in  traffic  in  the  market- 
place, and  set  fire  to  the  booths  ;  whilst  others  sent  for  the  generals,  and 
called  out  the  trumpeter  :  great  was  the  excitement  in  the  city.  The  next 
morning  at  daybreak  the  Presidents  called  the  Council  together  in  their 
Chamber,  and  you  ail  assembled   in   public  meeting  ; — before  the  Council 


652  DEMOSTHENES. 

had  advised  or  offered  anything  for  consideration,  every  deme  was  seated 
in  its  place  upon  the  hill-side.  When  the  Council  arrived,  and  the  Presi- 
dents proclaimed  the  news,  and  introduced  the  messenger  who  spoke  out 
his  message,  the  herald  demanded,  "  Who  desires  to  address  the  meeting  ? " 
No  one  stood  forth.  After  the  herald  had  many  times  made  the  same 
demand,  no  one  responded,  although  all  the  generals,  all  the  orators  were 
present,  and  their  country  by  her  common  voice  called  upon  each  citizen 
to  advise  concerning  her  safety  :  for  when  the  herald  lifted  up  his  voice, 
according  to  law,  it  is  right  to  call  it  the  common  voice  of  our  country.  If 
it  behooved  all  who  desired  the  salvation  of  their  country  to  come  forward, 
all  of  you  and  the  rest  of  the  Athenians  would  have  stood  up,  and  mounted 
the  platform  ;  for  all,  I  well  know,  desired  her  salvation.  Had  it  concerned 
the  rich  in  particular,  the  three  hundred  would  have  risen  up.  Had  it  con- 
cerned those  who  were  both  warmly  attached  to  their  country  and  also 
wealthy,  they  who  immediately  afterwards  gave  largely  for  the  common 
interests  would  have  been  there,  for  they  gave  from  patriotism  as  well  as 
wealth.  But,  as  it  appeared,  the  day  and  the  occasion  required  not  merely 
a  rich  and  patriotic  citizen,  but  one  who  had  followed  the  subject  from  the 
very  beginning,  and  could  correctly  understand  why  it  was  that  Philip  was 
thus  acting,  and  what  was  his  ulterior  purpose.  He  who  was  ignorant  of 
this,  or  who  had  not  followed  it  carefully  for  a  long  time,  was  totally  unfit, 
notwithstanding  his  patriotism  and  his  wealth,  either  to  see  what  it  was 
necessary  to  do,  or  to  advise  you  how  to  do  it. 

/was  the  man  who  appeared  on  that  day,  and  who,  ascending  the  plat- 
form, addressed  you.  What  I  then  told  you,  you  should  now  listen  to 
attentively  for  two  reasons  :  first,  that  you  may  know  that  I  alone,  of  all  the 
orators  and  counsellors,  did  not  desert  the  patriot's  post  in  that  hour  of 
danger,  but  both  by  speech  and  written  decrees  advised  what  was  most 
useful  to  you  in  your  time  of  peril  ;  next,  because  by  spending  a  little  time 
upon  this  you  will  much  more  readily  comprehend  all  the  rest  of  the  policy 
of  the  day.  I  spoke  as  follows  :  "  Those  persons,  1  thought,  who  were 
greatly  troubled  at  the  Thebans  being  under  Philip's  control,  ignored  the 
real  state  of  things,  for  I  well  knew  that  if  this  had  been  the  case  we  should 
have  not  only  heard  of  Philip  being  in  Elatea,  but  on  our  very  borders.  I 
was  clearly,  however,  of  opinion  that  he  was  coming  to  Thebes  to  bring  this 
about. — How  the  matter  now  stands,"  I  said,  *'  hear  from  me, 

"  Philip  has  won  over  many  of  the  Thebans  by  bribing  some  and  deceiv- 
ing others  :  those,  however,  who  have  withstood  him  from  the  first,  and 
are  now  opposed  to  him,  he  will  in  no  wise  be  able  to  gain.  What,  then, 
is  his  purpose,  and  why  has  he  occupied  Elatea  ?  By  making  a  great  shew 
of  strength  and  displaying  his  arms  he  has  raised  up  and  inspired  confi- 
dence to  his  adherents,  and  to  the  same  extent  depressed  his  enemies.  He 
will  thus  compel  these  last  either  to  join  him  through  fear,  which  they  do 
not  wish  to  do,  or  they  will  be  crushed  out  completely.  If,  therefore,"  said 
I,  "we  are  now  disposed  to  remember  the  old  offences  of  the  Thebans 
against  us,  and  to  distrust  them  as  enemies,  we  shall  be  doing  exactly  what 
Philip  wants  ;  and  I  fear  that  even  those  of  them  who  are  now  unfriendly 
will  join  him,  and  then  all  having  Philippized  with  one  consent,  he  and  they 
will  march  together  against  Attica. 

"  If  you  will  listen  to  me,  and  look  dispassionately  at  what  I  am  going  to 
propose,  I  think  I  can  shew  what  is  best  to  be  done,  and  remove  the  present 
danger  from  the    city.     What,    then,  do    I   propose?     First    of  all  dispel 


ORATION  ON    THE    CROWN.  653 

your  present  apprehension,  and  feel  and  fear  for  the  Thebans.  The 
danger  is  much  nearer  to  them  than  to  us,  for  to  them  the  peril  is  im- 
mediate. Next,  let  all  who  are  able  march  at  once  with  the  cavalry  to 
Eleusis,  that  every  one  may  see  you  are  in  arms.  Your  partisans  in  Thebes 
will  thus  be  enabled  to  speak  out  freely  on  the  right  side  equally  with  their 
opponents,  when  they  know  that  while  there  is  a  force  at  Elatea  to  back  up 
the  traitors  who  have  sold  their  country  to  Philip,  you  are  prepared  to  stand 
by  them  and  assist  them,  should  any  one  attack  them,  while  they  desire  to 
contend  for  their  country's  freedom. 

"  Further,  I  recommend  that  ten  ambassadors  be  chosen,  with  equal 
power  with  the  generals,  to  fix  the  time  for  going  thither  and  for  the  march 
out.  When  the  ambassadors  shall  reach  Thebes,  how  do  I  propose  the 
question  shall  be  dealt  with  ?  Give  me  here  your  earnest  attention.  En- 
deavor to  obtain  nothing  from  the  Thebans  (to  attempt  it  at  such  a  time 
would  be  base),  but  say  to  them  we  have  come  to  aid  them,  if  they  desire 
it,  in  their  time  of  extreme  peril,  as  we  foresee  better  than  they  what  is 
going  to  happen.  Should  they  accept  our  offer,  and  hearken  to  us,  we  shall 
have  obtained  what  we  wish,  and  our  conduct  will  wear  a  color  worthy  of 
the  city  ;  should  we  be  unsuccessful,  then  they  will  have  themselves  to 
blame  for  having  mismanaged  their  business,  and  we  shall  have  done  nothr 
ing  mean. or  dishonorable." 

Having  thus  spoken,  and  much  more  to  the  same  effect,  I  descended  and 
sat  down.  Every  one  concurred.  Not  a  dissenting  voice  was  heard.  I  not 
only  spoke  thus,  but  I  wrote  the  decree  ;  I  not  only  wrote  the  decree,  but  I 
went  on  the  embassy  ;  I  not  only  went  on  the  embassy,  but  I  persuaded  the 
Thebans.  I  went  through  with  everything  from  the  beginning  to  the  end, 
and  gave  myself  up  entirely  to  you,  in  the  existing  danger  to  the  City. 
Bring  me  the  decree  which  was  then  passed. 

********* 

Since,  however,  ^schines  insists  so  strongly  upon  the  result,  I  desire  to 
enounce  a  proposition  which  may  at  first  seem  paradoxical.  Do  not,  in  the 
name  of  Jupiter  and  all  the  gods,  be  astounded  at  it  because  it  seems 
extreme,  but  listen  without  prejudice  to  what  I  am  about  to  say.  Had  the 
issue  been  already  known  to  you  all, — had  all  foreseen  it,  and  had  you, 
^schines,  bawled  yourself  hoarse  in  proclaiming  it, — although  you  uttered 
not  a  whisper, — even  then  the  city  should  not  have  hesitated  to  undertake 
what  she  did,  having  regard  to  her  true  glory,  to  our  ancestors,  to  posterity. 
Now  indeed  she  appears  to  have  been  unsuccessful,  which  is  a  common 
chance,  when  the  gods  so  will  it.  But  then  she  would  have  incurred  the 
reproach  of  delivering  over  the  Greeks  to  Philip,  if  after  claiming  the  head- 
ship of  all  Greece  she  had  voluntarily  descended  from  it.  Had  she  then 
resigned  without  a  struggle  that  which  our  forefathers  spared  no  dangers 
to  achieve,  who  would  not  then  have  spit  upon  you,  ^schines, — not  upon 
me,  not  upon  the  city  ?  With  what  eyes,  good  God,  could  we  have  looked 
upon  strangers  visiting  the  city,  had  the  result  been  what  it  is  and  Philip 
been  chosen  the  lord  and  master  of  us  all,  the  rest  of  our  countrymen,  with- 
out us,  contesting  his  claim?  Especially  when  in  bygone  days  our 
city  had  shrunk  from  no  danger  in  the  cause  of  honor,  rather  than  repose 
in  an  inglorious  security.  What  Greek  indeed,  what  barbarian  does  not 
know  that  the  Thebans,  and  the  Lacedemonians  before  them  all-powerful, 
and  the  Persian  king  himself,  would  thankfully  and  readily  have  permitted 
Athens  to  take  what  she  wished  and  to  keep  her  own,  had  she  been  willing 


654  DEMOSTHENES. 

to  obey  the  behests  of  the  stranger  and  suffer  him  to  assume  the  command 
of  Greece  ?  But  such  things,  as  it  seemed  to  the  Athenians  of  those  days, 
were  neither  patriotic,  nor  natural,  nor  supportable  ;  nor  could  any  one  in 
all  past  time  have  prevailed  upon  the  City  to  succumb  to  the  powerful  evil- 
doer, sitting  down  in  safe  submission.  No,  she  ever  encountered  every 
peril,  in  the  contention  for  the  first  place,  and  for  honor  and  glory.  And 
you,  yourselves,  regard  this  conduct  as  so  august,  and  as  so  conformable  to 
your  own  thoughts  and  feelings,  that  those  of  your  ancestors  who  have  so 
acted  are  held  by  you  in  the  highest  esteem.  And  properly  :  for  who  does 
not  admire  the  virtue  of  the  men  who  preferred  to  quit  their  City  and  their 
country,  and  embark  upon  their  ships,  rather  than  endure  servitude,  elect- 
ing to  their  command  Themistocles,  who  had  so  counselled  them  ;  nay, 
even  stoning  to  death  Kyrsilus,  who  had  advised  submission  : — not  only 
him,  but  your  wives  also  putting  his  wife  to  death.  Those  Athenians  sought 
not  an  orator  or  a  general  by  whom  they  might  be  enslaved,  they  preferred 
not  to  live,  unless  they  could  live  free.  Each  one  of  them  believed  that  he 
was  born,  not  only  for  his  father  and  his  mother,  but  for  his  country  also. — 
And  the  difference  is  this. — He  who  thinks  that  he  is  born  for  his  parents 
only,  waits  for  his  appointed  and  natural  end  :  but  he  who  thinks  he  belongs 
,to  his  country  also,  prefers  to  die  rather  than  to  see  her  enslaved,  and  fears 
more  than  death  itself,  the  insults  and  dishonor  which  must  be  borne  when 
his  city  is  enthralled.  Were  I  to  assert  that  it  was  I  who  had  induced  you  to 
adopt  resolves  worthy  of  your  ancestors,  there  is  none  who  might  not  justly 
reprove  me.  I  now  proclaim  that  these  resolves  were  your  own,  and  that 
the  same  opinions  were  held  by  the  City  before  my  time.  I  only  say  that 
some  of  the  credit  from  each  of  these  measures  should  be  given  to  me.  But 
this  fellow,  who  finds  fault  with  everything,  and  who  is  instigating  you  to 
condemn  me  as  the  author  of  all  the  City's  alarms  and  calamities,  is  striving 
to  deprive  me,  indeed  of  this  present  honor,  but  is  taking  away  from  you 
your  just  eulogy  for  all  time  to  come.  For  if  you  now  convict  Ctesiphon  by 
condemning  me  as  not  having  pursued  the  best  policy,  then  will  you  appear 
to  have  erred,  and  not  to  have  suffered  what  has  happened  from  the  injus- 
tice of  Fortune.  But  you  have  not,  you  have  not  erred,  Athenians,  in 
encountering  peril  for  the  liberties  and  safety  of  your  countrymen.  I  swear 
it  by  the  spirits  of  your  fathers,  who  went  forth  to  face  death  at  Marathon, 
by  the  men  who  stood  in  battle  array  at  Plataea,  by  those  who  fought  by 
sea  at  Salamis  and  Artemisium,  by  the  throng  of  worthies  now  reposing  in 
the  public  sepulchres, — all  gallant  men, — all  buried  by  the  City  as  deserving 
of  the  same  honor. — Yes,  ^schines,  all, — not  the  victorious  and  success- 
ful only, — all  : — and  justly.  For  all  alike  did  the  work  of  noble  men, 
and  all  were  subject  to  the  influence  of  that  fortune  which  the  Divinity 
assigned  to  each.  And  you,  accursed  scribe,  have  been  talking  of  the 
trophies  and  battles  and  great  deeds  of  the  olden  time,  wishing  to  rob 
me  of  the  good  opinion  and  honor  of  my  countrymen.  Which  one 
of  those  deeds  does  this  present  controversy  stand  in  need  of  ?  But, 
oh  third-rate  actor,  when  the  City's  leadership  of  Greece  was  in  question, 
in  what  disposition  did  it  become  me  to  advise  when  I  arose  to  speak  ? 
Was  it  to  counsel  something  unworthy  of  these  our  citizens? — I  had 
been  justly  put  to  death  had  I  done  so  ! — My  fellow  citizens,  you  should  in 
nowise  deliberate  in  the  same  manner  in  a  private  controversy  and  upon  a 
public  question.  In  matters  of  every  day  life  you  must  be  governed  by  the 
particular  facts  and  the  laws  applicable  to  them  ;  in  affairs  of   State  you 


ORATION  ON    THE    CROWN.  655 

must  judge  in  a  spirit  worthy  of  your  ancestors.     And  when  you  are  called 

to  decide  public  questions,  each  one  of  you,  along  with  his  badge  and  staff 

of  office,  must  take  up  the  spirit  of  the  City,  if  you  deem  it  your  duty  to  act 

worthily  of  your  ancestors. 

********* 

When  the  Commonwealth  was  able  to  choose  the  best  course,  and  when 
to  strive  for  its  advantage  in  public  affairs  was  a  matter  of  emulation  with 
all,  I  counselled  most  wisely,  and  by  my  decrees  and  my  laws  and  my  em- 
bassies everything  was  directed  ;  and  you,  none  of  you,  were  to  be  found 
anywhere,  unless  it  was  necessary  to  do  the  State  a  mischief.  When  adver- 
sity came,  and  there  was  no  longer  a  searching  out  for  counsellors,  but  for 
men  who  were  working  for  those  behind  them,  who  were  ready  to  prostitute 
themselves  for  pay  against  their  country,  and  to  flatter  the  stranger,  then 
you  and  your  fellows  came  forth  radiant,  and  great,  and  splendid, — and  I, 
I  admit  it,  was  very  low,  but  still  your  friend, — while  these  men  were  not. 
Two  qualities,  Athenians,  an  upright  statesman  should  possess, — and  I  thus 
speak  as  I  am  speaking  of  myself  to  avoid  being  invidious, — when  in  power, 
he  should  advocate  a  policy  both  honorable  and  lofty  ;  and  at  all  times, 
and  in  all  contingencies,  he  should  be  loyal  to  his  country.  This  last 
quality  is  native  to  the  heart, — power  and  strength  depend  upon  other, 
things, — and  this  last  you  have  always  found  abiding  in  me.  Although 
my  person  was  demanded  by  the  stranger,  although  cited  before  the  Am- 
phictyonic  Council,  although  harassed  by  many  prosecutions,-  although 
hounded  by  these  miscreants  who  pursued  me  like  wild  beasts,  never 
have  I  faltered  in  my  allegiance  to  you.  From  the  beginning  I  chose 
unconditionally  the  straight  and  upright  course  in  politics, — to  uphold 
the  honor,  the  power,  the  glory  of  my  country,  to  increase  them  if  I 
could,  to  live  and  have  my  bemg  in  them.  When  the  stranger  was 
successful,  then  did  not  I  stalk  about  our  public  places  with  beaming 
face,  rejoicing,  stretching  out  the  right  hand  to  those  who  I  hoped  would 
report  it  over  yonder.  Neither  did  I  with  a  shudder  hear  of  any  success 
to  the  City,  walking  with  downcast  eyes  and  sorrowful  face,  like  these 
accursed  men  who  speak  ill  of  and  belittle  Athens  (as  if,  in  so  doing,  they  did 
not  speak  ill  of  and  belittle  themselves),  who  look  outside  of  their  country, 
exulting  in  the  success  of  the  Stranger  and  the  misfortunes  of  Greece,  and 
asserting  that  we  should  take  care,  he  shall  always  be  successful. 

Let  not,  O  ye  Gods,  let  none  of  these  things  be  approved  by  you.  Rather 
inspire  these  men  with  a  better  mind  and  counsels  !  But  if  they  be  incor- 
rigible, destroy  and  utterly  confound  them,  whether  they  be  on  sea  or 
land, — and  to  us  grant  the  shortest  period  to  the  woes  which  have  been 
fastened  upon  us,  and  provide  for  us  an  enduring  salvation  ! 


BOOK  VI.— THE  PHILOSOPHERS. 

CHAPTER    I.— THE    EARLY    PHILOSOPHERS    AND 

SOCRATES. 

I. — The  Originality  of  Greek  Philosophical  Thought.  The  Earliest  Philosophers  and 
their  Views,  Physical  and  Metaphysical.  The  lonians ;  Pythagoras,  and  the 
Vague  Report  of  His  Life  and  Teachings;  Xenophanes,  Heraclitus,  Empedo- 
cles,  etc.  II. — The  Atomists.  Our  Dependence  on  Aristotle  for  Information,  so 
that  we  get  but  Glimpses  of  the  Past,  yet  these  Glimpses  Attract  Students.  Anax- 
agoras  in  his  Relation  to  the  Athenian  Public.  The  Sophists  in  Athens.  Their 
Evil  Repute.  The  Growth  of  Individualism  in  Philosophy  going  on  All  Fours  with 
its  Spread  in  Literature.  III. — Protagoras,  his  Ethical  Teachings.  Conservative 
Opposition  to  New  Thought.  The  Cosmopolitanism  of  Philosophy  Distasteful  to 
Patriotic  Greeks.  Philosophy  an  Aristocratic  Attribute,  like  Modern  Letters,  un- 
like Modern  Science.  IV. — The  Fine  Promises  of  the  Sophists ;  Rhetoric  as  a 
Cure  for  Life's  Woes.  Contempt  for  Science.  V. — Socrates  ;  his  Life.  His  Novel 
Aim,  and  Method  of  Instruction.  His  Ethical  Teaching.  His  Practical  Side.  His 
Cross-exaniination  of  Civilization.  The  Mystery  of  his  Death.  His  Following. 
The  Cynic  and  Cyrenaic  Schools, 

L 

ALONGSIDE  of  the  marvelous  way  in  which  the  Greeks  treated 
the  various  questions  of  life  that  came  up  before  them  for  settle- 
ment or  discussion,  runs  their  continuous  attempt  to  define  what  was 
the  world  in  which  they  lived,  and  in  what  relation  it  stood  to  man. 
The  effort  to  solve  these  difficult  matters  is  the  function  of  philoso- 
phy ;  philosophers  are  those  men  who  think  that  they  have  solved 
them.  Their  answers  have  been  many  in  number  and  varied  in  kind. 
In  Greece  were  laid  the  foundations  on  which  most  of  the  later  men 
have  worked,  and  it  is  interesting  to  study  the  different  steps  of  phil- 
osophical thought  in  this  country.  Once  more  are  we  taken  back  to 
observing  the  growth  of  what  is  in  good  measure  original  work,  for 
here,  as  in  literature,  there  are  no  positive  traces  of  the  indebtedness 
of  the  Greek  mind  to  foreign  models.  Those  systems,  which  bear  the 
closest  analogy  to  the  result  of  Oriental  thought  grew  up  in  Italy  and 
Sicily,  regions  the  furthest  removed  from  the  East.  Isocrates,  to  be 
sure,  asserts  that  Pythagoras  drew  some  of  his  lessons  from  Egypt, 
but  Isocrates  is  only  a  feeble  authority  on  any  matter  of  fact,  and 
Plato  and  Aristotle  fail  to  corroborate  him.      The  analogies,  such  as 


DEBT  OF  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY    TO   FOREIGN  INFLUENCE.       657 

they  are,  may  be  satisfactorily  accounted  for  as  accidental  coincidences 
of  equally  crude  thought.  And  those  moderns  who  have  been  led  by 
the  assertions  of  later  Greeks  to  look  abroad  for  the  origin  of  their 
complicated  and  various  philosophical  systems  have  not  succeeded  in 
establishing  their  theories  with  anything  like  firmness.  The  Egyp- 
tians, the  Hindoos,  even  the  Chinese,  have  been  at  different  times  can- 
didates for  the  honor  of  inspiring  the  Greeks  with  their  early  philo- 
sophical conceptions,  but  in  general  it  is  supposed  that  there  is  no 
satisfactory  proof  of  foreign  aid.  Indeed,  the  naturalness  of  the 
growth  of  the  Greek  philosophy,  from  the  crudest  and  simplest  be- 
ginnings through  a  uniform  continuous  development,  renders  the  hy- 
pothesis at  present  superfluous.  Whatever  outside  influences  may 
have  come  in  were  at  least  absorbed  without  a  jar  that  is  now  manifest 
to  investigators.  And,  too,  there  is  no  trace  in  the  philosophy  of  the 
Greeks  of  the  theological  character  that  is  strongly  marked  in  Oriental 
speculations  on  such  subjects.  Even  if  the  hypothesis  is  not  dis- 
proved, its  necessity  is  not  clear.  So  much  seems  probable  ;  it  is  not 
merely  a  result  of  the  common  disposition  to  exaggerate  the  powers 
of  the  Greeks  that  suggests  their  originality  in  this  respect. 

Yet  it  must  be  said  that  the  whole  question  of  the  amount  to  which 
the  Greeks  were  indebted  to  other  civilizations  is  far  from  a  final 
solution.  In  general  the  same  spirit  that  led  the  Athenians  to  boast- 
ing that  they  sprang  from  the  soil  of  Attica  inspired  them  further  to 
insist  upon  their  independence  of  foreign  aid,  and  this  assumption  has 
long  been  repeated  by  the  moderns  as  part  of  the  general  disposition 
to  ascribe  a  semi-miraculous  quality  to  the  power  of  the  Greek  mind. 
The  discovery  of  the  relationship  of  the  languages  of  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean family  gave  it  a  shock,  and  the  more  recent  investigation  of  the 
remains  of  neighboring  civilizations  has  tended  to  break  up  this 
long-lived  exclusiveness.  One  discovery  after  another  is  made  that 
shows  how  this  or  that  bit  was  introduced  into  Greece  from  some  ad- 
jacent country  ;  yesterday,  it  was  some  conventional  figure  in  sculp- 
ture or  painting  ;  to-day,  it  is  the  capital  of  the  Ionic  column,  and 
every  such  instance  renders  more  likely  and  more  acceptable  the 
notion  that  intellectual  as  well  as  artistic  material  was  absorbed  in 
the  same  fashion.  But  what  survives  is  the  Greek  treatment  of  the 
material  thus  acquired,  which  is  no  less  remarkable  now  than  it  ever 
was.  Everything  that  came  into  their  possession  was  bountifully  de- 
veloped. 

Homer  and  Hesiod  were  without  weight  in  the  development  of  the 
earliest  Greek  philosophy  ;  their  acceptance  of  life  and  presentation  of 
its  facts  were  anything  but  speculative.  Indeed,  the  mythological 
explanation  was  at  all  times  a  serious  foe  to  abstract  thought,  which 


658 


THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 


could  in  no  way  accept  the  current  explanation.  There  existed  appa- 
rently in  very  early  times  a  vast  body  of  Orphic  verse,  as  it  was  called 
after  its  alleged  author,  Orpheus,  some  of  which,  it  is  said,  consisted 
of  cosmogonies,  but  these  early  attempts  perhaps  did  more  in  the 
way  of  arousing  than  of  satisfying  interest  in  philosophical  questions. 
The  border-line  between  a  vague  mythology  and  a  crude  cosmogony 
was  very  indistinct,  and  Pherecydes  of  Syros,  apparently  about  600  B.C., 
although  his  date  is  uncertain,  with  his  prose  theogony  ;  Epimenides, 
a  contemporary,  who  described  the  world  as  issuing  from  night  and 
air,  were  moving  in  the  direction  that  was  pursued  by  the  earliest  of 


CAPITAL   OF   THE    IONIC    COLUMN. 


those  who  first  fairly  deserved  the  name  of  philosophers.  The  Seven 
Wise  Men  were  long  reverenced  for  the  utterance  of  the  maxims 
which  confront  us  at  the  dawn  of  every  civilization  expressing  the  eth- 
ical principles  that  are  as  fixed  as  physical  laws  ;  but,  as  a  Greek  said, 
they  were  rather  men  of  sound  common-sense  and  law-givers  than 
sages  or  philosophers.  Yet  it  was  one  who  is  sometimes  included  in 
their  number  to  whom  the  credit  belongs  of  establishing  the  lines  on 
which  for  a  long  time  philosophy  was  to  advance.  This  honor  be- 
longs to  Thales  of  Miletus,  a  city  which  we  have  already  seen  to  be  a 
center  of  intellectual  activity.  There  he  was  born,  as  some  say,  in 
640  B.C.,  others  624,  of  Phoenician  descent,  and  won  great  fame  by  his 
astronomical  studies,  which  enabled  him,  to  the  amazement  of  his 
contemporaries,  to  foretell  an  eclipse.  He  is  said  to  have  traveled  in 
Egypt,  and  possibly  it  was  his  observation  of  the  dependence  of  that 


PRIMITIVE    THEORIES  OF  PHYSICS. 


659 


country  upon  the  annual  inundation  of  the  Nile  that  inspired  him 
to  utter  his  great  principle  that  water  was  the  original  source  of  all 
things.  The  importance  of  this  statement  lay  in  the  direct  substitu- 
tion of  a  natural  for  a  mythological  explanation  of  the  universe. 
Crude  as  it  was,  it  was  yet  a  beginning  of  science  that  was  here 
expressed.  The  thought  was  not  developed  by  Thales,  who  never 
explained  in  what  way  water 
was  transformed  into  other  sub- 
stances ;  he  remained  contented 
with  his  guess,  or  with  this 
reminiscence  of  the  old  Aryan 
myth  concerning  the  stream 
of  the  storm  cloud  that  fer- 
tilizes the  earth,  and  he  left  the 
full  expansion  of  it  to  his  suc- 
cessors. 

The  first  of  these  was  Anaxi- 
mander,  also  a  Milesian,  and, 
like  Thales,  a  distinguished 
mathematician  and  astronomer. 
In  his  view  of  philosophy  there 
lay  outside  of  water,  which  he 
agreed  with  his  predecessor  in 
making  important,  a  certain 
material  Infinite  wherefrom  all 
waste  and  destruction  were 
continually  repaired.  The  ori- 
gin of  the  world  was  explained 
in  this  wise :  warmth  and  cold 
made  their  separate  appearance, 
and  by  their  union  produced 
moisture,     whence     arose     the 

earth,  that  has  gradually  acquired  firmness.  Living  beings  were 
in  time  developed  out  of  this  moisture  by  means  of  heat.  They  first 
appeared  in  the  form  of  fishes,  acquiring  their  present  form  as  the 
earth  grew  dryer.  Anaximines,  another  Milesian,  and  somewhat 
later,  took  air  for  the  first  principle ;  its  condensation  produced  fire, 
wind,  clouds,  water,  and  the  earth.  The  earth  he  held  to  be  flat 
and  circular,  and  to  be  upheld  by  the  air.  Other  philosophers  who 
held  similar  views  were  Idaeus  of  Himora  and  Diogenes  of  ApoUonia 
in  Crete.  These  men  are  generally  classified  together  as  members  of 
one  school,  as  the  Ionic  Natural  Philosophers,  from  the  tendency  of 
their  studies  towards  physics. 


THALES   OF  MILETUS. 


66o  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

Both  of  these  men  owed  much  to  their  predecessor,  Anaximines, 
whose  doctrine,  as  we  have  seen,  bears  much  resemblance  to  that  of 
Anaximander,  except  that  he  took  for  the  beginning  of  all  things  Air. 
Obviously  the  process  by  which  fire  and  stone  are  both  brought  from 
air  must  have  been  crudely  explained,  and  the  infancy  of  both  physics 
and  philosophy  is  clearly  visible  here  in  the  similar  work  of  his  rivals. 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia  carried  out  these  physical  explanations  to  a 
fuller  development,  but  his  chief  merit  appears  to  have  been  the 
enlargement  of  the  empirical  knowledge  of  nature.  His  philosophy 
had  already  been  outgrown  elsewhere  by  men  starting  from  other 
principles,  yet  it  will  be  noticed  that  in  these  vague  explanations  of 
the  Ionic  philosophers  we  find  the  rudiments  of  the  guesses  that  have 
since  been  made  concerning  nature.  What  has  been  done  in  modern 
times  is  apparently  a  development  of  these  ingenious  hypotheses. 
Similarly,  the  metaphysics  of  the  Greeks  with  its  thin  divisions,  the 
Eleatic,  that  of  Heraclitus,  and  the  atomist,  covers  the  ground  of 
later  metaphysicians  ;  for  they  decide  respectively  that  being  is  every- 
thing and  that  change  is  only  apparent  ;  that  change  is  everything 
and  being  but  an  illusion  ;  and  finally,  that  there  is  at  once  per- 
manence and  change,  permanence  in  the  beings,  perpetual  change  in 
their  relations. 

An  important  school  was  that  of  the  Pythagoreans,  who  were  found 
mainly  in  Italy  and  Sicily.  Its  founder,  Pythagoras  of  Samos,  was 
born  about  580  B.C.,  and  he  settled  in  the  southern  part  of  Italy  about 
529  B.C.  There  is  little  known  about  this  remarkable  man,  whose 
eminence  made  him  the  subject  of  a  great  deal  of  mythical  gossip. 
He  was  an  adherent  of  the  Oriental  doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  and 
he  exerted  himself  in  behalf  of  political,  religious,  and  philosophical 
advance.  The  book  of  sayings  ascribed  to  him  is  apparently  not  wholly 
genuine.  The  most  striking  thing  in  his  philosophy  is  the  importance 
given  to  numbers.  Everything,  he  maintained,  was  made  out  of 
numbers  :  they  were  the  absolute  principle  of  existence  ;  in  them  the 
finite  and  the  infinite  met.  What  this  curious  statement  indicates,  is 
the  intense  delight  that  these  early  students  felt  for  the  new  science 
of  mathematics,  which  seemed  to  them  to  unfold  all  the  mysteries  of 
nature.  To  their  thinking  it  implied  the  existence  of  a  universal  har- 
mony towards  which  all  human  effort  should  be  directed,  and  the 
influence  of  Pythagoras  was  distinctly  exerted  in  this  direction.  He 
did  not  confine  the  functions  of  philosophy  to  the  region  of  abstract 
thought,  but  by  his  ethical  teaching  he  alone  of  the  philosophers 
before  Socrates  gave  instruction  about  the  conduct  of  life.  He  thus 
contributed  to  the  great  movement  of  religious  enthusiasm  that  passed 
through  Hellas  in  the  sixth  century  before  Christ   in  connection  with 


PHILOSOPHICAL    SYSTEM  OF   THE  PYTHAGOREANS.  66 1 

a  general  intellectual  excitement  that  found  expression  in  the  unri- 
valed outburst  of  lyric  verse.  His  teachings  were  in  strict  accord  with 
the  implied  necessity  of  universal  harmony  that  marked  a  distinct 
advance  in  philosophical  conceptions  ;  and  in  science,  too,  he  furthered 
progress  by  forming  his  hypotheses  in  accordance  with  this  grand  idea. 
His  statement  that  the  earth  is  a  globe  marks  an  obvious  advance  on 
earlier  thought,  and  the  notion  of  the  harmony  of  the  spheres  fitted  in 
most  boldly  with  the  general  conception,  for  it  assumed  that  the  inter- 
vals between  the  celestial  spheres  corresponded  with  the  relative 
length  of  springs  when  adjusted  to  produce  harmonious  tones.  Some 
of  the  early  Pythagoreans  taught  the  rotation  of  the  earth  on  its  axis, 
and  its  movement  around  the  sun  ;  even  in  antiquity,  however,  such 
views  were  regarded  as  heretical.  The  ethical  teaching  of  this  remark- 
able man  was  expressed  by  mathematical  symbols ;  thus,  justice  was 
defined  as  a  square  number,  whereby  there  was  expressed  the  corre- 
spondence of  action  and  suffering.  Alcmaeon,  the  Crotoniate,  a 
pupil  of  Pythagoras,  taught  that  the  brain  was  the  seat  of  the  soul, 
and  that  all  sensations  were  carried  thither  through  canals  from  the 
organs  of  sensation. 

The  Pythagoreans  then,  under  the  influence  of  a  grand  conception  of 
the  universe,  were  enabled  to  form  most  vivid  and  ingenious  scientific 
hypotheses,  and  to  give  ethical  teaching  an  apparent  resting-place  in 
science,  such  as  the  world  had  not  known.  The  philosophical  notion 
of  the  value  of  numbers,  which  was  the  corner-stone  of  the  whole  sys- 
tem, in  time  fell  away,  or  rather  perhaps  developed  into  the  science 
of  mathematics. 

Every  exposition  of  the  philosophy  of  Pythagoras  and  of  his  school 
is  complicated  by  the  extremely  uncertain  nature  of  the  information 
that  requires  to  be  sifted  and  arranged.  There  is  a  vast  abundance  of 
it ;  but,  starting  with  the  most  meager  supply,  it  grows  in  bulk  the 
further  it  gets  from  the  original  sources,  so  that  we  find  at  last  a  huge 
mass  of  untrustworthy  evidence.  It  is  clear,  however,  that  the  notion 
of  the  numerical  harmonies  was  a  useful  hypothesis  by  giving  a  cer- 
tain warrant  to  a  large  view  of  the  universe,  by  accustoming  men's 
minds  to  vast  conceptions :  it  enabled  them  to  form  a  certain  notion 
of  the  coherence  of  various  phenomena.  The  union  of  the  disciples 
in  a  band,  although  it  produced  a  great  deal  of  political  uneasiness, 
helped  to  convey  in  a  definite  form  the  sound  ethical  teachings  of  the 
leader  of  the  school  to  a  large  number  ;  and  the  persecution  which  the 
society  suffered  served  a  good  purpose  in  scattering  the  disciples,  who 
carried  their  theories  with  them  to  other  regions. 

His  notion  of  the  soul  and  of  God  can  not  be  clearly  determined,  but 
even  if  the  particulars  are  vague,  the  vastness   and  impressiveness  are 


662  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

clearly  attested,  and  possibly  the  zeal  and  disposition  that  accompany 
the  study  of  philosophy  are  as  important  as  any  other  quality  that  it 
may  possess.  The  Pythagoreans,  even  if  they  agreed  that  this  state- 
ment was  true  about  other  systems,  would,  however,  probably  deny  its 
applicability  to  themselves. 

The  third  school  of  philosophy,  the  Eleatic,  was  so  called  from 
Elea,  in  Italy,  where  it  especially  flourished.  The  founder  of  this  new 
system  was  Xenophanes,  who  was  born  at  Colophon,  an  Ionian  town 
in  Asia,  about  620  B.C.  It  will  be  noticed  that  it  is  among  the  lonians 
that  the  early  philosophical  studies  began.  Thales 
and  his  followers  belonged  to  Miletus,  Pythagoras 
was  from  Samos,  an  Ionian  island,  and  Xenophanes, 
besides  being  an  Ionian  by  birth,  found  a  hearing  in 
Elea,  which  was  an  Ionic  colony.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  was  the  Dorians  who  formed  the  adherents 
of  Pythagoras. 

The  great  contribution  of  Xenophanes  to  philoso- 
phy was  his  conception  of  one  single  god,  far  above 
all  human  limitations,  controlling  everything  by  his 
XENOPHANES  OF  ELEA.  powcH  Thls  vlew  naturally  met  with  great  opposition 
from  the  polytheistic  Greeks,  and  in  his  elegies,  to 
which  reference  has  been  made  (see  p.  186),  he  denounced  severely  the 
current  anthropomorphism.  The  seed  which  he  sowed  in  his  statement 
of  the  unity  of  God  was  further  developed  by  his  disciple  Parmenides,  of 
Elea,  who  flourished  about  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century  before 
Christ.  Like  Xenophanes,  he  gave  utterance  to  his  philosophical  con- 
ceptions in  a  poem,  of  which  fragments  have  come  down  to  us.  He 
continually  affirms  that  existence  is,  and  that  non-existence  is  not,  that  it 
can  not  be  conceived  of  as  existing,  for  thought  is  the  same  as  being. 
He  goes  on  to  show  that  what  is,  can  not  come  into  being  or  go  out  from 
being :  there  is  then  no  process  of  becoming,  as  some  philosophers 
taught.  The  true  nature  of  things  may  be  solved  by  thought  rather 
than  by  observation,  which  rests  on  the  fallible  evidence  of  the  senses. 
The  doctrines  of  Parmenides  were  defended  by  Zeno,  of  Elea,  who 
was  born  about  490  B.C.  He  endeavored  to  defend  his  master  by 
showing  that  the  opposing  views  led  to  absurdity.  The  paradoxes 
that  he  invented  still  survive  in  the  familiar  proof  that  Achilles  can 
not  overtake  the  tortoise ;  that  a  flying  atom  is  at  rest,  for  in  every 
moment  of  time  it  occupies  but  one  place,  etc.  Melissus  of  Samos 
tried  to  support  Parmenides  by  direct  proof.  Doubtless  the  argu- 
ments of  these  men  paved  the  way  for  the  later  discussions  of  the 
Sophists. 

That  there  was  opportunity  for  argument  is  very  certain,  for  philos- 


THE    THEORIES  OF  HERACLITUS  AND   EMPEDOCLES.  663 

ophy  would  be  unrecognizable  if  it  did  not  present  to  the  world  the 
spectacle  of  absolutely  contradictory  views  stoutly  upheld  by  equally 
doughty  antagonists.  What  Parmenides  called  wild  absurdity  was 
the  very  central  truth  of  all  things  in  the  system  of  Heraclitus,  of  Eph- 
esus,  who  lived  a  few  years  earlier.  He  is  known  to  posterity,  that 
always  likes  to  condense  its  knowledge  into  the  most  portable  form, 
as  the  weeping  philosopher,  but  his  writings  appear  to  justify  one  in 
thinking  that  he  was  more  likely  to  inspire  than  to  shed  tears.  Homer 
and  Archilochus,  he  said,  ought  to  be  whipped  out  of  public  meet- 
ings. Much  learning,  he  maintained,  does  not  teach  reason,  else  it 
would  have  taught  Hesiod  and  Pythagoras,  Xenophanes  and  Heca- 
taeus.  The  text  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  lecture  on  Numbers  might 
have  been  his  statement  that  "  the  many  are  bad  and  the  good  are 
few."  He  opposed  the  Eleatic  school  by  asserting  that  nature,  the 
universe,  was  a  continuous  process  of  change  :  everything  was  forever 
becoming.  In  seeking  for  the  primal  element  of  the  world,  he  sep- 
arated himself  as  far  as  possible  from  the  Ionic  physical  philosophers, 
by  naming  fire  as  the  primal  essence.  In  some  way  water  is  condensed 
from  fire,  and  earth  from  water.  Then  it  turns  again  through  water 
to  fire,  whence  it  again  repeats  the  same  step  in  a  series  of  endless 
revolutions.  Heraclitus  would  certainly  not  weep  if  he  could  read 
some  books  of  modern  science,  and  perhaps  a  wan  smile  would  flicker 
over  his  face  when  he  recalled  his  statement  that  war  was  the  father 
and  king  of  all  things.  He  would  be  prepared  to  believe  in  the 
struggle   for  existence. 

A  little  later  was  Empedocles  of  Agrigentum,  in  Sicily,  who  was  born 
about  500  B.C.  The  story  of  his  life  is  in  great  measure  a  collection  of 
wild  legends  that  ascribe  to  him  magical  powers  such  as  gathered  about 
certain  mediaeval  philosophers.  It  is  said  that  he  claimed  the  power 
of  controlling  rain  and  drought,  of  providing  immunity  from  the 
decay  of  old  age,  of  checking  disease,  etc.  His  death  is  said  to  have 
been  as  strange  as  his  life  :  according  to  one  tradition,  he  was  trans- 
lated from  the  earth  like  a  divine  being ;  according  to  another,  the 
basis  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  Empedocles  on  -^tna,  he  flung  him- 
self into  the  crater  of  ^tna.  He  left  a  statement  of  his  philosophical 
creed  in  his  poem  concerning  Nature,  of  which  considerable  fragments 
have  come  down  to  us,  thus  imitating  Xenophanes  and  Parmenides, 
who  naturally  adopted  this  form  of  expression  in  the  absence  of  any 
literary  prose.  The  poem  of  Empedocles  was  much  admired  in  an- 
tiquity: Aristotle  called  it  Homeric,  and  Lucretius  praised  it  warmly, 
as  something  nearly  divine.  What  is  left,  however,  fails  to  arouse  the 
enthusiasm  of  modern  readers  to  anything  like  the  same  extent.  His 
belief,  which   falls  half-way  between  those  of  the  Eleatic  and  Ionian 


664  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

schools,  was  that  the  material  principles  or  "  roots  "  of  things  were 
the  four  elements,  earth,  water,  air,  and  fire,  which  were  controlled 
by  two  abstract  forces,  a  uniting  love  and  a  dispelling  hate,  which 
prevailed  at  different  times.  Thus,  it  will  be  noticed,  he  added  earth 
to  the  materials  already  suggested  by  his  various  predecessors.  The 
confusion  between  the  opposing  forces  of  love  and  hatred,  and  their 
mutual  hostility,  brought  him  to  a  position  not  wholly  unlike  that 
which  has  been  defined  as  an  early  presentiment  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution.  This  was,  however,  not  so  much  an  exact  statement  as  a 
taunt  from  the  opponents  of  Darwin,  who  contended  (i)  that  his 
theories  were  not  true,  and  (2)  that  they  were  trite,  as  was  shown 
by  the  number  of  his  unsound  predecessors. 

Empedocles  further  maintained  that  we  know  the  material  and 
ideal  elements  of  things  through  like  material  ideal  elements  that 
compose  our  minds,  fire  by  fire,  water  by  water,  and  so  on  ;  thus, 
the  processes  of  thought  were  materialized  into  the  action  of  phys- 
ical elements.  Indeed,  like  many  of  his  predecessors,  Empedocles 
worked  in  the  line  of  physical  rather  than  of  philosophical  research. 


II. 

Another  late  and  important  school  of  philosophy  was  that  of  the 
Atomists,  which  was  founded  by  Leucippus  and  further  developed  by 
Democritus.  Of  Leucippus  very  little  is  known.  Democritus  was, 
according  to  his  own  statement,  forty  years  younger  than  Anaxagoras, 
of  whom  mention  is  made  later.  Their  theory  placed  as  the  center  of 
all  things,  the /^//Z  and  the  void;  the  first  representing  being,  or  some- 
thing, while  the  other  is  identified  with  not-being,  or  nothing.  Every- 
thing which. is,  consists  of  primal,  indivisible  particles  or  atoms,  differing 
from  one  another  only  geometrically,  by  form,  position,  and  arrange- 
ment. Fire  and  soul,  they  maintained,  were  composed  of  round  atoms. 
Sensation  is  due  to  material  images  issuing  from  objects  and  reaching 
the  soul  through  the  senses.  The  soul  is  the  noblest  part  of  man, 
and  the  highest  good  is  happiness. 

While  our  definite  information  regarding'all  these  philosophers  is  of 
the  most  meager  kind,  and  is  moreoverinjured  by  the  fact  that  it  comes 
to  us  mainly  from  Aristotle,  who  held  very  different  views,  it  is  yet 
impossible  not  to  be  struck  by  the  importance  of  many  of  these  early 
contributions  to  the  subject.  Especially  is  this  the  case  in  considering 
the  philosophy  of  Democritus,  whom  the  ancients  regarded  as  the 
peer  of  Plato  in  respect  of  the  simplicity  and  eloquence  with  which  he 
expounded  his  views.     We  have  left  the  merest  fragments  of  his  work, 


EXPLANATIONS  OF    THE    UNIVERSE.  665 

but  this  seems  to  have  covered  a  vast  mass  of  subjects,  especially  in 
physics,  and  certain  points  may  be  gathered  from  two  or  three  sen- 
tences of  his.  One,  for  example,  is  the  famous  statement  that  nothing 
comes  from  nothing  and  can  return  to  nothing,  which  is  one  of  the 
fundamental  principles  of  modern  physics,  as  indeed  it  was  unani- 
mously held  by  all  the  early  Greek  philosophers  that  matter  was 
eternal.  Equally  significant  is  another  utterance  :  nothing  happens 
by  accident,  but  everything  happens  from  some  reason  and  by  necessity, 
a  principle  that  forbids  the  formation  of  hypotheses  that  require 
miracles  to  explain  obscurities.  "  It  is  only  in  the  mind  that  sweet- 
ness and  bitterness,  heat  and  cold,  and  color  exist  ;  nothing  actually 
exists  but  the  atom  and  the  void,"  is  again  a  momentous  statement 
of  the  impossibility  of  knowing  the  essences  of  things  ;  and  in  further 
developments  of  his  thought  we  find  evidence  of  the  formation  of  the 
doctrine  of  something  very  like  the  modern  notion  of  evolution,  as 
we  find  it  stated  by  Empedocles. 

While  the  mainspring  of  this  earlier  philosophy  was  physical  study, 
it  was  of  course  not  without  reference  to  ethics,  and  here  it  taught  a 
philosophy  of  happiness,  of  moderation,  of  peace.  It  was  materialism 
that  he  taught,  and  materialism  has  been  as  much  of  a  by-word  as  lib- 
erty, or  reform,  or  anything  else  that  has  attacked  people's  prejudices, 
and  the  most  important  work  of  the  Greek  philosophers  was  in  the 
direction  of  inculcating  spiritualism  ;  but  even  in  the  heap  of  ruins 
that  alone  is  left  of  the  work  of  Democritus  we  may  find  the  stamp 
of  a  great  thinker,  just  as  in  a  bit  of  architectural  ornament  it  may 
yet  be  possible  to  detect  the  grace  and  beauty  that  went  to  the  deco- 
ration of  a  whole  city.  Enough  is  left,  at  any  rate,  to  convince  us  of 
a  great  ferment  of  thought  and  of  vast  theories,  and  to  show  that  here, 
as  everywhere,  the  Greek  has  been  before  us. 

Anaxagoras,  of  Clazomena  in  Asia  Minor,  was  born  about  500  B.C.  ; 
he  explained  the  universe  as  the  product  of  an  indefinite  number  of 
primitive  substances,  called  by  him  the  seeds  of  things,  which  under 
the  influence  of  the  divine  mind  grew  from  chaos  into  order  and  pro- 
duced the  world.  Thus,  it  will  be  remarked,  he  kept  touch  with  the 
atomists ;  and  if  he  gave  an  unprecedented  authority  to  Reason,  or 
Nous,  this  was  not  yet  so  much  a  separate  controlling  power  as  a  ben- 
eficial principle  exerting  itself  not  by  choice,  but  by  inherent  virtue. 
It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  Anaxagoras,  who  lived  for  thirty  years 
in  Athens  and  was  a  friend  of  Pericles,  incurred  the  hostility  of  the 
Athenians  by  his  studies.  To  be  sure,  other  causes  led  to  this  con- 
dition of  things:  the  opposition  of  a  good  part  of  the  public  did  not 
dare  to  express  itself  openly  against  the  great  statesman,   and  hence 


666  THE   EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

contented  itself  by  wounding  him  through  his  friends.  Phidias  was 
arrested  on  a  charge  of  impiety,  and  died  in  a  prison  within  the  city 
which  he  had  helped  to  make  immortal  ;  and  a  decree  against  "  as- 
tronomers and  atheists  "  was  evidently  aimed  at  Anaxagoras.  At  any 
rate,  such  was  his  interpretation  of  it,  and  he  withdrew  to  Lampsacus, 
where  he  passed  the  remainder  of  his  life.  The  pretext  for  the  perse- 
cution was  readily  found  in  the  philosopher's  conception  of  a  ruling 
reason,  a  conception  that  it  was  difficult  to  harmonize  with  the  cur- 
rent theology,  and  his  interest  in  astronomy  was  not  a  thing  to  endear 
him  to  the  Athenians,  who  had  a  keen  admiration  for  their  own  in- 
telligence, and  little  sympathy  for  scientific  study.  We  have  seen 
how  Aristophanes  derided  it,  and  even  Socrates  regarded  it  as  at 
the  best  a  waste  of  time,  and  probably  as  tainted  by  impiety. 
Moreover,  the  sun  and  moon  still  inspired  much  of  the  awe  of  the 
earlier  Nature-worship,  and  the  scientific  statement  that  these  objects 
were  not  divine  beings,  but  bodies  shining  by  original  or  reflected  light, 
and  so  not  wholly  unlike  the  earth,  sounded  to  the  Athenians  as  some- 
thing like  blasphemy.  We  must  remember,  too,  that  the  superstitions 
of  the  Athenians  were  not  peculiar  to  the  time  of  St.  Paul.  We  are  so 
accustomed  to  the  lavish  adulation  of  the  people  of  this  city  that  we  are 
led  to  regard  them  as  miracles  of  tolerance  and  ripe  intelligence,  and 
to  forget  that  their  great  men  were  the  exception,  and  had  perpetu- 
ally to  struggle  against  the  conservatism  and  bigotry  of  the  majority. 
Moreover,  even  an  earnest  love  of  freedom  did  not  necessarily  mean 
toleration  any  more  than  it  did  among  the  Puritans  in  England  or 
America,  and  that  intellectual  and  artistic  enthusiasm  do  not  assure 
immunity  from  bigotry  is  a  lesson  as  common  in  history  as  in  private 
life.  The  skeptical  teachings  of  the  Sophists  were  the  privilege  of  but 
a  few  ;  the  homogeneousncss  of  Athenian  society,  which  had  been  so 
important  an  element  in  its  earlier  greatness,  was  destroyed  after  the 
Peloponnesian  War,  and  the  expensiveness  of  the  lessons  of  these 
costly  teachers  must  have  helped  to  divide  society,  as  it  is  now  divided 
in  civilized  races,  into  two  distinct  classes,  the  learned  and  the  un- 
learned. Possibly  a  vague  feeling  of  indignation  with  this  partition 
counted  for  much  of  the  wrath  of  Socrates  and  Plato  with  the  de- 
tested Sophists.  The  populace  did  not  share  the  aristocratic  privilege 
of  learned  skepticism,  but  clung  to  the  ancient  religions,  and  with  re- 
newed zeal  in  the  days  of  Athenian  adversity.  Even  apart  from  this 
influence,  there  was  the  strong  historical  value  of  mythology  to  which 
the  Athenians  were  never  tired  of  referring.  Isocrates,  like  all  the 
orators,  uses  as  a  foundation  for  his  advice  the  legendary  stories  that 
delighted  the  Athenians ;  we  have  seen  ^schines  teaching  the  my- 
thology to  Philip,  and  a  system  that  ignored  this  influence  was  sure  to 


INTOLERANCE   OF    THE   NEW  PHILOSOPHICAL  METHODS.        667 

be  detested  by  many  of  them.  They  had  no  education  that  prepared 
them  for  such  abstract  notions,  and  the  consciousness  of  their  own 
intellectual  superiority  only  hardened  them  against  it.  Consequently 
we  see  here  the  same  intolerance  that  in  a  few  years  was  to  demand 
the  sacrifice  of  Socrates,  and  it  was  under  these  difficulties  that  phi- 
losophy began  to  make  itself  felt  in  Athens.  Perhaps  this  intolerance 
of  science  has  had  a  more  lasting  effect  than  could  have  been  imagined 
at  the  time  or  than  has  been  thought  since. 

Yet  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  all  these  prejudices  succeeded  in 
closing  Athens  against  the  new  learning,  for  nothing  could  be  further 
from  the  truth.  Pericles,  as  we  have  seen,  was  a  friend  of  the  philoso- 
phers and  interested  in  their  favorite  study,  and  it  speedily  secured  a 
place  in  this  center  of  all  intellectual  interest.  The  natural  sciences, 
too,  began  to  be  cultivated  with  interest  and  attention,  for  the  eager 
minds  of  the  Athenians  could  not  remain  indifferent  to  what  was  ex- 
citing the  rest  of  the  Hellenic  world.  Their  city,  then,  became  the 
home  of  philosophy ;  its  leaders  assembled  there  from  all  quarters, — the 
pupils  of  Parmenides  and  Empedocles,  the  Sophists,  all  who  were  sow- 
ing the  seeds  of  abstract  thought, — and,  by  their  mutual  attrition  and 
instruction,  combined  to  form  varied  elements  into  a  single  vaster 
whole.  Obviously  what  issued  from  these  various  and  at  times  con- 
flicting causes  was  the  natural  resultant  of  the  separate  forces,  and  in 
the  remoteness  of  the  later  philosophy  from  natural  science,  as  well 
as  in  the  nearly  exclusive  prominence  given  to  pure  thought  as  a 
means  of  establishing  philosophy,  it  may  be  possible  to  trace  the  in- 
fluence of  the  intellectual  subtlety  of  the  ingenious  Athenians.  For 
them  the  exercise  of  the  intellect  was  the  highest  privilege  of  man, 
and  especially  its  exercise  in  ingenuity.  Their  active  intelligence 
found  the  keenest  delight  in  theorizing,  discussing,  arguing  about 
any  conceivable  question,  and  from  the  moment  that  Athens  ac- 
quired the  intellectual  leadership,  philosophy  lost  its  connection  with 
physics  and  dealt  with  psychology  and  ethics.  The  Sophists  who 
aided  this  change  did  not  accomplish  it  by  making  over  the  Atheni- 
ans ;  they  simply  turned  away  from  the  contradictory  explanations  of 
their  predecessors  and  sought  to  find  in  men's  minds  the  foundations 
of  the  laws  governing  human  duties  and  actions.  In  so  doing  they 
moved  in  harmony  with  the  general  modification  that  we  have  seen 
illustrated  in  the  literature.  The  whole  tendency  of  the  time  was 
toward  the  perception  of  the  importance  of  the  human  mind.  We 
see  iEschylus  filling  his  plays  with  supernatural  beings  who  control 
the  whole  action  ;  while  Sophocles  deals  almost  entirely  with  human 
beings  and  human  actions,  and  in  Thucydides,  when  compared  with 
Herodotus,  we  perceive  how  much  more  attention  he  pays  to  men  and 


668  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

the  consequences  of  their  deeds  than  to  the  interference  of  the  gods. 
Indeed,  it  would  be  easier  to  go  further,  and  to  say  that  in  every 
period  of  great  intellectual  excitement  the  advance  consists  in  a  dis- 
tinct recognition  of  the  importance  of  the  individual ;  it  was  so  in  the 
Renaissance  and  in  the  Romantic  movement.  In  ancient  Hellas  the 
change  was  furthered  by  the  influence  of  Athens,  where  the  social 
habits  of  the  people,  their  unending  arguments,  their  interest  in  bright 
talk,  as  they  helped  the  development  of  the  drama,  also  brought  phi- 
losophy out  of  the  region  of  remote  studies  into  that  of  oral  discussion. 
Under  the  altered  conditions  the  new  art  of  rhetoric  became  inextri- 
cably involved  with  philosophy,  which  promised  to  unfold  all  its 
secrets  to  the  subtlest  arguer.  The  problems  of  philosophy  aroused 
the  attention  of  all,  but  they  were  impelled  to  handle  them  in  their 
own  fashion,  through  discussion,  and  rhetoric  offered  them  a  convenient 
instrument  in  the  improved  dialectics.  With  the  general  growth  of 
individualism  there  was  an  increase  in  the  authority  of  men's  feelings, 
and  over  these  obviously  persuasion  was  most  powerful.  Was  not  the 
truth,  they  thought,  more  likely  to  be  found  here  than  in  the  myste- 
ries of  nature,  which  not  only  eluded  observation,  but  were  also  not 
to  be  investigated  without  impiety  ?  That  was  a  strong  argument, 
especially  with  men  whose  religion  preserved  many  traces  of  an  out- 
grown nature-worship  that  in  many  of  its  forms  had  but  little  to  do 
with  morals, — little,  that  is  to  say,  in  comparison  with  Christianity  and 
Buddhism. 


III. 

The  magnitude  of  the  change  which  the  Sophists  introduced  by 
turning  their  backs  upon  the  physical  investigations  of  their  prede- 
cessors, and  by  abandoning  the  study  of  external  nature  in  order  to 
examine  the  spiritual  qualities  of  men,  is  very  evident  ;  and  among  its 
leaders  was  Protagoras,  who  thus  deserves  mention  as  a  precursor  of 
Socrates.  In  his  eyes  matter  was  nothing,  and,  as  he  himself  said, 
man  was  the  measure  of  all  things.  This  was  the  inspiring  principle 
of  the  new  philosophy,  which  in  the  hands  of  Socrates  led  to  the 
contempt  of  abstract  study  except  for  purposes  of  rank  utilitarianism, 
which  was  of  vast  importance  in  turning  men's  minds  to  ethical  sub- 
jects, but  was  more  truly  a  religious  than  a  scientific  movement.  This 
was  its  great  significance,  and  now  what  lies  heavy  on  mankind  is  the 
enormous  importance  given  by  the  Athenian  philosophers,  Socrates, 
Plato,  and  Aristotle,  to  words  as  distinguished  from  facts.  They 
imagined  that  the  existence  of  a  word  implied  the  existence  of  a  thing. 


SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  CHANGES  EFFECTED  BY  PHILOSOPHY.      669 

with  no  material  qualities,  above  and  outside  of  all  laws,  in  a  pure 
vacuum.  The  change  came,  as  we  have  seen,  with  the  sense  of  the 
importance  of  the  individual. 

The  change  in  philosophy  introduced  new  complexities  in  the  life  of 
the  Greeks,  as  must  always  be  the  case  in  every  society  when  advancing 
thought  compels  the  sundering  of  old  bonds  that  are  venerated  as 
part  of  the  inheritance  from  older  times.  These  new  principles 
attacked  directly  and  indirectly  the  two  fundamental  notions  of  Greek 
life  :  the  anthropomorphic  conception  of  the  deities,  by  substituting 
a  representation  of  unlimited  divine  forces,  of  which  the  recognized 
gods  were  but  symbols  ;  and  the  political  notion  of  the  all-important 
state  was  attacked  by  their  advocacy  of  a  wider  cosmopolitanism. 
The  religious  change  we  have  already  seen  in  the  statement  of  the 
views  of  most  of  the  philosophers  already  mentioned,  and  there  are 
quite  as  many  instances  of  the  effect  of  philosophical  reforms  upon 
the  political  basis  of  society.  Thus,  to  go  back  to  the  beginning, 
Thales  of  Miletus  urged  his  fellow-countrymen  in  Ionia  to  form  a 
senate  at  Teos,  which  should  exercise  control  over  all  the  twelve  Ionic 
cities,  which  should  be  its  demes,  but  the  plan  came  to  nothing,  and 
they  were  separately  overthrown  by  Croesus.  Heraclitus  was  a  firm 
adherent  of  the  aristocratic  party  in  Ephesus,  and  although  these 
instances  merely  show  perhaps  what  course  of  action  most  commended 
itself  to  cultivated  men,  and  do  not  prove  any  viciousness  peculiar  to 
students  of  philosophy,  we  may  see  in  the  new  disposition  shown  by 
nearly  all  of  these  to  leave  their  uncongenial  home  and  to  live  in 
Athens,  a  clear  proof  of  their  indifference  to  the  narrow  conditions  on 
which  the  earlier  society  rested.  Heraclitus  and  Democritus  both 
found  their  way  to  that  city,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  immediately 
after  the  Persian  wars  became  the  intellectual  and  artistic  center  of 
Greece.  Anaxagoras,  again,  made  it  his  home  for  thirty  years,  as  one 
of  the  many  resident  aliens,  who,  unburdened  by  political  duties,  and 
powerless  to  exercise  any  of  the  rights  of  citizenship,  yet  enjoyed  all 
the  social  privileges  of  that  attractive  spot.  How  different  their 
condition  was  from  that  of  the  natives  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact 
that  while  the  murder  of  a  citizen  was  a  capital  offense,  that  of  a  resident 
alien  was  punished  only  by  banishment.  Naturally  enough  the  pres- 
ence of  these  men,  whose  ability  was  notorious,  aroused  in  time  the 
jealousy  of  the  Athenian  citizens,  and  it  was  suspected  at  a  very  early 
date  that  they  exercised  a  pernicious  influence  upon  Pericles.  We  have 
seen  that  Anaxagoras  was  compelled  to  leave  Athens  by  an  accusation 
of  this  sort.  In  41 1  B.C.  Protagoras  was  accused  of  blasphemy,  at  a 
time  when  feeling  was  hot  between  the  oligarchic  party  and  the  popu- 
lace, and    later  we    shall    see    other  instances  of  the  existence  of  the 


670  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

same  hostility,  notably,  of  course,  in  the  case  of  Socrates.  Contin- 
ually we  shall  find  that  the  people  disliked  the  philosophers,  and 
although  the  accusation  brought  against  these  men  was  their  dan- 
gerous influence  on  religion,  it  is  yet  very  clear  that  this  charge  was 
a  mere  pretext,  and  that  the  animating  feeling  was  one  of  political 
distrust  and  jealousy.  Indeed  one  is  tempted  to  conjecture  that  uni- 
versally religious  persecutions  and  wars  are  politics  in  disguise ; 
certainly  much  might  be  said  in  defense  of  this  view. 

It  is  readily  seen  that  the  patriotism  of  Greek  citizens  might  be 
easily  offended  by  the  teachings  of  the  philosophers  with  their  advo- 
cacy of  a  wide  cosmopolitanism.  This  was  the  note  which  they  all 
sounded.  Thus,  Democritus,  in  one  of  the  fragments  of  his  work 
that  has  reached  us,  said  that  the  whole  world  was  the  fatherland  of  a 
sturdy  soul,  and  this  remark  was  often  re-echoed  by  his  successors  ; 
indeed  it  became  a  commonplace  among  the  philosophers  of  both 
Greece  and  Rome.  We  find  it  attacked  by  Aristophanes  in  his 
Plutus  and  by  Lysias  in  his  speech  against  Philon,  and  its  utterance 
may  well  have  offended  those  who  clung  firmly  to  the  conviction  that 
the  only  hope  for  preservation  lay  in  fidelity  to  the  limited  rule  of  the 
city.  As  the  future  history  of  Greece  shows,  the  principle  thus  stated 
by  the  philosophers,  who  were  merely  the  thinking  men  of  the  country, 
had  to  be  worked  out  by  the  nation,  and  the  result  was  the  vast 
extent  of  Hellenic  influence  that  survived  the  political  decay  of  the 
country.  The  opposition  to  it  only  lamed  the  material  unity  of 
Hellas ;  its  control  of  the  intellectual  authority  of  the  Greeks  was 
never  impaired.  Far  from  it,  it  remained  one  of  the  influences  that 
formed  an  important  contribution  to  the  growth  of  Christianity. 

Another  way  in  which  it  is  well  to  regard  the  influence  of  the  phi- 
losophers is  this,  that  their  teachings  and  authority,  as  has  been  men- 
tioned above,  tended  to  the  division  of  what  had  been  a  more  or  less 
homogeneous  society  into  one  that  separated  the  learned  from  the 
ignorant.  In  the  contest  that  is  portrayed  in  the  discussions  of  the 
orators,  we  find  abundant  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a  peace  party 
that  could  not  be  aroused  to  interest  in  what  seemed  a  futile  struggle. 
The  philosophers  formed  a  sort  of  aristocratic  body  which  asked  only 
leisure  for  intellectual  studies  ;  by  their  side  everything  else  seemed 
petty  and  disturbing.  Opinions  about  these  facts  will  differ;  it  is 
easy  to  mourn  the  apparent  degeneracy  of  these  men,  and  to  regret  that 
they  refused  to  continue  destructive  wars,  but  perhaps  it  is  better  to 
notice  how  the  fuller  breath  of  a  wider  civilization  was  refusing  to  be 
held  by  the  old  bonds.  The  fact  that  the  change  happened  is  a  proof 
that  it  was  inevitable,  and  he  is  a  bold  man  who  dares  to  wish  that  he 
could  make  history  over  again.     Before  proceeding  far,  he  will  prob- 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  GREEK  INFLUENCE  ON  MODERN  THOUGHT.      671 

ably  see  that  human  affairs  are  very  complicated  things,  especially 
when  he  considers  how  double-edged  are  the  half-truths  which  are  all 
that  it  is  vouchsafed  men  to  see  in  occasional  glimpses. 

This  whole  period  was  one  that  was  beset  by  the  most  intricate 
problems,  and  the  way  in  which  their  answer  was  determined  was  one 
of  vast  importance  to  future  ages.  When  we  remember  that  it  is  from 
what  are  called  the  degenerate  days  of  Greece  that  the  greater  part  of 
the  influence  of  that  country  on  later  civilization  is  derived,  we  may 
become  aware  to  what  an  extent  the  rhetorical  way  of  looking  at  his- 
tory as  a  picturesque  object  has  outweighed  the  importance  of  a  com- 
plete record.  The  brilliancy  of  execution  has  almost  alone  attracted 
historians,  and  after  Plato  and  Aristotle  the  student's  way  can  be  made 
only  by  groping.  The  loss  of  political  power  has  been  adjudged  a 
proper  date  for  the  interruption  of  all  interest  in  this  wonderful  people, 
but  it  was  then  that  they  were  beginning  their  work  in  Alexandria  and 
throughout  the  Roman  empire,  laying  the  foundations  of  modern 
thought.  Literary  men  have  had  the  ear  of  the  public,  and  they  have 
naturally  enough  lost  no  opportunity  of  pointing  out  their  own  im- 
portance ;  yet  the  world  does  not  live  on  literature  alone,  and  when 
this  languished,  the  processes  of  thought  were  not  extinct ;  the  past 
was  breaking  up  and  the  future  was  forming.  This  may  have  been  a 
silent  process,  but  we  all  know  of  those  facts  which  come  under  our 
own  observation  that  it  is  not  merely  the  melodramatic  moments  that 
are  of  importance,  and  this  is  true  of  everything.  Charm  of  style  is 
not  the  only  element  that  is  deserving  of  study. 

In  the  efforts  of  philosophy  to  establish  itself  we  may  see  sufficient 
evidence  of  a  bitter  struggle  between  what  seemed  to  be  the  facts  of 
life  and  what  must  have  appeared  to  many  like  an  impracticable  ideal. 
To  the  success  of  this  last  we  may  possibly  ascribe  some  of  the  long- 
lived  abstract  condition  of  metaphysics  in  its  remoteness  from  other 
sources  of  knowledge  than  introspection,  and  its  contempt  of  science. 
Philosophers  have  never  as  a  class  thought  little  of  themselves,  and 
they  have  perhaps  known  a  certain  exultation  in  the  reflection  that 
the  subject  of  their  studies  was  something  infinitely  higher  in  their 
opinion  than  mere  concrete  objects  which  science  did  not  despise.  In 
fact,  however,  they  have  been  repaid  at  times  in  their  own  coin,  and 
have  themselves  suffered  from  the  contempt  which  they  felt  for 
everything  but  their  favorite  study.  Yet  in  no  case  is  contempt  a  fruit- 
ful or  commendable  feeling,  and  it  is  the  greatest  glory  of  science  that 
it  tends  to  destroy  the  unworthy  habit  of  drawing  what  may  be  called 
social  distinctions  in  the  universe  which  students  must  observe  under 
peril  of  losing  caste. 


672  THE   EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 


IV. 

It  was  not  moral  turpitude  or  intellectual  weakness  that  inspired 
the  Greeks  in  following  a  course  that  has  been  so  full  of  influence  upon 
modern  thought  ;  this  was  rather  due  to  a  natural  dissatisfaction  with 
the  crude  gropings  of  men  of  science  and  an  equally  natural  confidence 
in  the  excellent  weapon  that  lay  ready  to  hand.  By  the  side  of  its 
apparent  incompetence  they  could  place  the  philosophy  which  seemed 
to  offer  almost  unlimited  power  to  the  human  intellect,  in  the  form  of 
an  art  which,  it  was  asserted,  could  be  taught  to  almost  any  one.  If 
men,  endowed  with  many  brilliant  qualities,  asserted  that  they  could 
teach  virtue,  it  was  only  natural  that  those  who  were  eager  to  learn 
the  principles  of  virtue  should  have  been  attracted  by  these  state- 
ments. Such,  at  least,  was  the  case  here,  and  the  temporary  success 
of  the  Sophists  is  as  readily  explicable  as  their  subsequent  failure.  The 
new  rhetoric,  with  its  abundance  of  quibbles,  was  but  a  sign  of  the 
changes  that  they  hoped  to  introduce.  What  they  did  was  to  help 
the  modification  of  Greek  thought  regarding  all  the  main  questions  of 
life.  Religion,  civil  duty,  patriotism,  science,  the  whole  duty  of  man, 
became  the  subject  of  perpetual  discussion  in  the  intellectual  ferment 
that  was  making  itself  felt  in  Greece:  Protagoras,  one  of  the  most 
popular,  was  an  avowed  agnostic.  When  he  came  to  Athens  it  was 
at  the  house  of  Euripides  that  he  began  to  read  out  of  one  of  his 
works,  and  opened  with  these  words  :  "  I  can  not  tell  whether  the 
gods  exist  or  not  ;  life  is  too  short  for  such  difficult  investigations." 
This  statement  at  once  created  great  excitement ;  the  book  was  pub- 
licly burned,  and  its  circulation  forbidden.  The  author  himself  left  the 
city,  and  perished  by  shipwreck  on  his  way  to  Sicily.  Yet  words  like 
these  from  one  high  in  authority  survive  public  burning,  and  the 
death  of  the  man  who  utters  them.  Gorgias  went  even  further.  He 
wrote  a  book.  On  Nature  or  Nothing,  in  which  he  maintained,  first, 
that  nothing  exists ;  secondly,  that  if  anything  does  exist,  we  can  not 
know  it ;  thirdly,  that  if  we  know  it,  we  can  not  possibly  communicate 
our  knowledge  to  others.  Prodicus  and  Hippiashad  favored  scientific 
study ;  the  skepticism  of  Protagoras  and  Gorgias  attacked  science  as 
much  as  religion,  and  they  were  the  mouthpiece  of  a  section  of  society 
that  sneered  at  the  alleged  truths  of  science  and  at  the  old  ideals 
which  seemed  to  perish  with  the  fables  about  the  gods. 

While  men's  interests  were  thus  rapidly  widening,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  for  a  time  men's  hopes  should  have  turned  with  some- 
thing like  rapture  to  the  art   of  dialectics  as  the  source  from  which 


674  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND    SOCRATES. 

true  light  should  come.  In  the  first  place,  discussion  was  the  very 
life-blood  of  Athens  ;  poetry  and  eloquence  had  long  formed  its  main 
interests,  and  with  these  new  teachers  it  seemed  as  if  a  solution  for 
all  problems  was  found  which  should  wring  from  the  universe  its  baf- 
fling secret.  In  the  ingenuities  of  controversy  it  was  hoped  that  a 
method  was  established  that  would  remove  all  difficulties.  The  shat- 
tering of  the  old  religious  faith  is  clearly  seen  in  the  plays  of  Euripi- 
des, who  alternates  between  the  conflicting  views  of  his  predecessors 
and  his  contemporaries.  At  times  he  adjudges  men's  fate  to  be  simply 
the  result  of  their  own  actions,  the  stories  of  the  gods  he  accepts  at 
one  moment  to  deny  at  the  next.  He  disapproves  of  the  statement 
that  the  power  of  prophecy  exists :  in  a  word,  the  old  belief  is  crum- 
bling like  a  thing  outworn.  While  on  the  one  hand  the  Greek  religion 
was  over-ripe,  science  had  not  reached  sufficient  maturity  to  stand  a 
rigorous  examination  or  to  serve  as  a  basis  for  an  altered  view  of  the 
universe,  and  neither  could  endure  comparison  with  the  brilliant 
results  that  promised  to  follow  the  new  use  of  argument  and  discus- 
sion. Rhetorical  skill  easily  held  the  first  place.  We  have  seen  the 
practical  results  of  the  teachings  of  the  Sophists  in  the  brilliant  prose 
literature  of  Greece,  and  their  power  as  a  m.eans  of  culture  was 
thought  to  be  even  greater.  Consequently  it  developed  a  tendency 
to  spin  webs  in  the  thin  air,  wholly  removed  from  any  solid  basis,  and 
it  was  this  tendency  which  has  given  the  Sophists  their  bad  name. 
They  encouraged  a  growth  which  had  no  roots,  and  although  the  un- 
wisdom of  this  conduct  is  now  perfectly  plain,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
suppose  that  it  was  the  result  of  a  deliberate  preference  of  the  wrong ; 
it  was  a  mistake,  not  a  crime,  and  a  mistake  that  arose  from  the  ex- 
aggeration of  the  power  of  rhetoric.  Much  of  the  opprobrium  that 
attaches  to  their  names  serves  but  to  illustrate  the  long  life  that  be- 
longs to  abuse,  and  many  of  the  charges  brought  against  them  were, 
like  much  fault-finding,  mere  pretexts.  Some  hated  them  merely  for 
one  of  the  commonest  causes  of  hatred  :  for  teaching  new  things  ; 
others,  for  the  non-performance  of  their  brilliant  promises.  Yet,  so 
confused  is  the  action  of  human  justice,  it  was  their  most  serious  foe, 
Socrates,  who  endured  persecution  and  became  a  scapegoat  for  the 
whole  band. 


THE  LIFE    OF  SOCRATES 


675 


V. 

This  remarkable  man  was  born  in  Athens  about  469  B.C.  His 
father,  Sophroniseus,  was  a  sculptor ;  his  mother,  Phaenarete,  was  a 
midwife.  In  his  early  years  Socrates  followed  the  occupation  of  his 
father,  with  what  success  we  are  not  told,  but  later  he  abandoned 
that  occupation  to  become  a  public  teacher.  That  the  gain  of  philos- 
ophy was  not  commonly  thought  to  be  a  loss  for  sculpture,  may  be 
conjectured   from    the  fact  that  the  Graces  represented  in  this  illus- 


THE  GRACES   ASCRIBED  TO   SOCRATES. 


tration  were  ascribed,  whether  accurately  or  not  is  uncertain,  to 
Socrates.  In  person  he  was  singularly  unattractive  ;  his  rare  and 
delicate  mind  was  enclosed  in  a  graceless  body  that  reminded  be- 
holders of  a  satyr.  Yet  if  he  lacked  beauty,  he  possessed  strength 
and  was  capable,  beyond  most  men,  of  exposure  and  hardship  ;  he 
was  tolerant  of  both  abstinence  and  what  others  would  have  thought 
excess.      He    passed    his  entire    life    in  Athens,  except  when  called 


UNIVERSITY 


676  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

away  for  brief  seasons  on  military  duties.  He  lived  there  peacefully 

enough,  never  taking  part   in  any  lawsuit  until  the  one  which  termi- 
nated in  his  condemnation  to  death. 

Of  his  life  in  Athens  we   know  a  great  deal    from   Xenophon  and 


Plato,  for  the  Memorabilia  of  Xenophon,  of  which  mention  has  been 
made  above,  besides  being  the  earliest  personal  memoir,  is  most 
abundant  in  information.  It  presents  to  us  a  vivid  picture  of  Socrates 
in  his  daily  life,  arguing  and   discussing  with   any  who  cared  to  listen 


METHOD   OF  SOCRATES'    TEACHING.  677 

to  him.  Of  the  method  of  his  conversation,  striking  as  it  is,  but  little 
need  be  said.  He  was  an  Athenian  of  the  Athenians,  a  representa- 
tive of  that  wonderful  people,  who  in  his  limitations,  as  in  his  excel- 
lence, illustrates  many  of  their  most  prominent  qualities.  That  he 
wrought  his  work  by  means  of  talk  in  the  market-place  was  simply  a 
continuation  of  the  fixed  habit  of  his  fellow-citizens,  as  much  as  was 
Dr.  Johnson's  talk  over  the  supper-table,  although  in  making  it  the 
aim  of  his  life  we  may  perhaps  suppose  that  Socrates  was  consciously 
reproving  the  Sophists  for  giving  instruction  for  hire.  The  reports 
of  his  remarks  given  us  by  Xenophon  and  Plato  make  very  clear  the 
courtesy  of  the  Athenians  and  their  quickness  and  subtlety.  The 
personal  note  of  the  great  philosopher  may  be  distinguished  in  the 
rigid  cross-examination  to  which  he  subjected  those  who  came  in  his 
way.  This  cross-examination,  however,  was  not  of  his  invention, 
although  he  was  doubtless  fully  aware  of  its  contrast  to  the  didactic 
instruction  of  many  of  the  Sophists  and  to  the  offers  of  some  of  their 
number  to  answer  any  questions  that  might  be  put  to  them.  It  was 
the  old-time  method  of  the  law-courts  which  led  the  victim  down  a 
series  of  damaging  admissions  to  a  black  pit  of  confusion  and  tardy 
remorse.  It  had  flourished  in  the  tragedies  and  now  made  its  way 
into  philosophy,  where  under  the  guise  of  simplicity  Socrates  would 
ask  the  most  baffling  questions  with  no  other  design  apparent  than 
simple  curiosity.  This  method  certainly  brought  philosophy  down  to 
the  comprehension  of  the  whole  people  instead  of  reserving  it  for  the 
fortunate  few,  and  by  his  illustrations  and  images,  which  seem  actually 
taken  from  life,  as  if  the  real  scenes  caught  his  eye  while  he  was 
talking,  he  simplified  what  to  many  must  have  appeared  a  remote  and 
obscure  subject.  In  a  way,  the  talk  of  Socrates  reminds  the  reader  of 
that  of  Dr.  Johnson,  whose  vivid  and  drastic  wit  in  a  somewhat  similar 
way  cut  through  pretense  and  exaggeration.  Few  other  likenesses 
suggest  themselves,  for  commonly  the  man  who  is  busy  denouncing 
these  qualities  in  others  is  illustrating  them  in  himself,  and  here  the 
contrast  between  the  subtle  questions  of  Socrates  and  the  violent  afifirm- 
ations  of  Johnson  warns  us  against  the  exaggeration  of  points  of 
resemblance.  Yet  in  the  provinciality  of  the  two  men  it  is  easy  to  see 
a  certain  agreement,  and  while  there  are  provinces  and  provinces,  even 
in  Athens  there  already  existed  a  distinct  aversion  to  natural  science  as 
well  as  to  cloudy  philosophy,  both  marked  traits  in  Socrates.  In  his 
aim,  which  was  to  make  men  good  citizens,  we  see  at  once  the  limit  as 
well  as  the  merit  of  his  designs. 

What  he  helped  to  do  was  to  carry  on  the  movement  of  philo- 
sophical thought  toward  ethics,  to  give  it  a  practical  bent ;  as  Cicero 
said,  *'  he   called   philosophy  down   from    the    heavens  to  earth,   and 


678  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

introduced  it  into  the  cities  and  houses  of  men,  compelling  men  to 
inquire  concerning  life  and  morals  and  things  good  and  evil."  Part 
of  the  change  was  doubtless  due  to  the  dissatisfaction  that  the 
Athenians  felt  for  misty  thought  and  what  seemed  to  them  unprofit- 
able studies. 

Lucidity  was  the  object  of  their  whole  intellectual  training.  By 
their  command  of  it  they  became  the  chosen  interpreters  of  the  Greek 
people,  and  in  the  early  physical  philosophy  they  saw  something  that 
fascinated  them  as  little  as  the  philosophy  of  Hegel  has  ever  fascinated 
the  French.  With  this  feeling,  Socrates  was  forever  seeking  defini- 
tions from  those  who  were  preparing  to  enwrap  him  in  long  disquisi- 
tions, and  were  ready  to  let  abundant  general  principles  take  the 
place  of  precise  statement.  Half  of  the  imposing  machinery  of  the 
philosophers  was  disabled  by  this  ingenious  attack  which  seemed  to 
be  merely  an  ingenuous  defense.  In  the  same  way,  by  limiting  the 
.functions  of  philosophy  to  human,  indeed,  one  might  almost  say,  to 
social  interests,  he  kept  close  to  that  side  of  the  Athenian  character 
which  was  indubitably  averse  to  far-straying  adventuresomeness,  a 
certain  philistinism,  the  severe  might  call  it.  The  insistence  upon 
lucidity  has  a  tendency  to  clip  the  wings  of  speculation,  as  we  may  see 
in  the  history  of  French  thought,  especially  in  contrast  with  that  of 
German  philosophy. 

So  much  at  least  we  are  justified  in  saying,  when  we  notice  how 
great  was  the  influence  of  Socrates  on  the  subsequent  development 
of  philosophy  among  the  Athenians,  how  incessantly  he  introduced 
a  practical  test  into  the  examination  of  his  powerful  rivals.  It  is 
sufficiently  obvious  that  his  method  was  not  universally  popular,  to 
speak  mildly,  but  its  fruitfulness  is  undeniable.  By  bringing  philos- 
ophy into  line  with  ethics,  he  sobered  men  who  were  intoxicated  by 
what  they  had  learned  from  the  Sophists,  and  by  his  constant  applica- 
tion of  their  principles  to  the  welfare  of  the  state,  he  kept  true  in  the 
main  to  the  fundamental  notions  of  the  Greeks  concerning  civic  duty. 
He  did  his  best  to  adapt  and  correct  these  outside  theories  to  possible 
use ;  they  floated  in  the  air,  and  he,  by  forcing  them  to  acquire  citizen- 
ship in  Athens,  gave  them  a  place,  when  properly  modified,  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  world.  And  in  the  peculiar  character  of  his  work 
we  may  doubtless  see  an  exaggeration  of  the  quality  most  unlike  the 
easy  flight  of  the  Sophists,  who  could  easily  ignore  awkward  and  dis- 
turbing facts.  The  homeliness  of  his  simplicity  is  a  vivid  exposition 
of  the   faults  which  he  was  attacking. 

With  what  excellent  effect  Socrates  applies  his  method  we  may  see 
illustrated  in  Xenophon's  account  of  his  talk  with  the  youthful  Glauco, 
who  attempted  to  address  the  public  assembly  before  he  was  twenty 


THE  EXAMINATION  OF  GLAUCO. 


679 


years  old.  Every  citizen  had,  to  be  sure,  the  right  of  speaking,  but 
idle  talkers  were  liable  to  be  forcibly  removed  by  the  police  when  it 
became  evident  that  their  words  were  vain.  Glauco  had  suffered  this 
ignominious  expulsion  more  than  once,  but  had  persisted  in  repeating 


ATHENIAN   CITIZENS. 


the  experiment  against  the  advice  of  his  friends,  when  Socrates  under- 
took to  reason  with  him.  After  a  few  compliments  the  philosopher 
opened  the  discussion  by  asking  Glauco  a  few  practical  questions 
about  statesmanship.  Would  Glauco  tell  him  the  current  revenue  of 
Athens  and  whence  it  was  derived  ?  No,  he  had  never  examined  the 
matter.  Then  perhaps  he  had  some  plan  for  diminishing  expenses? 
No,  he  proposed  nothing  of  the  kind.  But  he  did  think  that  the  ene- 
mies of  Athens  might  be  made  to  contribute  to  the  wealth  of  that 
city.  Ah,  if  they  are  going  to  war,  Glauco  can  doubtless  enumerate 
the  extent  of  the  Athenian  forces  ?  No,  he  has  forgotten  at  the  mo- 
ment. BjLit  doubtless  it  is  written  down  somewhere  ?  No,  it  is  not. 
And  so  Socrates  goes  on,  dexterously  permitting  his   interlocutor  to 


68o  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

expose  his  ignorance  and  incompetence.  What  he  did  here  with  prac- 
tical matters  he  did  continually  witji  subjects  of  abstract  thought,  cut- 
ting through  idleness  and  vanity  with  his  homely  wit,  not  inflicting  capi- 
tal punishment  on  those  whom  he  encountered,  but  letting  them  hang 
themselves  with  their  own  rope.  All  of  this  was  far  from  the  vague 
discussions  of  the  universe  and  the  origin  and  real  nature  of  all  things 
which  had  been  agitating  his  predecessors,  and  Socrates  further  sepa- 
rated himself  from  them  by  his  frank  acceptance  of  the  popular  reli- 
gion. He  held  that  the  gods  were  wise,  beneficent  beings,  who  had 
established  the  order  of  things  in  the  universe  for  useful  ends,  that 
they  made  known  their  wishes  through  the  oracles,  and  that  they  were 
to  be  worshiped  by  righteous  living  and  reverence,  rather  than  by  ex- 
travagant sacrifices.  The  soul  he  looked  upon  as  something  divine  in 
its  origin  and  nature,  and  apparently  he  regarded  it  as  immortal.  The 
secret  of  his  lessons  lay  in  the  enforcement  of  knowledge  as  the  root 
of  wise  thought  and  wise  actions.  Only  by  knowing  well  what  was 
justice,  or  temperance,  or  virtue  of  any  sort,  could  one  act  virtuously, 
and  the  definitions  he  sought  by  first  clearing  away  false  notions,  by 
analysis,  and  then  synthetically  he  bound  into  one  whole  the  truths 
that  had  been  thus  ascertained.  The  facts  being  thus  attained,  he  saw 
to  their  application  in  conduct.  Only  such  as  had  taken  these  neces- 
sary steps  were  competent  to  hold  positions  of  authority.  His  method 
lay  on  as  practical  a  foundation  as  the  result ;  he  believed  that  men, 
could  learn  what  they  needed  for  the  control  of  their  lives  from  the 
study  of  their  own  natures.  "  Know  thyself,"  already  a  familiar  Greek 
maxim,  received  new  significance  at  his  hands  :  all  virtue  depended 
on  this  knowledge, 

It  is  certainly  curious  that  of  all  the  Athenians  it  should  have  been 
Socrates  who  was  picked  out  for  death  on  account  of  dangerous 
and  heretical  notions,  and  when  he  was  charged  with  not  acknowledging 
the  gods  recognized  by  the  state,  and  with  introducing  new  demonia- 
cal beings,  it  is  evident  that  no  distinction  was  made  between  his 
teaching  and  that  of  the  Sophists.  Nor  is  this  wholly  surprising  :  his 
manner  of  thrusting  himself  into  attention,  while  the  Sophists  rather 
let  themselves  be  sought  by  their  pupils,  brought  him  into  greater 
prominence,  and  doubtless  the  public  was  more  willing  to  condone  of- 
fenses that  produced  no  public  scandal  than  such  as  pressed  themselves 
every  day  into  every  one's  view.  Here  was  a  man  baffling  and  disturb- 
ing his  listeners  at  every  street-corner,  talking  about  what  the  history 
of  the  world  has  proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  disturbing  subjects  pos- 
sible, that  is,  man's  duty,  and,  naturally  the  populace  would  be  ready 
to  confound  him  with  the  more  dangerous  foes  of  general  apathy.  He 
put  himself  in  evidence,  as  it  might  be  said,  before  a  public  that  knew 


OFFENSE   OF  SOCRATES— CAUSES  OF  HIS  DEATH.       .         68 1 

no  more  than  that  the  discussion  of  the  settled  religion  was  pernicious. 
If  Aristophanes  in  his  Clouds  could  so  totally  misrepresent  Socrates 
as,  for  instance,  to  imply  that  he  dabbled  in  physical  science,  how 
much  more  could  the  ignorant  populace  repeat  the  error,  especially 
when  we  consider  its  preference  for  a  single,  representative  victim. 
Grote's  ingenious  defense  of  the  Athenian  public  for  the  condemna- 
tion of  Socrates  amounts  to  this,  that  he  had  made  himself  an  intoler- 
able nuisance,  and  that  it  avenged  by  death  its  frequent  humiliation 
by  his  subtle  arguments,  but  this  is  scarcely  so  easy  of  belief  as  that 
the  distinction  was  not  clearly  drawn  between  him  and  the  Sophists, 
and  that  he  suffered  for  the  offenses  of  his  worst  antagonists.  Then, 
too,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  great  as  was  his  opposition  to  them,  he 
also  taught  the  unwisdom  of  uninquiring  compliance  with  conven- 
tion and  law.  They  eluded  observation  ;  he  sought  it  and  suffered. 
The  story  of  his  death  will  be  found  below,  as  well  as  extracts  from 
his  alleged  defense,  when  Plato  comes  under  discussion.  The  bare 
statement  of  the  fact  will  suffice  here,  and  may  well  serve  to  remind 
us  moderns  who  are  sometimes  compared  unfavorably  with  the  Athe- 
nians, that  even  that  wonderful  people  were  not  without  their  full 
share  of  philistinism,  of  bigotry,  that  is,  and  all  the  faults  of  narrow 
prejudice  and  harshness.  Beneath  the  brilliant  immortals  was  the 
populace  that  groped  its  way  where  others  led,  and  only  those  were 
successful  leaders  who  kept  touch  with  the  popular  interests.  All  of 
these  interests  Socrates  had  offended  :  his  disciples  were  found  among 
the  Thirty  Tyrants ;  the  religious  party  was  aggrieved  by  every 
inquiry  into  what  seemed  their  peculiar  property;  the  Sophists  de- 
tested him,  and  those  who  dreaded  the  influence  of  the  Sophists 
regarded  him  as  the  most  dangerous  of  those  perverters  of  innocence; 
the  conservatives  looked  upon  him  as  a  radical,  and  the  radicals 
thought  him  a  pernicious  conservative.  In  short,  he  knew  all 
the  bitter  loneliness  of  real  independence,  and  paid  with  his  life  for 
daring  to  take  nothing  for  granted. 

Moreover,  we  must  remember  that  what  in  the  eyes  of  posterity  is 
the  greatest  glory  of  Socrates,  the  fact,  namely,  that  he  was  the  first 
important  man  who  attempted  to  lay  the  foundations  of  the  state  on  a 
moral  basis,  and  that  he  questioned  the  force  of  authority  which  hitherto 
had  been  held  sufficient ;  remembering  this,  and  his  continual  demand 
that  all  action  and  belief  must  rest  on  the  conviction  of  truth  or 
expediency,  it  is  perhaps  easier  for  us  to  understand  the  opposition  to 
what  must  have  seemed,  because  in  fact  it  was,  a  very  important  sub- 
version of  settled  and  approved  principles.  Discipline  was  danger- 
ously threatened  by  this  correction  of  the  old  authority  of  the  state  ; 
and    it   is  very  obvious   that  at  any  time   there  may  arise   a  conflict 


682  THE  EARLY  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRATES. 

between  moral  and  civic  duty,  if  the  individual  refuses  to  act  until  he 
has  determined  the  justice  and  wisdom  of  his  orders.  The  appearance 
then  of  the  right  of  personal  judgment  was  the  entrance  of  the  small 
end  of  the  wedge  that  was  to  sunder  the  old  Greek  life  with  its  narrow 
exclusiveness  from  the  broader  and  far  more  extended  civilizations 
that  were  to  follow.  Xenophon  takes  care  to  show  us  how  well 
Socrates  performed  such  civic  duties  as  came  to  him  ;  but  the  schism 
that  his  philosophy  foreboded  spread  after  his  death  throughout 
society.  The  old  conditions  were  outgrown,  and  everywhere  we  find 
abundant  testimony  of  their  destruction.  Perhaps  the  best  expression 
of  the  new  feeling  is  to  be  found  in  this  passage  from  Plato's  Republic 
(VI.  496),  where  Socrates  is  speaking  of  philosophers  : 

"  Now  he  who  has  become  a  member  of  this  little  band,  and  has  tasted 
how  sweet  and  blessed  his  treasure  is,  and  has  watched  the  madness  of  the 
many,  with  the  full  assurance  that  there  is  scarcely  a  person  who  takes  a  single 
judicious  step  in  his  public  life,  and  that  there  is  no  ally  with  whom  he  may 
safely  march  to  the  succour  of  the  just  ;  nay,  that  should  he  attempt  it,  he  will 
be  a  man  that  has  fallen  among  wild  beasts, — unwilling  to  join  in  their  iniqui- 
ties, and  unable  singly  to  resist  the  fury  of  all,  and  therefore  destined  to 
perish  before  he  can  be  of  any  service  to  his  country  or  his  friends  and  do 
no  good  to  himself  or  any  one  else  ; — having,  I  say,  weighed  all  this,  such  a 
man  keeps  quiet  and  confines  himself  to  his  own  concerns,  like  one  who 
takes  shelter  behind  a  wall  on  a  stormy  day,  when  the  wind  is  driving  before 
him  a  hurricane  of  dust  and  rain  ;  and  when  from  his  retreat  he  sees  the 
defection  of  lawlessness  spreading  over  the  rest  of  mankind,  he  is  well  con- 
tent, if  he  can  in  any  way  leave  his  life  here  untainted  in  his  own  person  by 
unrighteousness  and  unholy  deeds,  and,  when  the  time  for  his  release  arrives, 
takes  his  departure  amid  bright  hopes  with  cheerfulness  and  security." 

The  echo  of  these  eloquent  words  is  not  yet  silent,  and  they  fully 
express  what  finds  corroboration  in  the  complexity  of  Euripides  and 
in  the  general  breaking  away  of  the  old  state  of  things.  That  those 
who  condemned  Socrates  saw  clearly  these  results  of  his  teachings 
can  not  be  positively  affirmed  ;  probably  they  did  not ;  for  it  is  hard 
enough  for  men  to  see  what  is  immediately  before  their  eyes  without 
any  foreknowledge  of  its  remote  consequences,  yet  a  dull  sense  of  the 
discord  that  lay  between  themselves  and  this  one  man  was  sufficient 
to  make  him  detested.  In  behalf  of  those  who  condemned  Socrates, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  a  very  little  compliance  on  his  part  with 
the  humor  of  his  judges  would  have  saved  his  life,  but  he  felt  that  his 
work  was  done,  and  by  dying  as  he  did  he  gave  the  -seal  of  martyrdom 
to  principles  that  were  destined  to  exert  an  enormous  influence,  for 
the  conflict  between  authority  and  right  is  practically  endless.  And 
it  is  also  well  to  bear  it  in  mind  that  the  life  of  an  atheist  is  often 
more  comfortable  than  that  of  a  reformer  ;  he  who  denies  everything 


THE  DISCIPLES  AND   SUCCESSORS  OF  SOCRA  TES.  683 

is,  as  it  were,  a  foreigner,  but  one  who  undertakes  to  improve  us  is  as 
detestable  as  only  our  relations  can  be. 

The  success  of  his  enemies  had  its  usual  result  in  the  ruin  of  their 
theories.  The  moment  when  they  deemed  themselves  victorious 
history  names  as  the  date  of  their  overthrow,  and  it  was  the  small 
state  theory  of  government  that  perished  when  Socrates  died.  Hence- 
forth cosmopolitanism  is  a  recognized  aim  of  the  philosophers  and  of 
the  thinking  men  in  general.  Athens  soon  ceased  to  be  Greek  and 
became  a  leading  city  in  a  wider  empire. 

His  personal  followers  were  many.  Xenophon,  as  we  have  seen, 
showed  in  his  work  the  effect  of  his  master's  teachings  ;  ^schines, 
the  Socratic,  as  he  is  termed  to  distinguish  him  from  the  orator,  and 
Kebes  of  Thebes  are  included  among  the  personal  friends  who 
maintained  a  loyal  allegiance  to  his  memory,  but  the  direct  line  of 
philosophic  descent  consists  of  two  main  schools,  the  Megaric  or 
Eristic,  which  occupied  itself  mainly  with  dialectics  and  the  Cynic 
school  of  Antisthenes,  and  the  Hedonic  or  Cyrenaic  school  of  Aris- 
tippus,  which  investigated  principally  ethical  matters.  The  founder 
of  the  first  school  was  Euclid  of  Megara,  who,  like  most  of  the  disci- 
ples of  Socrates,  fled  from  Athens  on  the  death  of  their  teacher.  He 
returned  to  Megara  and  there  taught  his  philosophy,  which  combined 
the  doctrines  of  the  Electics  with  those  of  Socrates,  and  endeavored 
to  establish  the  existence  of  a  single  good,  called  intelligence,  god, 
or  reason,  according  to  the  way  in  which  it  is  viewed  by  the  mind,  for 
it  was  not  to  be  perceived  through  the  senses.  With  this  philosophic 
principle  he  and  his  followers  combined  many  dialectic  subtleties 
which  brought  them  into  ill  repute.  The  most  celebrated  of  his 
disciples  was  Stilpo  of  Megara,  who  added  to  the  statements  of 
Euclid  a  view  of  things  rivaling  that  of  the  Cynics,  namely,  that  the 
wise  man  was  not  only  superior  to  every  evil,  but  that  he  should  not 
even  feel  it.  Others  of  whom  less  is  known  were  Diodorus  Cronus 
and  Philo.  This  Euclid  is  of  course  not  to  be  confounded  with  the 
more  famous  geometrician  who  lived  a  century  later. 

Phaedo  of  Elis  is  reputed  to  have  established  a  school  of  philosophy 
in  his  native  city,  and  to  have  taught  doctrines  similar  to  those  incul- 
cated by  Euclid  ;  of  the  particulars,  however,  only  very  little  is  known. 

The  Cynic  school  was  established  by  Antisthenes  of  Athens,  the  son 
of  an  Athenian  father  and  Thracian  mother,  who  taught  in  a  gymna- 
sium called  Cynosarges,  whence  the  school  took  its  name.  He  main- 
tained that  the  only  good  thing  is  virtue,  that  enjoyment  is  baleful, 
and  that  virtue  consists  solely  in  self-control.  All  that  it  requires  is 
Socratic  force.  Once  attained,  it  is  secure  for  all  time,  and  all  that  lies 
vague  between  vice  and  virtue  is  indifferent.      Thus   it  will   be  seen 


684 


THE  EARL  Y  PHILOSOPHERS  AND   SOCRA  TES. 


that  it  is  simply  the  ethical  side  of  the  teaching  of  Socrates  that  is 
developed  by  the  Cynics.  Diogenes  of  Sinope  (414-323)  who  won  for 
himself  the  title  of  the  Mad  Socrates,  exaggerated  all  these  theories, 
abandoned  all  the  conveniences  of  civilization,  and  was  glad  to  call 
himself  a  dog.     This  fantastic  turn  foreboded  the  direction  the  whole 


DIOGENES. 


movement  was  to  take,  when  afTectation  and  grotesqueness  tried  to 
wear  the  mantle  of  philosophy.  Yet  it  bore  good  fruit,  when  stripped 
of  its  absurdities,  in  the  later  Stoicism,  for  underlying  all  its  manifes- 
tations lay  a  deep-felt  reaction  against  a  corrupt  civilization.  It  cer- 
tainly seems  not  impossible  that  by  inculcating  upon  its  supporters 
entire  indifference  to  dress,  it  may  have  had  some  influence  in  pro- 
viding a  uniform  for  the  later  monastic  orders. 

The  Cyrenaic  school,  founded  by  Aristippus  of  Cyrene,  distinguished 
itself  from  the  Cynic  by  taking  pleasure  to  be  the  aim  of  life.  Plea- 
sure he  defined  as  the  sensation  of  gentle  motion  ;  it  is  to  be  sought 
by  the  truly  wise  man,  who,  however,  will  not  allow  himself  to  be  con- 
trolled by  it.  Physical  and  intellectual  pleasures  were  equally  es- 
teemed, the  difference  between  them  depending  on  the  degree  and 
duration  of  each.  The  sage  will  then  decide  for  himself,  and  remain 
always  the  master  rather  than  the  slave  of  his  pleasures.     Our  knowl- 


THE   CYRENAIC  SCHOOL. 


685 


edge,  he  also  held,  is  confined  to  our  sensations.  Not  unnaturally  this 
school  had  a  considerable  following;  besides  the  daughter  and  grand- 
son of  Aristippus,  we  hear  of  Theodorus,  the  atheist,  as  he  was  called, 
who  praised  a  constant  cheerfulness  ;  of  his  pupils,  Bio  and  Euhe- 
merus,  who  said  that  the  worship  of  gods  arose  from  the  admiration 
for  great  men,  whose  fame  acquired  a  vagueness  that  fitted  them  for 
mythological  fables ;  Hegesias  and  Anniceris.  Anniceris  deserves 
especial  mention  for  bringing  into  notice  the  importance  of  sympathy 
for  others  as  a  means  of  securing  personal  pleasure. 


MAXIMES     OF     THE     PHILOSOPHERS     AND     SAGESL 


CHAPTER  II.— PLATO. 

I. — The  Vast  Importance  of  Plato  to  Modern  Thought.  Mr.  Benn  on  his  Inconsis- 
tencies. Platonism  Not  to  be  Defined  by  one  Word  or  Phrase.  II. — The  Life  of 
Plato.  His  Aristocratic  Theories.  His  Political  Efforts  for  the  Regeneration  of 
Mankind.  His  Journeys,  etc.  His  Work;  the  Nature  of  the  Dialogues.  III. — 
His  Accounts  of  Socrates  ;  the  Apology  and  the  Crito.  Extracts.  IV. — The  Gen- 
eral Dialogues  :  Their  Literary  Charm.  Various  Ones  Analyzed  :  the  Charmides, 
Lysis,  Protagoras,  Ion,  Lesser  Hippias,  Meno.  V. — The  Symposium  and  the  Phas- 
drus.  The  Gorgias.  The  Cratylus.  The  Timasus,  etc.  VI. — The  Republic,  its 
Utopianism  and  Aristocratic  Longings.  The  Generally  Accepted  Notion  of  Pla- 
tonism. His  Theory  of  Ideas.  VII. — His  Followers,  and  his  Influence,  and  his 
New  Foundation  for  Ethics.     VIII. — Extract. 

I. 

In  the  end  of  the  preceding  chapter  we  have  seen  the  divisions  of 
those  followers  of  Socrates  who,  according  to  their  lights,  carried  on 
the  instruction  of  their  greater  teacher,  but  it  was  not  from  them  that 
his  influence  was  to  spread  throughout  the  world  so  much  as  from 
Plato,  the  most  illustrious  of  his  followers,  one  of  the  few  men  who 
have  left  upon  thought  a  lasting  mark.  The  other  pupils  were  called 
the  imperfect  or  one-sided  Socraticists  ;  it  was  Plato  who  developed 
the  philosophy  of  Socrates  into  something  that  those  who  listened  to 
the  latter  in  the  market-place  could  not  have  imagined  possible. 

It  is  speaking  within  bounds  to  say  that  no  single  writer  has  exer- 
cised more  influence  on  thinking  men  of  ancient  and  modern  times 
than  Plato.  Yet  his  influence  was  not  immediate  ;  both  he  and  Aris- 
totle set  the  mark  too  high  for  the  divergent  forces  of  Greece,  and  it 
was  not  till  after  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  that  what  was 
called  Neo-Platonism  arose  and  exerted  an  influence  on  the  thought 
of  the  early  Fathers.  Justin  Martyr,  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Origen, 
Eusebius,  St.  Augustin  and  others  regarded  Plato  as  inspired  or  as 
familiar  with  inspired  truth,  and  they  all  welcomed  him  as  an  ally  who 
could  help  to  develop  the  great  spiritual  forces  that  formed  part  of  the 
foundations  of  the  modern  world,  and  already  some  of  its  most  impor- 
tant elements  had  been  drawn  from  him.  The  vision  of  the  Church 
as  the  sign  on  earth  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  did  not  bear  an  acci- 
dental likeness  to  Plato's  Republic.  Throughout  the  Dark  Ages 
Plato's  fame  was  dimmed,  but  whenever  men  have  turned  their  eyes 
to  the  light   it   has  been  Plato  on   whom  men   have   depended  as  an 


THE  INCONSISTENCIES  OF  PLATO— BENN' S  CRITICISM.         687 

interpreter  of  higher  truth.  It  was  so  at  the  time  of  the  Renaissance, 
when  his  works  were  studied  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm;  and  the 
last  hundred  years,  aroused  by  the  no  less  important  excitement  of 
what  is  vaguely  called  the  Romantic  movement,  have  known  a  revival 
of  interest  in  his  work  after  the  brief  eclipse  of  curiosity  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Yet,  as  Mr.  A.  W.  Benn  has  well  said  in  his  "  Greek  Philosophers  " 
(i.  172  et  seq.),  "  No  philosopher  has  ever  offered  so  extended  and 
vulnerable  a  front  to  hostile  criticism.  None  has  so  habitually  pro- 
voked reprisals  by  his  own  incessant  and  searching  attacks  on  all  ex- 
isting professions,  customs,  and  beliefs.  It  might  even  be  maintained 
that  none  has  used  the  weapons  of  controversy  with  more  unscrupu- 
lous zeal.  And  it  might  be  added  that  he  who  dwells  so  much  on  the 
importance  of  consistency  has  occasionally  denounced  and  ridiculed 
the  very  principles  which  he  elsewhere  upholds  as  demonstrated 
truths.  .  .  .  His  system  seems  at  first  sight  to  be  made  up  of 
assertions,  one  more  outrageous  than  another.  The  ascription  of  an 
objective,  concrete,  separate  reality  to  verbal  abstractions  is  assuredly 
the  most  astounding  paradox  ever  maintained  even  by  a  metaphy- 
sician. Yet  this  is  the  central  article  of  Plato's  creed.  That  body  is 
essentially  different  from  extension  might,  one  would  suppose,  have 
been  sufficiently  clear  to  a  mathematician  who  had  the  advantage  of 
coming  after  Leucippus  and  Democritus.  Their  identity  is  implicitly 
affirmed  in  the  Timceiis.  That  the  soul  can  not  be  both  created  and 
eternal;  that  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis  is  incompatible  with  the 
hereditary  transmission  of  mental  qualities  ;  that  a  future  immortality 
equivalent  to,  and  proved  by  the  same  arguments  as,  our  ante-natal 
existence,  would  be  neither  a  terror  to  the  guilty  nor  a  consolation  to 
the  righteous, — are  propositions  implicitly  denied  by  Plato's  psychol- 
ogy. Passing  from  theoretical  to  practical  philosophy,  it  might  be 
observed  that  respect  for  human  life,  respect  for  individual  property, 
respect  for  marriage,  and  respect  for  truthfulness,  are  generally  num- 
bered among  the  strongest  moral  obligations,  and  those  the  obser- 
vance of  which  most  completely  distinguishes  civilized  from  savage 
man  ;  while  infanticide,  communism,  promiscuity,  and  the  occasional 
employment  of  deliberate  deceit,  form  part  of  Plato's  scheme  for  the 
redemption  of  mankind.  .  .  .  Finally,  from  the  standpoint  of 
modern  science,  it  might  be  urged  that  Plato  used  all  his  powerful 
influence  to  throw  back  physical  speculation  into  the  theological 
stage;  that  he  deliberately  discredited  the  doctrine  of  mechanical 
causation  which,  for  us,  is  the  most  important  achievement  of  early 
Greek  thought  ;  that  he  expatiated  on  the  criminal  folly  of  those 
who  held  the  heavenly  bodies  to  be,  what  we  now  know  them  to  be, 


688  PLA  TO. 

masses  of  dead  matter  with  no  special  divinity  about  them  ;  and  that 
he  proposed  to  punish  this  and  other  heresies  with  a  severity  distin- 
guishable from  the  fitful  fanaticism  of  his  native  city  only  by  its  more 
disciplined  and  rigorous  application." 

This  formidable  indictment,  which,  it  should  be  said,  is  made  by 
a  most  friendly  hand,  makes  very  clear  the  impossibility  of  describing 
Platonism  as  a  rounded  scheme  which  offers  a  consistent  explanation 
of  the  universe  or  of  social  phenomena.  The  effort  has  been  made, 
but  with  what  success  the  long  list  of  diverse  opinions  will  show.  It  is 
naturally  not  so  much  Platonism  as  a  system,  but  Plato  as  a  man,  that 
has  inspired  generations  of  liberal  thinkers ;  indeed,  the  variety  of  its 
tendencies  has  helped  to  inspire  the  supporters  of  the  most  conflicting 
theories  ;  it  has  been  a  sort  of  neutral  ground  from  which  adherents 
of  the  most  opposite  views  could  draw  the  munitions  of  war.  Yet 
there  is  a  likeness  in  the  methods,  however  different  may  have  been 
the  designs  of  the  various  partisans.  •  What  then  were  the  qualities 
of  this  wonderful  man  ? 

H. 

Plato,  or  Aristocles,  to  give  him  his  real  name,  was  born,  probably  in 
Athens,  in  427  or  428  B.C.,  of  an  honorable  family.  His  father  was  a 
descendant  of  Codrus,  the  last  of  the  kings  of  Athens,  and  on  his 
mother's  side  he  was  related  to  Solon.  For  seven  or  eight  years 
Plato  was  a  pupil  of  Socrates,  and  after  his  teacher's  condemnation  he 
fled  from  Athens  and  with  many  of  his  companions  went  to  Megara, 
to  the  house  of  Euclid,  for  protection.  What  next  happened  is  uncer- 
tain ;  some  assert  that  he  took  a  long  journey,  to  Cyrene,  Egypt,  and 
possibly  to  Asia  Minor,  although  it  may  be  that  part  of  this  time  was 
spent  in  Athens.  When  about  forty  years  old  he  made  a  visit  to  the 
Pythagoreans  in  Italy,  and  thence  he  went  to  Sicily,  where  he  became 
a  friend  of  Dio,  the  brother-in-law  of  Dionysius  I.,  the  tyrant.  Here 
we  are  at  least  on  a  solid  ground  of  fact  ;  his  other  journeys  partake 
of  the  nature  of  romances  invented  to  explain  certain  admixtures  of 
foreign  learning  in  his  lessons  ;  thus,  the  early  Fathers  explained  his 
supposed  agreement  with  the  Old  Testament  as  a  part  of  his  acquisi- 
tions from  Egypt.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  at  this  time 
Athens  was  the  clearing-house  for  the  whole  intellectual  world,  that 
philosophers  of  all  sorts  met  there  for  exchange  and  discussion  of 
their  ideas,  and  that  his  knowledge  of  other  views  does  not  require  the 
hypothesis  of  his  travels  by  its  explanation.  In  Sicily  he  fared  but 
ill ;  his  frank  speech  soon  aroused  the  anger  of  Dionysius,  who,  in  his 
wrath,  had  him  sold  as  a  prisoner  of  war  in  ^Egina  then  fighting  with 


POLITICAL    THEORIES  OF  PLATO. 


689 


Athens.  The  story  runs  that  he  was  rescued  from  this  miserable 
condition  by  Anniceris,  the  philosopher,  who  practiced  here  the  sym- 
pathy that  he  taught  in  his  lessons. 

We  have  already  seen  in  the  words  of  the  philosophers  evidence 
of  their  tendency  to  sepa- 
rate themselves  from  the 
narrow  limits  of  civil  life, 
and  in  Plato's  endeavors 
to  put  his  political  theo- 
ries in  practice  in  the 
realm  of  the  Sicilian 
tyrants,  we  may  find  an- 
other example  of  this  en- 
largement of  the  func- 
tions of  their  favorite 
study.  It  was  in  large 
states,  with  monarchical 
tendencies,  that  they 
hoped  to  exercise  an  in- 
fluence denied  them  by 
the  Athenian  democracy, 
and  since  philosophers 
could  not  become  kings 
they  thought  to  accom- 
plish their  efforts  by 
making  kings  philoso- 
phers. As  Plato  said  in 
the  Republic  (V.  473)  : 

"  Unless  it  happens  either 
that  philosophers  acquire 
the  kingly  power  in  states, 
or  that  those  who  are  now 

called    kings    and  poten-  plato. 

tales    be    imbued     with    a 

sufficient  measure  of  genuine  philosophy,  that  is  to  say,  unless  political 
power  and  philosophy  be  united  in  the  same  person,  most  of  those 
minds  which  at  present  pursue  one  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other  being 
peremptorily  debarred  from  either,  there  will  be  no  deliverance,  my  dear 
Glaucus,  for  cities,  nor  yet,  I  believe,  for  the  human  race  ;  neither  can  the 
commonwealth,  which  we  have  now  sketched  in  theory,  ever  till  then  grow 
into  a  possibility  and  see  the  light  of  day.  But  a  consciousness  how  en- 
tirely this  would  contradict  the  common  opinion  made  me  all  along  so 
reluctant  to  give  expression  to  it  :  for  it  is  difficult  to  see  that  there  is  no 
other,  way  by  which  happiness  can  be  attained  by  the  state  or  by  the 
individual." 


690  PLATO. 

The  only  countries  where  the  proper  conditions  seemed  to  exist 
were  Syracuse  and  Macedonia,  and  it  was  to  these  that  the 
philosophers  turned  their  attention.  Socrates  himself  had  been  in- 
vited to  the  Macedonian  court  by  Archelaus,  but  he  was  too  good  an 
Athenian  to  think  of  going  away,  although,  as  has  been  said,  Euripi- 
des and  Agathon  were  more  compliant.  Plato,  too,  had  received  an 
invitation  thither,  but  it  was  to  Sicily  that  he  turned  his  steps  ;  yet  in 
spite  of  these  refusals  the  Macedonian  rulers  appear  to  have  sought 
and  obtained  the  aid  of  the  philosophers,  partly,  doubtless,  from  a 
desire  to  introduce  civilization  into  their  ruder  country,  and  partly, 
too,  as  was  the  case  in  the  eighteenth  century  with  Catherine  of 
Russia,  from  a  politic  desire  to  make  use  of  their  ready  and  powerful 
influence.  Thus  we  shall  see  later  how  Aristotle  came  into  the  em- 
ployment of  the  Macedonians.  It  is  obvious  that  these  close  relations 
between  the  philosophers  and  the  most  powerful  monarchs  of  the  time 
could  not  have  been  without  effect  on  the  political  development  of 
Athens,  and  that  they  also  express  a  new  perception  of  the  widening 
civilization  that  began  to  show  itself.  The  frequent  effort  of  the 
philosophers  of  very  different  calibre  to  describe  an  ideal  state  proves 
that  they  thought  that  the  old  order  of  things  was  at  an  end,  and  this 
was  not  disproved  by  the  fact  that  in  their  lives  they  were  not  political 
conspirators  or  agitators.  It  is  not  merely  what  men  say  or  do  that 
has  influence  on  posterity,  but  their  general  positions  with  regard  to 
the  world  ;  and  even  if  the  philosophers  can  not  be  detected  intriguing 
with  the  Macedonian  party,  their  contemplation  of  an  aristocratic 
superiority  to  low  civic  cares  and  their  serene  hope  of  an  altered  poli- 
tical condition  in  which  wisdom  should  alone  be  honored,  all  bore 
fruit  in  the  general  indifference  to  patriotic  teaching  in  Athens  and  in 
the  establishment  afterwards  of  Alexandria,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  at 
once  became  the  metropolis  of  all  the  learning  of  the  world,  the  great 
center  of  every  branch  of  education.  It  is  obvious  that  it  could  not 
have  acquired  this  prominence  without  previous  preparation,  and  it 
may  not  be  unfair  to  suppose  that  this  preparation  was  going  on,  pos- 
sibly unconsciously,  in  the  minds  of  the  philosophers,,  who  were  unde- 
niably the  intellectual  leaders  of  their  time. 

A  similar  argument  may  be  applied  to  the  transformation  of  relig- 
ious belief.  No  one  will  deny  that  here  the  influence  of  the  phil- 
osophers was  very  great.  Not  one  of  them  shared  the  popular  views 
concerning  the  gods  ;  all,  without  exception,  Academicians,  Peripa- 
tetics, Stoics,  and  Epicureans,  agreed  that  the  stories  that  were  told 
about  and  were  accepted  by  the  ignorant  rabble  were  but  myths,  to 
which  some  ascribed  a  higher  spiritual  significance  than  did  others. 
And  for  the  educated  classes  the  teachings  of  philosophy  ever  more 


THE   SCHOOL    OF  ATHENS.  691 

and  more  took  the  place  of  the  old  religion.  Yet  we  do  not  detect 
the  philosophers  blaspheming,  burning  the  temples,  or  desecrating  the 
images  of  the  gods.  Their  influence  worked  more  subtly,  and  with 
more  effect,  as  all  serious  thought  must  work  even  if  it  is  so  carefully 
guarded  that  its  expression  shall  nowhere  appear  iconoclastic.  Soc- 
rates, we  are  accustomed  to  say,  was  unjustly  put  to  death  for  destroy- 
ing the  belief  in  the  gods,  and  it  is  true  that  he  strongly  urged  that 
they  be  worshiped,  but  it  is  quite  as  true  that  the  philosophy  which 
was  inspired  by  him  overthrew  the  old  religion  among  educated  men. 
This  result  was  latent  in  the  very  condition  of  intellectual  curiosity 
which  animated  him  ;  and  as  to  the  political  views  of  the  philosophers, 
the  later  cosmopolitanism  was  already  implied  in  their  theories  about 
an  improved  state.  Their  acceptance  of  the  small  Greek  city  as  their 
ideal  is  no  more  answer  to  this,  than  their  avowed  reverence  before 
the  deities ;  the  change  that  they  desired  involved  the  larger 
conditions. 

In  387  or  386  B.C.,  Plato,  once  more  in  Athens,  opened  his  famous 
school  in  the  Academy.  The  Academy  was  situated  just  outside  Athens, 
less  than  a  mile  from  the  city  gate,  near  the  hill  of  Colonus  celebrated 
by  Sophocles  ;  the  place  got  its  name  from  the  old  hero  Academus,  of 
whom  it  was  said  that  when  Castor  and  Polydeuces  invaded  Attica  to 
set  free  their  sister  Helen,  he  told  them  the  place  where  she  was  kept 
in  concealment.  This  assertion  seems  to  us  to  have  much  more  the 
nature  of  an  anecdote  than  that  of  a  fact,  but  it  was  sufficiently 
authoritative  at  the  time  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  to  save  the  region 
from  ravage.  In  time  a  gymnasium  for  the  instruction  of  youth  was 
built  here,  and  called  the  Academy.  These  gymnasia  contained  an 
enclosure  where  grew  trees  as  in  a  college  yard,  and  it  was  in  these 
groves  that  Plato,  who  lived  in  the  neighborhood,  taught  philosophy  to 
a  number  of  enthusiastic  pupils  for  nearly  twenty  years.  In  367  B.C.  he 
made  another  journey  to  Syracuse,  in  Sicily,  to  visit  the  court  of  the 
second  Dionysius,  who  had  succeeded  to  power,  and  still  retained  all 
a  crown-prince's  enthusiasm  for  the  studies  of  his  youth.  Dion,  the 
young  tyrant's  uncle,  encouraged  the  new  ruler,  and  for  a  time  appa- 
rently there  was  a  distinct  promise  that  philosophy  should  be  brought 
to  a  practical  application  in  affairs  of  state.  Plato  had  a  brief  taste 
of  the  sweets  of  popularity  in  this  court ;  but  soon  the  fashion  turned, 
Dion  was  banished,  all  hopes  of  reformation  disappeared,  and  Plato 
returned  to  Athens  with  his  theories  still  untested  and  Syracuse  not 
made  over  anew.  A  few  years  later,  undismayed  by  his  previous  fail- 
ures, he  was  again  in-  Syracuse  trying  to  effect  a  reconciliation  be- 
tween Dion  and  Dionysius,  but  without  success,  and  the  rest  of  his  life, 
some  twenty  years,  for  he  died  in  348  or  347  B.C.,  was  spent  in  impart- 


692  PLATO. 

ing  philosophic  instruction  and  in  composing  his  dialogues.  Yet  a 
change  was  making  itself  felt :  Aristotle  was  acquiring  prominence  as 
a  rival  who  was  at  the  same  time  an  opponent.  Before  he  died  he 
appointed  his  nephew,  Speusippus,  the  head  of  the  Academy,  judging 
him  the  most  worthy  to  carry  on  his  teaching. 

For  a  long  time  Plato  was  regarded  as  a  model  of  personal  beauty, 
although  this  reputation  rests  on  a  slenderer  basis  than  it  did  before 
one  of  the  busts  supposed  to  portray  him  was  discovered  to  be  a  rep- 
resentation of  young  Dionysius.  In  his  youth  he  was  a  writer  of  verses, 
but  when  he  became  interested  in  philosophy  he  burned  the  tetralogy 
that  he  had  written,  devoting  himself  to  austerer  studies.  Yet  aus- 
terity is  in  no  way  a  characteristic  of  Plato,  and  though  it  is  by  no 
means  impossible  that  his  poetry  may  have  belonged  to  the  same  cate- 
gory as  Socrates'  statues,  his  prose  has  a  charm  that  has  been  a  large 
factor  in  the  influence  of  this  writer,  who  combines  wit,  eloquence,  and 
grace  with  a  poetical  quality,  after  a  fashion  that  one  is  safe  in  saying 
has  never  been  equaled,  Byron  wrote  to  a  friend,  who  had  been 
praising  his  Don  Juan,  that  there  was  no  poem  in  the  world  of  which 
one-half  was  good,  that  such  approbation  could  be  given  only  to  de- 
tached passages  of  the  work  of  the  most  famous  poets.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  most  prose,  and  Plato's  often  flags.  It  contains  sandy 
tracts  in  which  jewels  are  half-hidden,  and  some  where  there  are  no 
jewels  ;   but  his  best  is  most  marvelous  in  its  grace  and  richness. 

The  form  that  he  chose  for  imparting  his  instruction  to  readers  was 
that  of  the  dialogue,  which  thus  gave  the  most  vivid  representation  of 
the  conversations  by  which  doubtless  he  himself,  as  certainly  his  mas- 
ter Socrates,  taught  philosophy.  Moreover,  the  masterly  skill  with 
which  he  handles  this  form  of  composition  makes  it  clear  that  he  took 
possession  of  one  already  developed  by  others,  and  gave  it  the  final 
touch  of  perfection,  and  the  facts  confirm  this  impression.  Zeno,  the 
Eleatic,  had  already  made  use  of  question  and  answer  to  convey 
instruction,  and  several  of  the  followers  of  Socrates,  besides  Xeno- 
phon,  had  composed  dialogues  that  should  represent  the  method  of 
their  master,  but  none  rivaled  Plato  in  grandeur  of  conception  and  in 
literary  excellence.  Like  his  immediate  predecessors,  he  gave  Soc- 
rates the  leading  part  in  his  dialogues,  and  in  his  mouth  he  placed  all 
the  truths  of  philosophy;  indeed,  he  drew  him  as  philosophy  incarnate. 

Unfortunately  there  grew  up  around  the  genuine  dialogues  a  num- 
ber of  imitations  which  are  not  to  be  readily  distinguished  from  what 
really  belongs  to  Plato,  just  as  the  works  of  the  great  masters  of  paint- 
ing are  not  always  to  be  separated  from  those  of  their  disciples. 
Thirteen  letters  alleged  to  have  been  written  by  him  from  Sicily 
have    been  discarded,   and  many  dialogues    were    rejected    even    by 


THE  DIALOGUES.— THEIR  EFFECT   UPON  MODERN   THOUGHT.      693 

antiquity  ;  more  have  shared  the  same  fate  in  modern  times,  and  the 
determination  of  what  is  genuine  is  yet  far  from  being  settled.  An- 
other subject  of  discussion,  and  one,  apparently,  equally  interminable, 
is  the  order  of  their  composition.  That  any  generally  satisfactory 
solution  of  either  of  these  problems  is  possible,  may  well  be  doubted 
in  view  of  Plato's  disposition  to  follow  an  argument  wherever  it  would 
lead  him,  without  regarding  consistency  or  that  stifler  of  independ- 
ence, a  formal  system  of  arrangement.  This  freedom  from  the  cus- 
tomary shackles,  it  may  be  presumed,  has  been  of  the  utmost  service 
in  adapting  philosophy  to  different  tastes,  for  few  have  been  insensible 
to  the  varied  fascinations  of  his  style.  The  fact  remains  undeniable 
that  these  dialogues  have  been  among  the  most  powerful  instiga- 
tors of  thought  that  the  world  has  ever  known.  Scientific  thought 
has  not  yet  in  the  world's  history  proved  nearly  so  fascinating  as  that 
combination  of  feeling,  emotion,  and  dialectic  with  which  these  won- 
derful writings  abound. 

This  quality  of  Plato's  teaching,  which  has  so  noticeably  adapted  it 
for  admiration  in  periods  of  intellectual  excitement,  when  men  were 
possessed  by  a  hopefulness  and  enthusiasm  for  which  perhaps  they 
could  give  no  satisfactory  explanation,  probably  owed  its  origin  in 
some  measure  to  his  discontent  with  the  current  sensationalism  then 
taught  by  the  Sophists,  just  as  in  following  his  own  fancy,  without 
formulating  a  system,  he  reacted  from  their  rigid  formalism.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  his  choice  was  a  happy  one,  for  from  his  utterances 
men  have  drawn  the  foundations  of  many  schemes  of  the  universe, 
exactly  as  from  texts  that  have  expressed  discontent  with  things 
present  or  confidence  in  unknown  powers,  there  have  arisen  the  most 
complicated  systems  of  theology.  The  fundamental  characteristic 
of  Plato  is  idealism,  the  enforcement,  namely,  of  the  lesson  that 
above  and  beyond  what  we  may  perceive  through  our  senses,  there 
exist  ideals  which  alone  are  true  things  ;  all  that  exists  is  but  a  vague 
and  shadowy  representation  of  these  higher  truths,  as  they  were  called 
with  but  little  conception  of  the  confusion  that  would  be  wrought  by 
this  introduction  of  social  distinctions  among  thoughts.  Yet  what 
becomes  very  clear  in  the  study  of  Plato  is  the  difference  between 
those  dialogues  in  which  the  negative  spirit  prevails  and  the  compo- 
sure of  those  who  hold  conventional  ideas  is  sadly  ruffled,  and  the 
others  in  which  Plato,  abandoning  negation,  proceeds  to  explicit 
affirmation  of  his  own  views.  He  first  cleared  the  field  of  pretensions 
to  knowledge,  and  then  declared  what  it  was  that  he  thought  to  be  the 
truth.  The  ingenuity  with  which  Socrates  is  represented  as  under- 
mining ignorance  and  arrogance  is  most  noteworthy ;  at  times  the 
reader  almost  wonders  that  the  Athenians,  when  they  at  last  had  him 


694  PLATO. 

in  their  power,  did  not  burn  him  at  the  stake   or  have  him  torn  limb 
from  limb  by  wild  horses. 

III. 

Besides  the  philosophical  writings  of  Plato,  there  are  included  among 
the  dialogues  the  Apology  and  the  Crito,  which  serve  to  show  forth  the 
Socrates  whom  Plato  adored.  The  Apology  assumes  to  be  the  speech 
delivered  by  that  philosopher  to  his  accusers,  yet  there  are  no  means 
of  deciding  the  faithfulness  of  the  report,  although  its  quality  agrees 
with  what  Xenophon  tells  us  of  the  real  speech,  that  if  Socrates  had 
tried  at  all  to  be  conciliatory,  he  would  have  been  acquitted.  Whether 
a  faithful  transcript  or  an  ingenious  invention,  it  is  a  most  wonderful 
speech,  and  it  is  hard  to  doubt  that  some,  if  not  the  greater  part,  of 
the  words  of  Socrates  must  have  been  recorded  here.  The  defense 
begins  with  a  modest  denial  of  the  possession  of  eloquence  against 
which  his  hearers  had  been  warned,  and  then  follows  an  answer  to  the 
charges  of  corrupting  youth  and  of  atheism.  Part  of  this  division  of 
the  defence  is  taken  up  with  a  cross-examination  of  his  accusers,  who 
fall  speedily  before  his  easy  attack.  Socrates  shows  how  naturally  he 
has  won  a  bad  name  in  Athens,  and  explains  the  whole  aim  of  his 
long-continued  system  of  discovering  the  pretended  wisdom  of  his 
fellow-citizens.  He  will  not  entreat  to  have  his  life  spared  ;  for  that 
he  thinks  dishonorable.  When  he  is  convicted  and  it  is  proposed  that 
he  be  condemned  to  death,  his  irony  appears  more  fully,  he  declines  to 
suggest  exile  as  a  counter-proposal,  and  offers  a  slight  fine  in  lieu  of 
death,  a  single  mina,  which  his  friends  persuade  him  to  advance  to 
thirty  minae.  When  this  proposal  is  declined  and  his  death  is  voted, 
he  points  out  that  this  punishment  has  no  terrors  for  him,  that  he  is 
an  old  man  who  can  look  for  only  a  few  years  more  at  the  best,  and 
that  death  will  either  secure  him  a  dreamless  sleep  or  be  the  means  of 
conveying  him  to  the  companionship  of  the  wise  and  good.  He  also 
warns  his  judges  that  they  will  not  confer  any  benefit  upon  the  world 
by  killing  him,  for  his  followers  will  not  refrain  from  accusing  them  of 
injustice. 

There  are  many  reasons  why  I  am  not  grieved,  O  men  of  Athens,  at  the 
vote  of  condemnation.  I  expected  it,  and  am  only  surprised  that  the  votes 
are  so  nearly  equal;  for  I  had  thought  that  the  majority  against  me  would  have 
been  far  larger  ;  but  now,  had  three  votes  gone  over  to  the  other  side,  I  should 
have  been  acquitted.  And  I  may  say,  I  think,  that  I  have  escaped  Meletus. 
Nay,  I  may  say  more  ;  for  without  the  assistance  of  Anytus  and  Lycon, 
he  would  not  have  had  a  fifth  part  of  the  votes,  as  the  law  requires,  in  which 
case  he  would  have  incurred  a  fine  of  a  thousand  drachmas,  as  is  evident. 

And  so  he  proposes  death  as  the  penalty.     And  what  shall  I  propose  on 


SOCRATES'    SPEECH   TO  HIS  JUDGES.  695 

my  part,  O  men  of  Athens  ?  Clearly  that  which  is  my  due.  And  what  is 
that  which  I  ought  to  pay  or  to  receive  ?  What  shall  be  done  to  the  man 
who  has  never  had  the  wit  to  be  idle  during  his  whole  life  ;  but  has  been 
careless  of  what  the  many  care  about — wealth,  and  family  interests,  and 
military  offices,  and  speaking  in  the  assembly,  and  magistracies,  and  plots, 
and  parties.  Reflecting  that  I  was  really  too  honest  a  man  to  follow  in  this 
way  and  live,  I  did  not  go  where  I  could  do  no  good  to  you  or  to  myself  ; 
but  where  I  could  do  the  greatest  good  privately  to  every  one  of  you,  thither 
I  went,  and  sought  to  persuade  every  man  among  you,  that  he  must  look  to 
himself,  and  seek  virtue  and  wisdom  before  he  looks  to  his  private  interests, 
and  look  to  the  state  before  he  looks  to  the  interests  of  the  state  ;  and  that 
this  should  be  the  order  which  he  observes  in  all  his  actions.  What  shall  be 
done  to  such  an  one  ?  Doubtless  some  good  thing,  O  men  of  Athens,  if  he 
has  his  reward  ;  and  the  good  should  be  of  a  kind  suitable  to  him.  What 
would  be  a  reward  suitable  to  a  poor  man  who  is  your  benefactor,  who  desires 
leisure  that  he  may  instruct  you  ?  There  can  be  no  more  fitting  reward  than 
maintenance  in  the  Prytaneum,  O  men  of  Athens,  a  reward  which  he  deserves 
far  more  than  the  citizen  who  has  won  the  prize  at  Olympia  in  the  horse  or 
chariot  race,  whether  the  chariots  were  drawn  by  two  horses  or  by  many. 
For  I  am  in  want,  and  he  has  enough  ;  and  he  only  gives  you  the  appear- 
ance of  happiness,  and  I  give  you  the  reality.  And  if  I  am  to  estimate  the 
penalty  fairly,  I  should  say  that  maintenance  in  the  Prytaneum  is  the  just 
return. 

Perhaps  you  think  that  I  am  braving  you  in  what  I  am  saying  now,  as  in 
what  I  said  before  about  the  tears  and  prayers.  But  this  is  not  the  case. 
I  speak  rather  because  I  am  convinced  that  I  never  intentionally  wronged 
any  one,  although  I  cannot  convince  you  of  that — for  we  have  had  a  short 
conversation  only  ;  but  if  there  were  a  law  at  Athens,  such  as  there  is  in 
other  cities,  that  a  capital  cause  should  not  be  decided  in  one  day,  then  I 
believe  that  1  should  have  convinced  you  ;  but  now  the  time  is  too  short. 
I  cannot  in  a  moment  refute  great  slanders  ;  and,  as  I  am  convinced  that  I 
never  wronged  another,  I  will  assuredly  not  wrong  myself.  I  will  not  say 
of  myself  that  I  deserve  any  evil,  or  propose  any  penalty.  Why  should  1  ? 
Because  I  am  afraid  of  the  penalty  of  death  which  Meletus  proposes  ?  When 
I  do  not  know  whether  death  is  a  good  or  an  evil,  why  should  I  propose  a 
penalty  which  would  certainly  be  an  evil  ?  Shall  I  say  imprisonment  ?  And 
why  should  I  live  in  prison,  and  be  the  slave  of  the  magistrates  of  the  year — 
of  the  Eleven  ?  Or  shall  the  penalty  be  a  fine,  and  imprisonment  until  the 
fine  is  paid  ?  There  is  the  same  objection.  I  should  have  to  lie  in  prison, 
for  money  I  have  none,  and  cannot  pay.  And  if  I  say  exile  (and  this  may 
possibly  be  the  penalty  which  you  will  affix),  I  must  indeed  be  blinded  by 
the  love  of  life,  if  I  am  so  irrational  as  to  expect  that  when  you,  who  are  my 
own  citizens,  cannot  endure  my  discourses  and  words,  and  have  found  them 
so  grievous  and  odious  that  you  would  fain  have  done  with  them,  others  are 
likely  to  endure  me.  No  indeed,  men  of  Athens,  that  is  not  very  likely. 
And  what  a  life  should  I  lead,  at  my  age,  wandering  from  city  to  city,  living 
in  ever-changing  exile,  and  always  being  driven  out  !  For  I  am  quite  sure 
that  into  whatever  place  I  go,  as  here  so  also  there,  the  young  men  will  come 
and  listen  to  me  ;  and  if  I  drive  them  away,  their  elders  will  drive  me  out  at 
their  desire  ;  and  if  I  let  them  come,  their  fathers  and  friends  will  drive  me 
out  for  their  sakes. 

Some  one  will  say  :  Yes,  Socrates,  but  cannot  you  hold  your  tongue,  and 
then  you  may  go  into  a  foreign  city,  and  no  one  will   interfere  with   vou  ? 


696  PLATO. 

Now  I  have  great  difficulty  in  making  you  understand  my  answer  to  this. 
For  if  I  tell  you  that  to  do  as  you  say  would  be  a  disobedience  to  the  God, 
and  therefore  that  I  cannot  hold  my  tongue,  you  will  not  believe  that  I  am 
serious  ;  and'  if  I  say  again  that  the  greatest  good  of  man  is  daily  to  con- 
verse about  virtue,  and  all  that  concerning  which  you  hear  me  examining 
myself  and  others,  and  that  the  life  which  is  unexamined  is  not  worth  living, 
you  are  still  less  likely  to  believe  me.  And  yet  what  I  say  is  indeed  true, 
although  a  thing  of  which  it  is  hard  for  me  to  persuade  you.  Moreover,  I 
have  not  been  accustomed  to  think  that  I  deserve  any  punishment.  Had  I 
money  I  might  have  estimated  the  offence  at  what  1  was  able  to  pay,  and 
have  been  none  the  worse.  But  you  see  that  I  have  none,  and  I  can  only 
ask  you  to  proportion  the  fine  to  my  means.  However,  I  think  that  I  could 
afford  a  mina,  and  therefore  I  propose  that  penalty  :  Plato,  Crito,  Critobulus, 
and  Apollodorus,  my  friends  here,  bid  me  say  thirty  minge,  and  they  will  be 
the  sureties.  Well,  then,  say  thirty  minae,  let  that  be  the  penalty  ;  and  for 
that  sum  they  will  be  ample  security  to  you. 

Not  much  time  will  be  gained,  O  Athenians,  in  return  for  the  evil  name 
which  you  will  get  from  the  detractors  of  the  city,  who  will  say  that  you 
killed  Socrates,  a  wise  man  ;  for  they  will  call  me  wise,  even  although  I  am 
not  wise,  when  they  want  to  reproach  you.  If  you  had  waited  a  little  while, 
your  desire  would  have  been  fulfilled  in  the  course  of  nature.  For  I  am  far 
advanced  in  years,  as  you  may  perceive,  and  not  far  from  death.  I  am 
speaking  now  only  to  those  of  you  who  have  condemned  me  to  death.  And 
I  have  another  thing  to  say  to  them  :  You  think  that  I  was  convicted  because 
I  had  no  words  of  the  sort  which  would  have  procured  my  acquittal — I  mean, 
if  I  had  thought  fit  to  leave  nothing  undone  or  unsaid.  Not  so  ;  the 
deficiency  which  led  to  my  conviction  was  not  of  words — certainly  not.  But 
I  had  not  the  boldness  or  impudence  or  inclination  to  address  you,  as  you 
would  have  liked  me  to  address  you,  weeping  and  wailing  and  lamenting, 
and  saying  and  doing  many  things  which  you  have  been  accustomed  to  hear 
from  others,  and  which,  as  I  maintain,  are  unworthy  of  me.  I  thought  at 
the  time  that  I  ought  not  to  do  anything  common  or  mean  when  in  danger  : 
nor  do  I  now  repent  of  the  manner  of  my  defence,  and  I  would  rather  die 
having  spoken  after  my  manner,  than  speak  in  your  manner  and  live.  For 
neither  in  war  nor  yet  at  law  ought  I  or  any  man  to  use  every  way  of  escaping 
death.  Often  in  battle  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  if  a  man  will  throw  away 
his  arms,  and  fall  on  his  knees  before  his  pursuers,  he  may  escape  death  ; 
and  in  other  dangers  there  are  other  ways  of  escaping  death,  if  a  man  is 
willing  to  say  and  do  anything.  The  difficulty,  my  friends,  is  not  in  avoiding 
death,  but  in  avoiding  unrighteousness  ;  for  that  runs  faster  than  death.  I 
am  old  and  move  slowly,  and  the  slower  runner  has  overtaken  me,  and  my 
accusers  are  keen  and  quick,  and  the  faster  runner,  who  is  unrighteousness, 
has  overtaken  them.  And  now  I  depart  hence  condemned  by  you  to  suffer 
the  penalty  of  death,  and  they  too  go  their  ways  condemned  by  the  truth  to 
suffer  the  penalty  of  villainy  and  wrong  ;  and  I  must  abide  by  my  award — 
let  them  abide  by  theirs.  I  suppose  that  these  things  may  be  regarded  as 
fated, — and  I  think  that  they  are  well.  And  now,  O  men  who  have  con- 
demned me,  I  would  fain  prophesy  to  you  ;  for  I  am  about  to  die,  and  that 
is  the  hour  in  which  men  are  gifted  with  prophetic  power.  And  I  prophesy 
to  you  who  are  my  murderers,  that  immediately  after  my  death  punishment 
far  heavier  than  you  have  inflicted  on  me  will  surely  await  you.  Me  you 
have  killed  because  you  wanted  to  escape  the  accuser,  and  not  to  give  an 


SOCRATES'    SPEECH   TO  HIS  JUDGES.  697 

account  of  your  lives.  But  that  will  not  be  as  you  suppose  :  far  otherwise. 
For  I  say  that  there  will  be  more  accusers  of  you  than  there  are  now  ; 
accusers  whom  hitherto  I  have  restrained  :  and  as  they  are  younger  they 
will  be  more  inconsiderate  with  you,  and  you  will  be  more  offended  at  them. 
If  you  think  that  by  killing  men  you  can  prevent  some  one  from  censuring 
your  evil  lives,  you  are  mistaken  ;  that  is  not  a  way  of  escape  which  is  either 
possible  or  honourable  ;  the  easiest  and  the  noblest  way  is  not  to  be  disabling 
others,  but  to  be  improving  yourselves.  This  is  the  prophecy  which  I  utter 
before  my  departure  to  the  judges  who  have  condemned  me. 

Friends,  who  would  have  acquitted  me,  I  would  like  also  to  talk  with  you 
about  this  thing  which  has  happened,  while  the  magistrates  are  busy,  and 
before  I  go  to  the  place  at  which  I  must  die.  Stay  then  awhile,  for  we  may 
as  well  talk  with  one  another  while  there  is  time.  You  are  my  friends,  and 
I  should  like  to  show  you  the  meaning  of  this  event  which  has  happened  to 
me.  O  my  judges — for  you  I  may  truly  call  judges — I  should  like  to  tell 
you  of  a  wonderful  circumstance.  Hitherto  the  familiar  oracle  within  me 
has  constantly  been  in  the  habit  of  opposing  me  even  about  trifles,  if  I  was 
going  to  make  a  slip  or  error  in  any  matter  ;  and  now  as  you  see  there  has 
come  upon  me  that  which  may  be  thought,  and  is  generally  believed  to  be, 
the  last  and  worst  evil.  But  the  oracle  made  no  sign  of  opposition,  either  as 
I  was  leaving  my  house  and  going  out  in  the  morning,  or  when  I  was  going 
up  into  this  court,  or  while  I  was  speaking,  at  anything  which  I  was  going  to 
say  ;  and  yet  I  have  often  been  stopped  in  the  middle  of  a  speech,  but  now 
in  nothing  I  either  said  or  did  touching  this  matter  has  the  oracle  opposed 
me.  What  do  I  take  to  be  the  explanation  of  this  ?  I  will  tell  you.  I 
regard  this  as  a  great  proof  that  what  has  happened  to  me  is  a  good,  and 
that  those  of  us  who  think  that  death  is  an  evil  are  in  error.  For  the  cus- 
tomary sign  would  surely  have  opposed  me  had  I  been  going  to  evil  and  not 
to  good.  Let  us  reflect  in  another  way,  and  we  shall  see  that  there  is  great 
reason  to  hope  that  death  is  a  good  ;  for  one  of  two  things — either  death  is 
a  state  of  nothingness  and  utter  unconsciousness,  or,  as  men  say,  there  is  a 
change  and  migration  of  the  soul  from  this  world  to  another.  Now  if  you 
suppose  that  there  is  no  consciousness,  but  a  sleep  like  the  sleep  of  him  who 
is  undisturbed  even  by  the  sight  of  dreams,  death  will  be  an  unspeakable 
gain.  For  if  a  person  were  to  select  the  night  in  which  his  sleep  was  undis- 
turbed even  by  dreams,  and  were  to  compare  with  this  the  other  days  and 
nights  of  his  life,  and  then  were  to  tell  us  how  many  days  and  nights  he  had 
passed  in  the  course  of  his  life  better  and  more  pleasantly  than  this  one,  I 
think  that  any  man,  I  will  not  say  a  private  man,  but  even  the  great  king  will 
not  find  many  such  days  or  nights,  when  compared  with  the  others.  Now  if 
death  is  like  this,  I  say  that  to  die  is  gain  ;  for  eternity  is  then  only  a  single 
night.  But  if  death  is  the  journey  to  another  place,  and  there,  as  men  say, 
all  the  dead  are,  what  good,  O  my  friends  and  judges,  can  be  greater  than 
this  ?  If  indeed  when  the  pilgrim  arrives  in  the  world  below,  he  is  delivered 
from  the  professors  of  justice  in  this  world,  and  find  the  true  judges  who 
are  said  to  give  judgment  there,  Minos  and  Rhadamanthus  and  yEacus  and 
Triptolemus,  and  other  sons  of  God  who  were  righteous  in  their  own  life, 
that  pilgrimage  will  be  worth  making.  What  would  not  a  man  give  if  he 
might  converse  with  Orpheus  and  Musaeus  and  Hesiod  and  Homer  ?  Nay, 
if  this  be  true,  let  me  die  again  and  again.  I  myself,  too,  shall  have  a  won- 
derful interest  in  there  meeting  and  conversing  with  Palamedes,  and  Ajax 
the  son  of  Telamon,  and  other  heroes  of  old,  who  have  suffered  death 
through  an  unjust  judgment ;  and  there  will  be  no  small  pleasure,  as  I  think, 


698  PLA  TO. 

in  comparing  my  own  sufferings  with  theirs.  Above  all,  I  shall  then  be  able 
to  continue  ray  search  into  true  and  false  knowledge;  as  in  this  world,  so 
also  in  that ;  and  I  shall  find  out  who  is  wise,  and  who  pretends  to  be  wise, 
and  is  not.  What  would  not  a  man  give,  O  judges,  to  be  able  to  examine 
the  leader  of  the  great  Trojan  expedition  ;  or  Odysseus  or  Sisyphus,  or 
numberless  others,  men  and  women  too  !  What  infinite  delight  would  there 
be  in  conversing  with  them  and  asking  them  questions  !  In  another  world 
they  do  not  put  a  man  to  death  for  asking  questions  ;  assuredly  not.  For 
besides  being  happier  in  that  world  than  in  this,  they  will  be  immortal,  if 
what  is  said  is  true. 

Wherefore,  O  judges,  be  of  good  cheer  about  death,  and  know  of  a  cer- 
tainty, that  no  evil  can  happen  to  a  good  man,  either  in  life  or  after  death. 
He  and  his  are  not  neglected  by  the  gods  ;  nor  has  my  own  approaching 
end  happened  by  mere  chance.  But  I  see  clearly  that  to  die  and  be  released 
was  better  for  me  ;  and  therefore  the  oracle  gave  no  sign.  For  which 
reason,  also,  I  am  not  angry  with  my  condemners,  or  with  my  accusers  ;  they 
have  done  me  no  harm,  although  they  did  not  mean  to  do  me  any  good  ; 
and  for  this  I  may  gently  blame  them. 

Still  I  have  a  favour  to  ask  of  them.  When  my  sons  are  grown  up,  I 
would  ask  you,  O  my  friends,  to  punish  them  ;  and  I  would  have  you  trouble 
them,  as  I  have  troubled  you,  if  they  seem  to  care  about  riches,  or  anything, 
more  than  about  virtue  ;  or  if  they  pretend  to  be  something  when  they  are 
really  nothing, — then  reprove  them,  as  I  have  reproved  you,  for  not  caring 
about  that  for  which  they  ought  to  care,  and  thinking  that  they  are  some- 
thing when  they  are  really  nothing.  And  if  you  do  this,  I  and  my  sons  will 
have  received  justice  at  your  hands. 

The  hour  of  departure  has  arrived,  and  we  go  our  ways — I  to  die,  and 
you  to  live.     Which  is  better  God  only  knows. 

FROM  THE  PH^DO. 

Wherefore,  Simmias,  seeing  all  these  things,  what  ought  not  we  to  do  that 
we  may  obtain  virtue  and  wisdom  in  this  life  ?  Fair  is  the  prize,  and  the 
hope  great !  A  man  of  sense  ought  not  to  say,  nor  will  I  be  too  confident, 
that  the  description  which  I  have  given  of  the  soul  and  her  mansions  is 
exactly  true.  But  I  do  say  that,  inasmuch  as  the  soul  is  shown  to  be  immortal, 
he  may  venture  to  think,  not  improperly  or  unworthily,  that  something  of  the 
kind  is  true.  The  venture  is  a  glorious  one,  and  he  ought  to  comfort  himself 
with  words  like  these,  which  is  the  reason  why  I  lengthen  out  the  tale. 
Wherefore,  I  say,  let  a  man  be  of  good  cheer  about  his  soul,  who  has  cast 
away  the  pleasures  and  ornaments  of  the  body  as  alien  to  him,  and  hurtful 
rather  in  their  effects,  and  has  followed  after  the  pleasures  of  knowledge  in 
this  life  ;  who  has  arrayed  the  soul  in  her  own  proper  jewels,  which  are 
temperance,  and  justice,  and  courage,  and  nobility,  and  truth — thus  adorned 
she  is  ready  to  go  on  her  journey  to  the  world  below,  when  her  hour  comes. 
You,  Simmias  and  Cebes,  and  all  other  men,  will  depart  at  some  time  or 
other.  Me  already,  as  the  tragic  poet  would  say,  the  voice  of  fate  calls. 
Soon  I  must  drink  the  poison  ;  and  I  think  that  I  had  better  repair  to  the 
bath  first,  in  order  that  the  women  may  not  have  the  trouble  of  washing  my 
body  after  I  am  dead. 

When  he  had  done  speaking,  Crito  said  :  And  have  you  any  commands 
for  us,  Socrates — anything  to  say  about  your  children,  or  any  other  matter 
in  which  we  can  serve  you  ?     Nothing  particular,  he  said  :  only,  as  I  have 


THE  DEATH  OF  SOCRATES.  699 

always  told  you,  I  would  have  you  look  to  yourselves  ;  that  is  a  service 
which  you  may  always  be  doing  to  me  and  mine  as  well  as  to  yourselves. 
And  you  need  not  make  professions  ;  for  if  you  take  no  thought  for  your- 
selves, and  walk  not  according  to  the  precepts  which  I  have  given  you,  not 
now  for  the  first  time,  the  warmth  of  your  professions  will  be  of  no  avail. 
We  will  do  our  best,  said  Crito.  But  in  what  way.  would  you  have  us 
bury  you  ? 

In  any  way  that  you  like  ;  only  you  must  get  hold  of  me,  and  take  care 
that  1  do  not  walk  away  from  you.  Then  he  turned  to  us,  and  added  with  a 
smile  :  —  I  cannot  make  Crito  believe  that  I  am  the  same  Socrates  who  have 
been  talking  and  conducting  the  argument  ;  he  fancies  that  I  am  the  other 
Socrates  whom  he  will  soon  see,  a  dead  body  —  and  he  asks.  How  shall  he 
bury  me?  And  though  I  have  spoken  many  words  in  the  endeavour  to  show 
that  when  I  have  drunk  the  poison  I  shall  leave  you  and  go  to  the  joys  of 
the  blessed,  —  these  words  of  mine,  with  which  I  comforted  you  and  myself, 
have  had,  as  I  perceive,  no  effect  upon  Crito.  And  therefore  I  want  you  to 
be  surety  for  me  now,  as  he  was  surety  for  me  at  the  trial  :  but  let  the  prom- 
ise be  of  another  sort ;  for  he  was  my  surety  to  the  judges  that  I  would 
remain,  and  you  must  be  my  surety  to  him  that  I  shall  not  remain,  but  go 
away  and  depart  ;  and  then  he  will  suffer  less  at  my  death,  and  not  be 
grieved  when  he  sees  my  body  being  burned  or  buried.  I  would  not  have 
him  sorrow  at  my  hard  lot,  or  say  at  the  burial.  Thus  we  lay  out  Socrates, 
or,  Thus  we  follow  him  to  the  grave  or  bury  him  ;  for  false  words  are  not 
only  evil  in  themselves,  but  they  infect  the  soul  with  evil.  Be  of  good  cheer 
then,  my  dear  Crito,  and  say  that  you  are  burying  my  body  only,  and  do  with 
that  as  is  usual,  and  as  you  think  best.  When  he  had  spoken  these  words, 
he  arose  and  told  us  to  wait  while  he  went  into  the  bath-chamber  with  Crito; 
and  we  waited,  talking  and  thinking  of  the  subject  of  discourse,  and  also  of 
the  greatness  of  our  sorrow  ;  he  was  like  a  father  of  whom  we  were  being 
bereaved,  and  we  were  about  to  pass  the  rest  of  our  lives  as  orphans.  When 
he  had  taken  the  bath  his  children  were  brought  to  him  —  (he  had  two 
young  sons  and  an  elder  one)  ;  and  the  women  of  his  family  also  came,  and 
he  talked  to  them  and  gave  them  a  few  directions  in  the  presence  of  Crito  ; 
and  he  then  dismissed  them  and  returned  to  us. 

Now  the  hour  of  sunset  was  near,  for  a  good  deal  of  time  had  passed 
while  he  was  within.  When  he  came  out,  he  sat  down  with  us  again  after 
his  bath,  but  not  much  was  said.  Soon  the  jailer,  who  was  the  servant  of 
the  eleven,  entered  and  stood  by  him,  saying  :  —  To  you,  Socrates,  whom  I 
know  to  be  the  noblest  and  gentlest  and  best  of  all  who  ever  came  to  this 
place,  I  will  not  impute  the  angry  feelings  of  other  men,  who  rage  and  swear 
at  me,  when,  in  obedience  to  the  authorities  I  bid  them  drink  the  poison — 
indeed,  I  am  sure  you  will  not  be  angry  with  me  ;  for  others,  as  you  are 
aware,  and  not  I,  are  the  guilty  cause.  And  so  fare  you  well,  and  try  to 
bear  lightly  what  must  needs  be  ;  you  know  my  errand.  Then  bursting 
into  tears  he  turned  away  and  went  out. 

Socrates  looked  at  him  and  said  :  I  return  your  good  wishes,  and  will  do 
as  you  bid.  Then  turning  to  us,  he  said,  How  charming  the  man  is  :  since 
I  have  been  in  prison  he  has  always  been  coming  to  see  me,  and  at  times  he 
would  talk  to  me,  and  was  as  good  as  could  be,  and  now  see  how  gener- 
ously he  sorrows  for  me.  But  we  must  do  as  he  says,  Crito  :  let  the  cup  be 
brought,  if  the  poison  is  prepared  :  if  not,  let  the  attendant  prepare  some. 

Yet,  said  Crito,  the  sun  is  still  upon  the  hill-tops,  and  I  know  that  many  a 
one  has  taken  the  draught  late,  and  after  the  announcement  has  been  made 


700  PLATO. 

to  him,  he  has  eaten  and  drunk,  and  enjoyed  the  society  of  his  beloved  ;  do 
not  hasten  then,  there  is  still  time. 

Socrates  said  :  Yes,  Crito,  and  they  of  whom  you  speak  are  right  in  doing 
thus,  for  they  think  that  they  will  gain  by  the  delay;  but  I  am  right  in  not  doing 
thus,  for  I  do  not  think  that  I  should  gain  anything  by  drinking  the  poison 
a  little  later  ;  I  should  be  sparing  and  saving  a  life  which  is  already  gone, 
and  could  only  despise  myself  for  this.  Please  then  to  do  as  I  say,  and  not 
to  refuse  me. 

Crito  made  a  sign  to  the  servant,  who  was  standing  by  ;  and  he  went  out, 
and  having  been  absent  for  some  time,  returned  with  the  jailer  carrying  the 
cup  of  poison.  Socrates  said  :  You,  my  good  friend,  who  are  experienced 
in  these  matters,  shall  give  me  directions  how  I  am  to  proceed.  The  man 
answered  :  You  have  only  to  walk  about  until  your  legs  are  heavy,  and  then 
to  lie  down,  and  the  poison  will  act.  At  the  same  time  he  handed  the  cup 
to  Socrates,  who  in  the  easiest  and  gentlest  manner,  without  the  least  fear  or 
change  of  colour  or  feature,  looking  at  the  man  with  all  his  eyes,  Echecrates, 
as  his  manner  was,  took  the  cup  and  said  :  What  do  you  say  atjout  making 
a  libation  out  of  this  cup  to  any  god  ?  May  I,  or  not  ?  The  man  answered: 
We  only  prepare,  Socrates,  just  so  much  as  we  deem  enough.  I  understand, 
he  said  :  but  I  may  and  must  ask  the  gods  to  prosper  my  journey  from  this 
to  that  other  world  —  even  so  —  and  so  be  it  according  to  my  prayer.  Then 
holding  the  cup  to  his  lips,  quite  readily  and  cheerfully  he  drank  off  the 
poison.  And  hitherto  most  of  us  had  been  able  to  control  our  sorrow,  but 
now  when  we  saw  him  drinking,  and  saw  too  that  he  had  finished  the  draught, 
we  could  no  longer  forbear,  and  in  spite  of  myself  my  own  tears  were  flowing- 
fast,  so  that  I  covered  my  face  and  wept  over  myself,  for  certainly  I  was  not 
weeping  over  him,  but  at  the  thought  of  my  own  calamity  in  having  lost  such 
a  friend.  Nor  was  I  the  first,  for  Crito,  when  he  found  himself  unable  to 
restrain  his  tears,  had  got  up  and  moved  away,  and  I  followed  ;  and  at  that 
moment,  Apollodorus,  who  had  been  weeping  all  the  time,  iDroke  out  in  a 
loud  and  passionate  cry  which  made  cowards  of  us  all.  Socrates  alone 
retained  his  calmness  :  What  is  this  strange  outcry  ?  he  said.  I  sent  away 
the  women  mainly  in  order  that  they  might  not  offend  in  this  way,  for  I  have 
heard  that  a  man  should  die  in  peace.  Be  quiet  then,  and  have  patience. 
When  we  heard  that,  we  were  ashamed,  and  refrained  our  tears  ;  and  he 
walked  about  until,  as  he  said,  his  legs  began  to  fail,  and  then  he  lay  on  his 
back  according  to  the  directions,  and  the  men  who  gave  him  the  poison  now 
and  then  looked  at  his  feet  and  legs  ;  and  after  a  while  he  pressed  his  foot 
hard,  and  asked  him  if  he  could  feel ;  and  he  said,  No  ;  and  then  his  leg, 
and  so  upwards  and  upwards,  and  showed  us  that  he  was  cold  and  stiff.  And 
he  felt  them  himself,  and  said  :  When  the  poison  reaches  the  heart,  that  will 
be  the  end.  He  was  beginning  to  grow  cold  about  the  groin,  when  he  un- 
covered his  face,  for  he  had  covered  himself  up,  and  said  (they  were  his  last 
words)  —  he  said  :  Crito,  I  owe  a  cock  to  Asclepius  ;  will  you  remember  to 
pay  the  debt  ?  The  debt  shall  be  paid,  said  Crito  ;  is  there  anything  else  ? 
There  was  no  answer  to  the  question  ;  but  in  a  minute  or  two  a  movement 
was  heard,  and  the  attendants  uncovered  him  ;  his  eyes  were  set,  and  Crito 
closed  his  eyes  and  mouth. 

Such  was  the  end,  Echecrates,  of  our  friend,  whom  I  may  truly  call  the 
wisest,  the  justest,  and  best  of  all  the  men  whom  I  have  ever  known. 

In  the  Crito,  we  have  a  representation  of  Socrates  declining  the 
offer   of  his  friends  to  help  him  escape   from  prison,  on  the  ground 


702  PLATO. 

that  he  would  be  doing  wrong  in  breaking  the  laws,  and  that  wher- 
ever he  might  decide  to  live,  he  would  be  justly  regarded  as  a  male 
factor  who  could  not  properly  set  up  for  a  teacher  of  virtue. 

The  Menexenosis  another  unphilosophical  dialogue,  wherein  Socra- 
tes repeats  a  eulogy  of  Athens  which  he  says  that  he  heard  uttered 
by  Aspasia,  the  mistress  of  Pericles. 

IV. 

In  the  several  dialogues  as  we  find  them  in  Jowett's  admirable 
translation,  we  shall  not  detect,  as  the  reader  can  not  be  too  often 
reminded,  anything  like  a  definite  system,  but  rather  wit,  ingenuity, 
eloquence,  and  poetry,  playing  about  a  number  of  subjects,  sometimes 
amazing  us  with  a  more  than  childlike  simplicity,  again  taking  our 
breath  away  with  their  sweep  and  boldness.  The  Charmides  is  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  nature  of  temperance,  or,  more  definitely,  moderation, 
that  takes  place  between  Socrates,  who  is  represented  as  recounting 
the  conversation,  Charmides,  Chaerephon,  and  Critias.  There  is  no 
definition  of  this  virtue  growing  out  of  the  talk;  one  attempt  is  made 
after  another  by  the  secondary  interlocutors,  but  Socrates  finds  a  flaw 
in  every  one  that  is  suggested,  and  while  it  is  agreed  that  temperance 
is  an  admirable  quality,  yet  the  essential  core  that  marks  its  difl"erence 
from  other  virtues  is  not  found.  The  Laches  and  the  Euthyphron 
take  up  in  a  similar  way  courage  and  holiness  respectively,  showing 
the  difficulty  of  getting  any  general  definition  of  the  abstract  quality. 
In  the  Lysis  there  is  an  equal  failure  to  define  friendship.  While 
these  three  dialogues  are  animated  by  a  single  spirit,  the  effort,  that 
is  to  say,  to  clear  the  ground  by  disposing  of  the  authority  of  the  cur- 
rent confidence  in  the  power  of  names  to  supersede  intelligent  com- 
prehension, they  are  yet  somewhat  less  vivid  than  certain  other 
dialogues  in  which  equally  important  work  is  done  with  more  com- 
pleteness. They  are  full  of  attractive  qualities ;  the  Charmides 
especially  is  rich  in  wit  and  compliment,  but  the  Protagoras  far  sur- 
passes them  all  in  literary  merit.  Here,  as  often  elsewhere,  Socrates 
reports  the  conversation,  which  is  mainly  a  discussion  between  Prota- 
goras and  himself  on  the  question  whether  or  not  virtue  can  be 
taught.  While  this  is  the  main  subject  of  discussion,  the  controversy 
also  plays  about  many  subsidiary  matters  with  the  most  attractive 
grace  and  eloquence.  The  whole  dialogue  is  a  wonderful  piece  of 
dramatic  art,  and  the  picture  of  the  elderly  Protagoras,  generous  and 
amiable,  is  most  fascinating.  He  is  no  man  of  straw  to  be  overborne 
by  the  arguments  of  Socrates,  but  a  very  genuine  person,  although 
he  can  make  no  showing  against  his  formidable  antagonist  when  the 
fatal  hour  of  cross-examination  comes.     Yet  at  other  moments  he  is 


VIEPVS  REGARDING  POETICAL    COMPOSITION.  703 

powerful  and  attractive,  while  Socrates  with  the  incessant  iteration 
of  his  questions  is  at  times  paradoxical  and  wearisome,  although  this 
is  far  from  being  a  final  criticism  of  his  part  in  the  dialogue,  or  of  the 
upshot,  so  far  as  there  is  an  upshot,  of  the  talk,  that  virtue  is 
knowledge. 

Some  of  the  implications  of  the  Protagoras  are  further  developed 
in  other  minor  dialogues.  Thus,  the  Ion  treats  of  the  nature  of  poet- 
ical composition  and  recitation.  It  takes  its  name  from  the  Rhapsode 
who  falls  into  the  clutches  of  Socrates  and  is  readily  led  to  believe 
that  his  success  in  his  art  is  due  to  inspiration.  Puffed  up  with  this 
belief,  he  avers  under  the  ironical  questioning  of  Socrates  that  his 
knowledge  of  Homer  gave  him  the  mastery  of  every  art  and  thus  fitted 
him  for  an  appointment  as  general.  But  apart  from  this  satire  of  the 
extreme  adulation  that  was  often  expressed  by  his  contemporaries 
for  the  works  of  Homer,  Plato  also  makes  it  clear  that  he  too  is  not 
unaffected  by  a  generous  enthusiasm  when  he  states  his  notion  that  a 
poet  composes  under  the  influence  of  inspiration.  The  poet,  he  says, 
"is  a  light,  and  winged,  and  holy  thing." 

"  These  beautiful  poems  are  not  human,  or  the  work  of  man,  but  divine 
•and  the  work  of  God  ;  the  poets  are  only  the  interpreters  of  the  Gods  by 
whom  they  are  severally  possessed.  Was  not  this  the  lesson  which  the  God 
intended  to  teach,  when  by  the  mouth  of  the  worst  of  poets  he  sang  the  best 
of  songs  ?  " 

Plato's  name  thus  lent  weight  to  one  of  the  most  long-lived  super- 
stitions that  civilization  has  ever  known,  and  one  that  has  perhaps 
done  more  than  any  other  to  separate  literature  from  life  by  ascribing 
to  it  a  divine  origin.  Curiously  enough,  this  exaggeration  of  the 
poet's  rank  goes  on  all  fours  with  the  savage's  ascription  of  divinity 
to  everything  that  he  can  not  understand.  Later,  however,  we  shall 
see  that,  in  spite  of  this  exaltation  of  poets,  Plato  deals  out  to  them 
harder  measure  in  his  ideal  state.  Again,  in  the  Lesser  Hippias, 
Socrates  criticises  the  Homeric  poems  while  discussing  the  general 
question,  whether  those  who  err  voluntarily  or  those  who  err  invol- 
untarily are  the  better,  a  matter  which  he  fails  to  solve. 

Most  of  these  dialogues  portray  the  ready  downfall  of  the  Sophists 
before  the  swift  sword-play  of  Socrates,  and  in  the  Euthydemus  he 
carries  on  the  same  warfare,  which  is  marked  by  good-humored  ban- 
ter and  indeed  at  times  by  a  childish  logic-chopping  on  tlie  part  of 
his  antagonists  that  make  short  work  of  those  whom  Plato  is  always 
ready  to  portray  as  dangerous  persons.  Socrates  lets  it  be  seen  how 
pernicious  are  their  methods,  and  in  what  way  the  young  could  be 
more  wisely  taught.     In  the  Meno,  the  question,  Can  virtue  be  taught  ? 


704  PLATO. 

is  brought  up  again   for  discussion,  with   but  a  vague  answer,  that 
virtue  comes  to  the  virtuous  by  the  grace  of  God. 

V. 

The  Symposium  and  the  Phaedrus  contain  conversations  on  the 
nature  of  love,  that  have  formed  the  sacred  books  of  mystics  for 
many  generations.  Nowhere  does  Plato  pour  out  a  fuller  measure  of 
fancy,  poetry,  and  sympathetic  enthusiasm  than  here.  The  generous 
abundance  of  his  ardor  is  almost  rivalled  by  the  richness  of  his  literary 
capacity  which  is  nowhere  more  marked  than  here.  In  the  Phaedrus, 
Socrates  affirms  the  immortality  of  the  soul  in  an  apologue,  that  is 
interesting  to  posterity  because  it  has  escaped  the  theological  petri- 
faction that  has  so  often  befallen  the  similar  efforts  of  religious  enthu- 
siasts to  portray  heavenly  joys.  From  this  point  the  talk  glides  into 
a  criticism  of  rhetoric,  and  an  alternative  praise  of  philosophy  as  the 
wiser  teacher. 

The  Gorgias  is  another  of  the  dialogues  that  carries  the  reader  over 
a  beaten  track  as  well  as  into  very  deep  waters.  The  talk  plays  about 
the  shortcomings  of  rhetoric,  with  a  most  satisfactory  refutation  of 
the  immortal  commonplaces  of  worthy  people  that  writing  and  speak- 
ing can  and  should  be  taught  those  who  have  nothing  to  say.  This 
lesson  is  made  clear  only  through  long  stumbling  and  groping  that 
bear  witness  to  the  infancy  of  the  art  of  logic,  but  when  once  stated  it 
amounts  to  a  serious  indictment  of  the  art  that  promises  much  and 
performs  little.  This  is  not  all ;  the  controversy  about  rhetoric  is 
made  the  vehicle  for  the  expression  of  far  higher  truths ;  Plato 
affirms  the  right  of  the  private  judgment  concerning  the  beliefs  of 
the  multitude,  and  beneath  a  veil  of  irony  he  establishes  three  great 
ethical  ideas  :  first,  that  it  is  a  greater  evil  to  do  than  to  suffer  injustice  ; 
second,  that  it  is  better  to  suffer  for  wrong-doing  than  not  to  suffer ; 
third,  that  we  do  not  what  we  will,  but  what  we  wish. 

Praise  of  Plato's  art  is  as  ineffectual  as  praise  of  beautiful  scenery, 
or  of  a  starlit  night ;  it  is  at  the  best  but  a  mumbling  expression  of 
the  keen  delight  that  one  feels  at  seeing  a  difficult  thing  well  done, 
and  here  it  is  most  interesting  to  notice  that  Plato  lets  part  of  the 
defense  of  these  grand  truths  be  made  against  Callicles,  who  represents 
the  average  man  of  the  world,  whose  cleverness  and  acuteness  have 
made  him  a  fair  representative  of  the  public  sentiment  that  rests  on 
conventionality.  Just  as  a  modern  mathematician  will  read  the  work 
of  one  of  the  founders  of  that  science  with  intelligent  sympathy,  so 
the  sneers  that  Callicles  utters  against  wisdom  and  serious  thought 
will  echo  in  the  heart  of  many  worthy  men  of  the  present  day,  who 


SOURCE   OF  PLATO'S  INFLUENCE.  705 

detest  no  one  more  than  an  agitator  who  stirs  up  thought  concerning 
what  it  is  hoped  may  be  regarded  as  settled  principles.  And  who  can 
say  what  strength  may  not  have  been  drawn  from  these  golden  words 
of  Socrates : 

"  I  tell  you,  Callicles,  that  to  be  boxed  on  the  ears  wrongfully  is  not  the 
worst  evil  which  can  befall  a  man,  nor  to  have  my  face  and  purse  cut  open, 
but  that  to  smite  and  slay  me  and  mine  wrongfully  is  far  more  disgraceful 
and  more  evil ;  aye,  and  to  despoil  and  enslave  and  pillage,  or  in  any  way  at 
all  to  wrong  me  and  mine,  is  far  more  disgraceful  and  evil  to  the  doer  of  the 
wrong  than  to  me  who  am  the  sufferer.  These  truths  which  have  been 
already  set  forth  as  I  state  them  in  the  previous  discussion,  would  seem  now, 
if  I  may  use  an  expression  which  is  certainly  bold,  to  have  been  fixed  and 
riveted  by  us,  in  iron  and  adamantine  bonds  ;  and  unless  you  or  some  other 
still  more  interesting  hero  shall  break  them,  there  is  no  possibility  of  denying 
what  I  say.  For  what  I  am  always  saying  is,  that  I  know  not  the  truth 
about  these  things,  and  yet  that  I  have  never  known  anybody  who  could  say 
anything  else,  any  more  than  you  can,  without  being  ridiculous." 

It  is  by  these  magnificent  aspirations  of  a  generous  soul  toward 
truth,  by  thus  setting  high  the  standard  which  future  generations 
must  reach,  that  Plato  has  won  his  place  among  the  greatest  teachers 
that  the  world  has  ever  known  ;  and  let  us  remember  that  this  was  at- 
tained by  aspiration,  not  by  inspiration. 

In  the  Cratylus  there  is  a  long  discussion  about  what  may  be  called 
metaphysical  philology,  that  falls  out  of  the  line  of  the  more  moving 
dialogues.  The  First  Alcibiades — the  genuineness  of  which,  as  well 
as  of  the  Lesser  Hippias,  referred  to  above,  and  of  the  Menexenos,  is 
generally  doubted — contains  a  conversation  between  Socrates  and 
Alcibiades,  in  which  the  philosopher  brings  his  younger  friend  to  swift 
confession  by  showing  him,  or  rather  by  leading  him  to  see,  his  incom- 
petence for  leadership.  In  the  Sophist  and  the  Statesman,  Plato 
points  out  how  sophists  and  statesmen  respectively  fall  short  of  the 
philosopher  in  true  wisdom  ;  and  in  the  Parmenides  he  disposes  of 
some  of  the  philosophical  notions  of  his  contemporaries.  In  the 
Timaeus  is  a  long  and,  to  the  eye  of  modern  science,  fantastic  state- 
ment of  Plato's  notions  regarding  physiology,  which  is  an  attempt  to 
explain  the  constitution  of  the  universe  by  metaphysics.  There  is  a 
grandeur  about  the  whole  conception,  which  also  contains  some  happy 
guesses,  but  its  main  interest  is  as  evidence  of  a  remote  condition  of 
human  thought  when  science  is  preceded  by  metaphysics;  possibly 
the  domain  of  metaphysics,  which  now  seems  secure  in  its  remote- 
ness, may  in  its  turn  become  the  prey  of  exact  science.  The  Timaeus, 
obscure  as  it  is,  and  perhaps  on  account  of  its  very  obscurity,  for  a 
long  time    controlled  the   early  gropings  of  scientific    thought    and 


7o6  PLATO. 

brought  down,  it  may  be,  to  a  late  period  the  imaginings  of  the  early 
Pythagoreans,  which  represent  even  the  hard  and  fast  science  of 
mathematics  in  its  metaphysical  stage.  The  Theatetus,  again,  con- 
tains a  long  philosophical  conversation  concerning  knowledge,  while 
in  the  Philebus  it  is  pleasure  that  is  the  subject  of  the  discussion. 
Yet  most  of  these  dialogues  are  valuable  mainly  for  the  light  that 
they  throw  on  the  inevitable  floundering  of  men  who  are  groping 
toward  metaphysical  clearness  and  have  not  yet  learned  the  rudi- 
ments of  logic.  Moreover,  the  grace  and  dramatic  vividness  of  what 
are  apparently  the  earlier  dialogues  are  lacking  in  these  severer  studies. 

VI. 

This  difference  is  more  clearly  seen  when  we  compare  the  early 
Republic  with  the  later  Laws.  The  Republic  is  perhaps  the  best 
known  of  the  writings  of  Plato;  it  offers  the  reader  a  practical  appli- 
cation of  many  of  the  separate  theories  of  the  rest  of  the  dia- 
logues. That  this  concentration  of  his  hopes  and  plans  took  the 
form  of  a  reconstitution  of  the  state  makes  it  clear  that  the  rehabili- 
tation of  the  government  had  for  a  long  time  been  the  subject  of 
many  thinkers'  meditations.  Not  only  is  it  true  in  general  that  a 
question  is  never  answered  until  it  is  asked,  but  in  this  particular  case 
we  know  that  the  possible  regeneration  of  Athens  had  been  a  widely 
studied  problem.  The  Birds  and  the  Ecclesiazusae  of  Aristophanes, 
with  their  derision  of  fantastic  projects  of  improvement,  show  this,  and 
Xenophon's  advocacy  of  the  Lacedaemonian  system  of  government  is  a 
further  proof  of  the  general  interest  in  the  subject.  Then  the  political 
disturbances  in  Athens  at  about  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  are 
unmistakable  examples  of  the  prevailing  discontent  with  democracy. 
Plato  had  certainly  reasonable  grounds  for  indignation  with  the  popu- 
lace for  their  condemnation  of  Socrates,  and  throughout  his  work  we 
find  very  sufficient  instances  of  his  discontent  with  his  contempora- 
ries. This  point  of  view  was  that  of  an  aristocrat  with  great  contempt 
for  the  populace — 

— "  who  are  unacquainted  with  wisdom  and  virtue,  and  who  spend  their  time 
in  perpetual  banqueting  and  similar  indulgences,  are  carried  down,  as  it 
appears,  and  back  again  only  as  far  as  the  midway  point  on  the  upward 
road  ;  and  between  these  limits  they  roam  their  life  long,  without  ever  over- 
stepping them  so  as  to  look  up  towards,  or  be  carried  to,  the  true  Above  : 
and  they  have  never  been  really  filled  with  what  is  real,  or  tasted  sure  and 
unmingled  pleasure  ;  but,  like  cattle,  they  are  always  looking  downwards, 
and  hanging  their  heads  to  the  ground,  and  poking  them  into  their  dining- 
tables,  while  they  graze  and  get  fat  and  propagate  their  species  ;  and  to 
satiate  their  greedy  desire  for   these  enjoyments,  they  kick  and   butt  with 


ARISTOCRATIC  SPIRIT  OF   THE  REPUBLIC.  ^0^ 

hoofs   and  horns  of   iron,  till  they  kill  one  another  under  the  influence  of 
ravenous  appetites." 

These  words  are  placed  by  Plato  in  the  mouth  of  his  ideal  Socrates, 
in  the  Republic,  but  the  real  Socrates  had  much  more  confidence  in 
the  Athenians,  of  whom  he  said  that  if  they  went  wrong,  the  fault  lay 
in  their  leaders. 

Plato  had  seen  the  decay  of  popular  government,  the  wreck  of  an 
oligarchy  in  Athens,  and  the  abomination  of  despotism  in  Sicily  ;  his 
sole  hope  lay  in  the  careful  training  of  a  few  intelligent  young  men  ; 
the  masses  he  regarded  as  the  instigators  of  all  evil.  His  denuncia- 
tions of  Sophists  and  poets  were  consistent  parts  of  his  general  con- 
tempt for  the  populace.  Athens  was  enfeebled,  and  the  old  energy 
which  had  been  employed  in  defending  its  imperial  powers  was  now 
wasting  itself  in  private  litigation  and  excessive  legislation.  Almost 
every  matter  was  finally  settled  in  the  courts  of  law,  and  to  acquire 
any  influence  before  these  it  was  necessary  to  acquire  a  certain  mas- 
tery of  oratory,  which  was  communicated  by  the  Sophists,  who 
afifirmed  that  their  new  art  of  rhetoric  took  the  place  of  all  other 
education.  The  poets,  too,  were  always  busy  composing  or  repeating 
discreditable  myths  about  the  gods,  which  excited  the  wrath  of  Plato, 
and  he  was  furthermore  indignant  with  them  for  their  inability  to  ex- 
plain their  own  work,  and  for  their  persistent  imitation  of  one  another. 
The  fact  that  they  too  claimed  a  sort  of  omniscience,  as  did  the 
Sophists,  aroused  Plato's  jealousy  of  their  influence,  especially  since 
their  success  crowded  out  the  claims  of  his  philosophy  for  recogni- 
tion. The  love  of  higher  things,  which  was  the  basis  of  his  teaching, 
could  only  be  comprehended  by  the  few,  and  this  intellectual  aristoc- 
racy was  the  source  whence  sprang  the  whole  aristocratic  structure  of 
his  Republic. 

The  theories  of  reformation  are  commonly  aristocratic,  but  reform 
itself  is  always  democratic,  and  the  Republic  is  the  head  of  along  line 
of  imaginary  remodelings  of  this  world  of  ours  which  rest  on  the  good 
that  a  few  choice  spirits  are  to  communicate  to  their  inferiors.  Ac- 
cording t-o  Plato's  scheme,  there  is  to  be  strict  subdivision  of  occu- 
pations among  the  citizens  of  the  model  state,  and  the  load  of  govern- 
ment is  to  be  borne  by  the  oldest  and  wisest  of  these,  called  the  Guar- 
dians. The  training  of  these  Guardians  is  described  at  considerable 
length  ;  they  are  to  be  encouraged  in  bravery,  and  hear  only  stories 
that  inculcate  honor,  courage  ;  no  Puritans  were  ever  severer  than 
Plato  against  the  enervating  lessons  of  the  poets.  He  shares,  too, 
their  austerity  in  what  he  says  about  music  ;  the  only  musical  instru- 
ments to  be  allowed  the  Guardians  being  the  lyre,  the  guitar,  and  the 


7o8  PLATO. 

pipe,  and  music  must  be  simple  and  purifying.  He  lays  much  weight 
on  their  gymnastic  training.  These  men  will  form  the  military  class, 
and  from  their  number  the  best  are  to  be  chosen,  who  are  to  rule 
according  to  the  laws  of  strict  conservatism  :  they  are  not  to  let  the 
state  grow  too  large ;  they  must  resist  all  modifications  of  the  pre- 
scribed music  and  gymnastics,  and  they  must  prevent  or  remove  ex- 
cessive wealth  or  extreme  poverty.  With  regard  to  the  citizens,  their 
occupations  are  rigidly  subdivided.  The  whole  plan,  in  a  word,  is  one 
that  is  to  be  regulated  by  philosophers  ;  it  was  not  the  lion,  it  will  be 
remembered,  who  painted  the  picture.  Curiously  enough,  there  is  a 
distinct  resemblance,  which  writers  have  pointed  out,  between  this 
ideal  state  and  the  construction  of  mediaeval  society.  The  strict  sub- 
division of  the  men  of  the  Republic  into  the  wise  rulers,  the  brave 
warriors,  and  the  manual  laborers  or  tradesmen,  and  the  prominence 
given  to  the  military  class,  which  is  sharply  distinguished  from  the  in- 
dustrial, remind  us  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  and  the  devotion  to  the  study 
of  the  good  which  was  enforced  from  philosophers  is  like  the  religious 
lives  of  the  priests.  Plato  recommended  the  community  of  women 
and  children  :  one  of  the  main  features  of  mediaeval  society  was  the 
partial  abolition  of  marriage  and  property,  and  in  both  the  ideal  and 
real  states  women  were  admitted  to  the  privilege  of  holding  positions 
of  responsibility.  The  similarity  of  the  later  facts  to  the  earlier  theo- 
ries may  be  explained  in  part,  perhaps,  as  an  effort  to  carry  into  effect 
the  Platonic  thoughts  which  were  of  enormous  weight  in  early  Chris- 
tianity;  while  other  influences  were  those  springing  from  the  decay  of 
society  and  barbarian  conquest,  which  called  forth  the  crudities  which 
Plato  secured  by  willfully  abandoning  the  civilization  of  his  time. 
The  main  resemblance  lay  in  this,  that  both  the  Republic  and  the 
mediaeval  society  did  not  build  up  a  social  unit,  every  part  of  which 
should  be  animated  by  a  single  feeling,  but  rather  chose  a  favorite 
class,  of  philosophers  by  Plato,  of  priests  in  the  Middle  Ages,  who 
should  carry  on  the  good  work  and  be  revered  by  the  rest.  Possibly 
this  is  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  many  curious  resemblances  :  like 
effects  followed  like  causes. 

Yet  apart  from  the  practicability  of  Plato's  scheme  is  the  spirit  in 
which  it  is  devised,  and  while  setting  the  world  right  is  a  task  beyond 
any  one  man's  power,  this  attempt  is  the  means  of  uttering  much  valu- 
able criticism  and  comment  concerning  social  and  political  affairs.  It 
is  easy  to  pick  flaws  in  the  plan,  but  it  still  remains  a  monument  of 
honorable  enthusiasm,  not  without  the  pathos  that  surrounds  every 
failure  of  a  generous  spirit.  What  we  notice  in  the  Republic  is  its 
buoyancy,  and  especially  when  we  contrast  it  with  the  Laws,  which 
was  written  later,  and  again  grapples  with  the  problem  of  a  perfect 


THE   SCOPE  AND  PURPOSE    OF    THE  LAWS.  709 

state.  As  in  some  of  his  later  dialogues,  the  accustomed  grace  and 
lightness  of  touch  are  gone  ;  the  machinery  creaks,  as  it  were,  and 
instead  of  argument  we  have  dogmatic  assertion,  and  in  place  of  dis- 
cussion, formal  assent.  While  the  Republic  is  an  ideal  state,  the  Laws 
is  an  attempt  to  portray  the  best  state  possible  for  Greece  under  the 
existing  conditions.  Many  of  the  principles  are  alike  in  the  two 
schemes  :  the  rules  regarding  education  have  many  points  of  resem- 
blance ;  there  are  to  be  strict  regulations  concerning  music  and  songs ; 
poets  remain  in  disfavor,  but  in  the  Laws  less  prominence  is  given  to 
the  Philosophers.  We  see  in  the  Republic  how  much  the  Spartan 
system  had  impressed  Plato,  in  the  Laws  he  adds  some  of  the  good 
points  of  Athenian  life.  Yet  he  is  averse  to  a  naval  power,  which 
was  one  of  the  strongest  weapons  of  Athens.  The  community  of 
wives  and  children  is  given  up,  as  well  as  the  overweighing  influence 
of  philosophers.  The  question  of  the  use  of  wine  makes  its  appear- 
ance as  a  legislative  problem.  A  strict  conservatism  controls  the  later 
state,  and  it  is  rigidly  ruled  by  its  council  of  government.  After  all, 
two  attempted  solutions  of  an  impossible  question  are  more  than 
enough,  and  the  world  has  taken  its  revenge  by  questioning  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  later  scheme. 

These  two  great  dialogues,  with  the  speculative  Philebus  and  the 
Critias,  with  its  account  of  the  imaginary  island  of  Atlantis,  that  has 
teased  some  readers  into  the  belief  that  it  refers  to  a  legendary  memory 
of  America,  complete  the  list  of  his  accepted  writings.  How  far- 
reaching  these  are,  even  this  meager  analysis  may  show,  yet  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  even  from  this  abundance  of  material  no  separate 
system,  which  we  can  definitely  call  Platonism,  is  to  be  drawn.  This 
fact  the  reader  must  bear  in  mind,  as  well  as,  to  speak  frankly,  the 
repellant  quality  of  much  of  Plato's  work.  This  side  of  it  is  generally 
ignored  by  commentators,  who  are  happiest  when  struggling  with  the 
inexplicable,  and  many  a  student,  whose  soul  has  been  fired  by  the 
indiscriminate  raptures  that  accompany  every  mention  of  Plato's 
name  in  cultivated  society,  has  been  left  stranded  on  the  barren  quib- 
bling and  incomprehensible  arguments  of  some  of  the  interlocutors. 
It  is  true  of  Plato,  as  of  every  other  writer,  that  he  is  at  his  best  only 
occasionally,  and  it  is  truer  of  him  than  of  most  others,  that  when  he 
is  obscure,  and  that  is  not  seldom,  he  defies  comprehension  more 
successfully  than  even  most  philosophers. 

Yet  apart  from  and  above  these  difificulties  there  stands  the  image 
of  the  great  man  who  tested  and  examined  all  the  opinions  of  his  time 
and  left  everywhere  the  touch  of  his  inspiring  enthusiasm.  What  he 
did  was  to  give  the  world  a  sense  of  the  infinite,  and  if  he  failed  to 
define  it  clearly,  the  fault  did  not  lie  in  him.     As  has  been  said  before. 


7IO  PLATO. 

the  core  of  Plato's  philosophy  is  his  theory  of  ideas,  which  assigned  to 
them  independent  existence  outside  of  the  accidents  to  which  the 
objects  themselves  were  exposed.  Thus  the  archetypal  idea  of  a  bed, 
of  which  real  beds  are  but  blundering  copies,  has  existed  from  all  time  ; 
and  so  with  abstract  ideas  of  justice,  of  the  good,  etc.;  these  are  the 
truly  existing  things  whereof  life  is  an  imperfect  copy.  The  highest 
idea  is  that  of  the  good,  which  seems  to  be  identified  with  deity. 
Thus,  it  will  be  noticed,  philosophy  received  from  Plato  a  theological 
form,  which  was  perhaps  an  inevitable  result  when  speculation  found 
its  home  in  Athens.  Yet  the  theology  that  he  taught  rose  far  above 
the  ordinary  Athenian  superstitions  ;  he  set  morality  much  higher 
than  the  conventionality  of  ritualism,  and  made  religion  consist  in  an 
intelligent  imitation  of  God  rather  than  in  blind  obedience.  He 
taught  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  a  pure  monotheism,  while  the 
conduct  of  life  was  to  be  pure  and  virtue  was  to  be  desired,  not 
because  it  ensured  a  pleasing  reward,  but  because  it  was  the  sole  health 
and  well-being  of  the  soul.  Throughout,  it  was  closely  connected  with 
knowledge,  indeed  inseparable  from  it,  thus  appealing  to  the  two  most 
elevating  tendencies  of  human  character.  Is  it  wonderful  that  his 
immortal  writings,  masterpieces  of  mere  literature  as  they  are,  should 
have  formed  a  rich  source  of  generous  inspiration  for  countless 
ardent  spirits? 

It  is  to  these  fervent  and  elevating  principles  that  Plato  owes  his 
vast  influence  upon  subsequent  ages  rather  than  to  any  practicability 
in  his  plans  for  reforming  society,  and  to  take  this  last  as  the  sole  test, 
besides  being  simply  impossible,  would  lead  to  the  condemnation  of 
nearly  all  the  good  that  is  advocated  by  priests  and  sages.  Modern 
experience  proves  the  narrowness  of  his  carefully  formed  designs,  but 
the  world  has  not  exhausted  all  the  profit  that  is  to  be  derived  from 
his  ardent  love  of  justice  and  wisdom.  What  the  world  values  is  the 
height  of  aspiration  ;  the  statement  of  particulars  can  never  be  made 
precise  without  being  faulty  or  defective  ;  every  law,  no  matter  how 
carefully  devised  and  guarded,  is  at  some  time  or  another  the  instru- 
ment of  injustice  ;  every  rule  that  deals  in  the  least  with  definitions  is 
sooner  or  later  found  to  be  incompetent  or  wrong.  The  intricacy  of 
the  world  defies  definition  and  codification,  exactly  as  the  complica- 
tions of  human  action  present  continual  combinations  unimagined  by 
legislators.  In  other  words,  everything  except  such  general  state- 
ments as  "  Do  right,"  "  Love  virtue,"  etc.,  lose  their  original  clearness 
when  one  asks,  what  is  right  ?  what  is  virtue  ?  and  hears  conflicting 
answers.  But  what  prevails  is  the  ardor  with  which  these  vague  com- 
mands are  uttered  and  the  generosity  with  which  their  application  is 
inculcated.     Here  Plato  takes  his  place  among  the  world's  great  mas- 


THE  MORAL   SYSTEM  OF  PLATO.  7" 

ters  by  his  ingenuity  and  eloquence,  and  the  remote  and  divergent 
possibilities  of  the  enthusiasm  he  has  inspired  and  nourished  attest  the 
fruitfulness  of  his  lessons.  On  the  whole,  different  as  have  been  the 
results  of  his  teaching,  they  have  been  alike  in  one  thing,  in  hopeful- 
ness and  optimistic  confidence.  What  all  men  aim  at  who  strive  to 
build  up  something  better  than  the  apparent  possibilities  of  life,  finds 
encouragement  and  support  in  his  buoyant  zeal :  and  just  as  evil  is 
long-lived  though  cures  abound,  and,  after  martyrs  have  bled  and 
died,  the  great  world  goes  on  blundering  and  sinning,  yet  the  intense 
devotion  of  saints  and  sages,  like  all  enthusiasms,  counts  as  one  of  the 
forces  forming  the  resultant  that  finds  its  expression  in  the  thoughts 
and  life  of  men. 

Generally,  the  highest  appeals  have  been  of  a  religious  sort,  but  in 
Plato  we  have  the  exceptional  appearance  of  a  man  who  speaks  of  all 
the  higher  duties  from  the  point  of  view  of,  so  to  speak,  a  worldling. 
Whether  this  be  an  advantage  or  not  will  be  temporarily  determined 
some  hundreds — or  is  it  thousands  ? — of  years  hence,  but  now  it  may 
be  acknowledged  that  the  position  which  he  has  won  for  himself  is  at 
least  interesting,  because  we  see  in  him  a  man  contending  for  what  is 
the  aim  of  saint  and  sage  alike,  for  righteousness,  with  weapons  of  the 
intellect  and  not  of  the  emotions.  He  applies  to  life  what  is,  after  all, 
the  final  test,  that  of  the  intelligence,  and  although  he  often  does  this 
unintelligently,  in  other  words  without  the  evidence  that  has  since 
grown  around  a  difficult  subject,  and  doubtless  without  due  compre- 
hension of  all  the  evidence  before  him, — for  it  must  not  be  forgotten, 
notwithstanding  all  that  is  said  about  Plato,  he  was  a  human  being, — 
yet,  in  spite  of  these  objections,  his  aim  was  the  noblest  and  his  method 
the  fullest  that  the  world  has  known.  The  Socrates  who  is  the  mouth- 
piece for  his  instructions  is,  as  it  were,  an  unconsecrated  religious 
teacher,  who  speaks  not  from  a  pulpit  but  in  the  market-place,  and 
wholly  without  the  remoteness  from  living  interests  which  draws  a  bar 
between  priests  and  laity  in  modern  times.  His  authority  is  what  he 
wrings  in  the  shape  of  concessions  from  his  most  obstinate  foes. 
Thus  his  magnificent  declaration  that  it  is  better  to  suffer  than  to  do 
wrong  is  proved  by  an  irresistible  line  of  argument  that  overcomes  the 
«  most  persistent  opposition.  His  antagonists  are  not  the  customary 
men  of  straw  whom  we  are  accustomed  to  see  falling  at  the  first  word 
of  a  philosopher's  argument,  but  real  incarnations  of  the  world's  op- 
position to  new  and  improving  truths.  How  thoroughly  this  view 
belonged  to  Plato  we  may  infer  from  Xenophon's  report  of  the  state- 
ment of  Socrates  that  true  virtue  consisted  in  kindness  to  one's  friends 
and  hostility  to  one's  enemies,  which  was  not  a  perversion  of  his  own, 
but  merely  the  expression    of  the  current  opinion  ;  and  in    the  story 


712  PLATO. 

that  is  reported  of  the  rich  Corinthian  who  was  so  moved  by  Plato's 
words  that,  like  another  unnamed  enthusiast,  he  gave  up  all  he  pos- 
sessed to  devote  himself  to  the  new  doctrine,  we  may  see  the  inspira- 
tion that  was  drawn  from  his  teaching. 

It  is  this  continual  assertion  of  the  superiority  of  the  higher  law 
that  preserves  Plato's  importance,  when  his  peculiarly  metaphysical 
significance  would  interest  only  a  small  number,  for  all  men  are  con- 
cerned with  moral  questions,  and  those  who  are  interested  in  meta- 
physical questions  are  fewer.  In  him  we  find  the  culmination  of  all 
the  gradual  breaking  up  of  the  old  religion,  and  of  the  enlargement  of 
the  ethical  synthesis  that  had  been  going  on  in  one  way  or  another 
under  the  philosophers  from  the  time  that  they  began  to  question  ex- 
isting opinions.  Of  the  influence  of  his  words  upon  early  Christianity  . 
this  is  not  the  place  to  speak.  Evidence  of  its  extent  is  easily  found, 
and,  like  most  evidence,  it  has  been  differently  judged  by  men  of 
opposing  views.  Some  thought  that  Plato  derived  what  he  had  to  say 
from  what  were  called  the  inspired  books  ;  others  held  that  the  early 
Christians  drew  inspiration  from  him.  A  curious  similarity  of  state- 
ment between  him  and  the  Fathers  is  the  least  thing  that  these  con- 
flicting opinions  prove,  and  in  studying  the  history  of  thought  it  is 
impossible  to  overlook  any  testimony  that  shows  its  condition  at  any 
given  time.  It  is  at  least  undeniable  that  we  find  in  his  teachings  the 
recommendation  to  philosophers,  or  lovers  of  wisdom,  to  hold  them- 
selves aloof  from  the  things  of  this  world  ;  and  in  his  praise  of  justice, 
which  was  the  whole  aim  of  his  noble  life,  we  may  see  what  a  spur  was 
given  to  men's  contemplation  of  a  lofty  ideal.  His  teaching  of  immor- 
tality again  could  not  have  been  without  result.  For  an  example  of 
what  even  the  most  reluctant  to  consider  it  must  call  a  curious  coin- 
cidence, we  may  take  these  words  from  the  end  of  the  Republic,  where 
he  describes  the  course  of  a  soul  after  death : 

"  His  story  was,  that  when  the  soul  had  gone  out  of  him,  it  travelled  in 
company  with  many  others,  till  they  came  to  a  mysterious  place,  in  which 
were  two  gaps  above  in  the  heaven.  Between  these  gaps  sate  judges,  who, 
after  passing  sentence,  commanded  the  just  to  take  the  road  to  the  right  up- 
wards through  the  heaven,  and  fastened  in  front  of  them  some  symbol  of  the 
judgment  that  had  been  given  ;  while  the  unjust  had  been  ordered  to  take 
the  road  downwards  to  the  left,  and  also  carried  behind  them  evidence  of  all 
their  evil  deeds." 

VII. 

While  Plato  has  held  a  lofty  position  for  many  centuries,  his  im- 
mediate followers  inclined  rather  toward  subdividing  their  master's 
teaching  than  toward  handing  it  down  as  a  whole.      On  his  death, 


THE   SUCCESSORS  OF  PLATO.  TU 

Plato  was  succeeded  by  his  nephew  Speusippus,  born  in  Athens  about 
393  B.C.,  and  living  until  339  B.C.  He  carried  on  instruction  in  the 
Academy,  according  to  his  uncle's  directions.  He  represented  the 
Old  Academy,  as  it  was  called  ;  the  divisions,  which  represented  dif- 
ferent philosophical  tendencies,  being  known  as  the  Middle  and 
New  Academy,  respectively.  Speusippus  taught  that  there  was  an 
orderly  series  of  existences,  whereof  the  divine  was  the  highest  in 
rank  and  the  latest  in  development.  The  mathematical  principles 
which  Plato  had  helped  to  make  the  basis  of  subsequent  investiga- 
tion were  somewhat  developed  by  him.  Speusippus  was  succeeded 
by  Xenocrates  of  Chalcedon  (396-314  B.C.),  who  went  further  in  the 
same  direction  and  identified  ideas  with  numbers.  He  discriminated 
between  things  sensible,  intelligible,  and  intermediate  things,  which 
lay  between  the  other  two,  and  so  were  matters  of  opinion.  The 
dwindling  of  the  early  inspiration  seems  to  be  the  clearest  result  of 
this  philosophizing.  Polemo,  who  followed  Xenocrates,  turned  his 
attention  mainly  to  ethical  teaching.  Among  others  who  held  the 
position  of  pupils  of  Plato  were  Eudoxus  of  Cnidus,  famous  as  a 
geometrician ;  Heraclides  of  Heraclea,  who  made  interesting  mathe- 
matical investigations  that  convinced  him  of  the  revolution  of  the 
earth  upon  its  axis.  Grantor,  on  the  other  hand,  was  interested  in 
ethics.  The  mantle  of  Plato,  it  will  be  seen,  was  soon  reduced  to 
shreds.  The  Middle  Academy  was  more  sceptical ;  the  most  impor- 
tant names  mentioned  in  connection  with  it  are  those  of  Arcesilas 
(315-241  B.C.),  and  Carneades  (214-129  B.C.).  Arcesilas  was  the  succes- 
sor of  Crates,  who  was  director  of  the  school  after  Polemo.  The  New 
Academy  began  with  Philo  of  Larissa,  who  lived  at  the  time  of  the 
first  Mithridatic  War.  He,  and  his  disciple  Antiochus,  inclined 
toward  the  doctrines  of  the  Stoics. 


vni. 

Ath. — When  I  see  you  thus  earnest,  I  feel  impelled  to  offer  up  a  prayer, 
and  can  no  longer  refrain.  Who  can  be  calm  when  he  is  called  upon  to  prove 
the  existence  of  the  Gods?  Who  can  avoid  hating  and  abhorring  the  men 
who  are  and  have  been  the  cause  of  this  argument ;  I  speak  of  those  who 
will  not  believe  the  words  which  they  have  heard  as  babes  and  sucklings 
from  their  mothers  and  nurses,  repeated  by  them  both  in  jest  and  earnest, 
like  charms,  who  have  also  heard  and  seen  their  parents  offering  up  sacrifices 
and  prayers  —  sights  and  sounds  delightful  to  children  —  sacrificing,  I  say, 
in  the  most  earnest  manner  on  behalf  of  them  and  of  themselves,  and  with 
eager  interest  talking  to  the  Gods,  and  beseeching  them,  as  though  they  were 
firmly  convinced  of  their  existence;  who  likewise  see  and  hear  the  genuflexions 
and  prostrations  which  are  made  by  Hellenes  and  barbarians  to  the  rising 
and  setting  sun  and  moon,  in  all  the  various  turns  of  good  and  evil  fortune, 


714 


PLA  TO. 


not  as  if  they  thought  that  there  were  no  Gods,  but  as  if  there  could  be  no 
doubt  of  their  existence,  and  no  suspicion  of  their  non-existence  ;  when  men, 
knowing  all  these  things,  despise  them  on  no  real  grounds,  as  would  be  ad- 
mitted by  all  who  have  any  particle  of  intelligence,  and  when  they  force  us 
to  say  what  we  are  now  saying,  how  can  any  one  in  gentle  terms  remonstrate 
with  the  like  of  them,  .when  he  has  to  begin  by  proving  to  them  the  very  ex- 
istence of  the  Gods?  Yet  the  attempt  must  be  made;  for  it  would  be  un- 
seemly that  one-half  of  mankind  should  go  mad  in  their  lust  of  pleasure,  and 
the  other  half  in  righteous  indignation  at  them.  Our  address  to  these  lost 
and  perverted  natures  should  not  be  spoken  in  passion  ;  let  us  suppose  our- 
selves to  select  some  one  of  them,  and  gently  reason  with  him,  smothering 
our  anger  :  —  O  my  son,  we  say  to  him,  you  are  young,  and  the  advance  of 
time  will  make  you  reverse  many  of  the  opinions  which  you  now  hold.  Wait, 
therefore,  until  the  time  comes,  and  do  not  attempt  to  judge  of  high  matters 
at  present  ;  and  that  is  the  highest  of  which  you  think  nothing — to  know 
the  Gods  rightly  and  to  live  accordingly.  And  in  the  first  place  let  me  indi- 
cate to  you  one  point  which  is  of  great  importance,  and  of  the  truth  of  which 
I  am  quite  certain  :  —  You  and  your  friends  are  not  the  first  who  have  held 
this  opinion  about  the  Gods.  There  have  always  been  persons  more  or  less 
numerous  who  have  had  the  same  disorder.  1  have  known  many  of  them, 
and  can  tell  you,  that  no  one  who  had  taken  up  in  youth  this  opinion,  that 
the  Gods  do  not  exist,  ever  continued  in  the  same  until  he  was  old  ;  the  two 
other  notions  certainly  do  continue  in  some  cases,  but  not  in  many  ;  the 
notion,  I  mean,  that  the  Gods  exist,  but  take  no  heed  of  human  things,  and 
also  the  notion  that  they  do  not  take  heed  of  them,  but  are  easily  propitiated 
with  sacrifices  and  prayers.  What  may  be  the  true  doctrine,  if  you  are 
patient,  and  take  my  advice,  you  will  hereafter  discover,  by  the  help  of  the 
legislator  and  others.  In  the  mean  time  take  heed  lest  you  offend  about  the 
Gods.  For  the  duty  of  the  legislator  is  and  always  will  be  to  teach  you  the 
truth  of  these  matters. 


SCHOOL     ROOM. 


CHAPTER  III.— ARISTOTLE. 

— Aristotle's  Unfortunate  Rivalry  with  Plato.  His  Life.  His  Influence,  Especially 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Consequences  of  Exaggerated  Praise  Not  Unknown  to 
Aristotle's  Fame.  II. — His  Relations  to  his  Predecessors.  His  Interest  in 
Scientific  Study.  His  Writings ;  their  Lack  of  Literary  Charm.  The  Manner  of 
their  Preservation.  III. — His  Conception  of  Philosophy,  and  his  Division  of  its 
Functions,  The  Breadth  of  its  Interests.  The  Politics,  etc.  His  Repellent 
Style  Compared  with  the  Charm  of  Plato's.  The  Safe  Middle  Path  which  he 
Follows.  His  Cool  Wisdom,  IV. — The  Poetics;  its  Importance  to  Modern 
Literature.  V. — Extracts.  VI. — The  Peripatetics,  and  the  Latest  Course  of 
Philosophy.     Epicureans  and  Stoics. 


THE  real  successor  of  Plato  was  Aristotle,  whose  influence  on  the 
thought  of  the  world  has  been  second  only  to  that  of  his  illustri- 
ous master.  Yet  the  lamentable  partisanship  of  cultivated  men,  which 
leads  them,  when  mention  is  made  of  prominent  names  in  any  depart- 
ment of  thought,  to  praise  their  favorite  by  denouncing  his  rival,  has 
found  in  Plato  and  Aristotle  an  admirable  opportunity  for  exercise,  so 
that  defamation  of  one  continually  alternates  with  extravagant  lauda- 
tion of  the  other.  The  world  is  wide  enough  for  both,  however  ; 
sympathy  with  the  intellectual  and  ethical  enthusiasm  of  Plato  need 
not  render  one  insensible  to  the  austerer  merits  of  his  rival.  With 
regard  to  both  it  will  be  necessary  to  exercise  the  toleration  due  to 
men  who  lived  when  the  subjects  which  they  studied  were  yet  com- 
paratively in  their  infancy. 

Aristotle  was  born  384  B.C. ;  that  is,  it  will  be  noticed,  exactly  one 
century  later  than  Herodotus,  at  Stagira,  a  town  on  the  eastern  coast 
of  the  Strymonic  Gulf,  whence  the  philosopher  was  given  his  familiar 
title,  the  Stagirite.  His  birthplace  lay  in  a  region  that  was  at  one 
time  part  of  Thrace  and  at  another  that  of  Macedon,  and  was  thus 
exposed  to  all  the  vicissitudes  of  war  until  between  350  and  347  B.C., 
Philip  razed  it  among  the  thirty-two  cities  that  he  wiped  out  of  exis- 
tence for  presuming  to  revolt  against  his  power.  His  father  was 
Nicomachus,  an  Asclepiad,  or  descendant  of  .^Csculapius,  according  to 
the  tradition  which  made  that  mythical  founder  of  medical  science 
the  ancestor  of  those  who  practiced  it.  Of  the  early  education  of 
Aristotle  we  know  but  little  ;  and  the   earliest  authority  from  whom 


7i6 


ARISTOTLE. 


our  information  is  drawn  lived  six  centuries  later,  a  period  during 
which  it  is  impossible  that  legend  should  not  have  grown  up  about  so' 
remarkable  a  man.  Yet  accepting  the  familiar  accounts  in  place  of 
anything  better,  we  learn  that  when  Aristotle  was  about  seventeen  or 
eighteen  years  old  he  made  his  way  to  Athens,  still  the  intellectual 
center  of  the  world,  and  there  he  soon  placed  himself  under  Plato's  in- 
struction. Concerning  his  intercourse  with  Plato  much  gossip  survives. 
We  are  told  not  only  that  Aristotle  was  extravagant  and  foppish,  but 
that  he  also  justly  offended  his  teacher  by  acts  of  irreverence.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  are  told,  what  seems  quite  as  likely,   that  the  young 

stranger  won  his  elder's  re- 
spect by  his  devotion  to 
his  studies,  and  Plato  is 
said  to  have  called  him  the 
mind  of  the  school,  as  well 
as  the  reader.  That  in 
time  there  grew  up  in  Aris- 
totle's mind  serious  oppo- 
sition to  many  of  the  Pla- 
tonic theories  is  true,  but 
the  details  handed  down  to 
us  are  of  the  nature  of 
anecdotes,  not  facts.  Aris- 
totle remained  twenty  years 
in  Athens,  growing  steadily 
in  reputation  as  a  student 
and  as  a  teacher,  giving  in- 
struction in  rhetoric  as  well 
as  in  philosophy.  On  the 
death  of  Plato,  he  accepted 
the  invitation  of  Hermias, 
ruler  of  Atarneus,  to  visit 
him,  but  this  patron  was 
soon  after  assassinated,  and 
Aristotle  fled  to  Mytilene  with  the  adopted  daughter  of  Hermias, 
Pythias,  whom  he  subsequently  married.  Soon  after  reaching 
Mytilene,  he  was  invited  by  Philip  to  take  charge  of  the  education 
of  Alexander,  a  proposition  which  he  accepted.  For  four  years  he 
remained  there,  until  at  eighteen  Alexander  became  Regent.  How 
considerable  was  the  influence  of  Aristotle  and  how  important  the 
reward  of  his  pupil  is  a  matter  of  uncertainty.  It  is  said  that  the 
despot  gave  Aristotle  vast  sums  to  help  him  in  his  studies,  but  while 
this  is  likely  enough,  the  facts  are  vague.     In  355  B.C.,  Aristotle  returned 


ARISTOTLE. 


SAYINGS  OF  ARISTOTLE— VICISSITUDES  OF  HIS  FAME.         717 

to  Athens,where  he  remained  for  thirteen  years,  teaching  in  the  peri- 
patos,  or  walking-place,  of  the  Lyceum,  whence,  or  from  the  word 
meaning  to  walk  about,  his  disciples  were  called  the  Peripatetics.  The 
death  of  Alexander  gave  new  hopes  to  the  party  opposed  to  Macedon, 
and  Aristotle  was  an  object  of  attack,  ostensibly  on  the  ground  of 
blasphemy,  for  he  was  accused  of  conferring  divine  honors  upon  mor- 
tals, that  is,  upon  his  wife  and  Hermias.  Aristotle  remembered  the 
fate  of  Socrates,  and  discreetly  withdrew,  "  in  order  not  to  give  the 
Athenians  a  second  opportunity  to  commit  sacrilege  against  philoso- 
phy," as  he  is  reported  to  have  said.  Shortly  afterward  he  died,  in 
322  B.C.,  in  the  sixty-third  year  of  his  age. 

The  early  Fathers  of  the  Church  were  not  displeased  to  gather  and 
to  retail  anecdotes  that  set  this  formidable  pagan  in  an  unfavorable 
light,  and  doubtless  their  prejudices  were  protected  by  the  Neo-plato- 
nists,  whose  influence  on  the  beginnings  of  Christianity  was  considerable; 
they  certainly  had  in  their  hearts  no  love  for  Aristotle.  Yet  we  have 
received  from  other  sources  some  of  his  sayings  which  confirm  the 
report  of  his  wit  and  generosity.  On  being  told  that  some  one  had 
spoken  ill  of  him  in  his  absence,  he  said  that  his  maligner  was  welcome 
to  beat  him — in  his  absence.  When  he  was  reproached  with  giving 
aid  to  an  unworthy  man,  he  made  answer  that  he  sympathized  with 
him  not  on  account  of  character,  but  because  he  was  a  man.  Some 
one  asked  him  why  the  society  of  handsome  people  was  agreeable  : 
"  That  is  a  blind  man's  question,"  he  replied. 

"  The  Athenians  have  discovered  two  things,  wheat  and  laws,"  he 
said  ;  "  they  know  how  to  use  the  wheat,  but  not  the  laws." 

"  Hope  is  a  waking  dream." 

Whatever  may  be  the  authenticity  of  these  reported  sayings,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  what  is  left  of  Aristotle's  writings  confirms  the  impres- 
sion of  his  intelligence  and  acuteness,  yet  it  would  be  hard  to  name 
another  eminent  man  whose  fame  has  known  such  great  vicissitudes. 
While  in  the  Middle  Ages  he  was  the  one  infallible  intellectual  guide, 
and  through  the  translation  of  Boethius  established  the  lines  on  which 
the  philosophy  of  that  period  was  to  move,  for  two  hundred  years  his 
power  has  been  broken  and  his  name,  after  being  treated  with  violent 
scorn,  has  been  again  the  object  of  extravagant  laudation  as  well  as  of 
virulent  abuse.  As  we  shall  see  later,  his  treatise  on  the  art  of  writing 
poetry  was  the  corner-stone  of  pseudo-classic  literature  ;  but  he  has 
paid  for  the  reverence  with  which  he  was  once  treated,  by  enduring 
something  not  unlike  religious  persecution.  When  mediaevalism 
revived  early  in  this  centuryAristotle's  fame  arose  anew,  and  there  was 
a  brief  recrudescence  of  his  ancient  glory  along  with  the  revival  of 
Gothic  architecture ;     and   Hegel  found  undreamed-of   merit    in    his 


7i8  ARISTOTLE. 

philosophy  at  the  time  when  old  armor  came  into  use  for  household 
decoration,  and  glaziers  began  to  receive  orders  for  diamond-shaped 
window-panes.  Where  mediaevalism  still  survives,  as  in  the  English 
universities,  the  name  of  Aristotle  is  still  glorified.  These  statements 
are  curious  when  we  remember  that  Plato's  ideal  state  bore  a  notice- 
able resemblance  to  the  condition  of  society  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and 
that  Aristotle  was  the  expression  of  an  inevitable  reaction  ;  the  irony 
of  history  could  go  no  further.  There  is  this  to  be  said,  however,  that 
one  important  part  of  Plato's  Republic  is  authority,  the  authority  of 
the  philosophers,  and  that  he  is  far  from  being  the  only  man  who  has 
thought  that  what  he  regarded  as  the  truth  had  been  found,  and  that 
although  it  had  been  discovered  in  freedom,  it  should  be  enforced  by 
law  rather  than  entrusted  to  the  perils  of  discussion  and  prejudiced 
abuse.  Indeed,  the  way  in  which  the  lofty  ethical  teachings  of  Chris- 
tianity were  petrified  into  a  rigid  code  during  the  Middle  Ages  is 
another  instance  of  the  difference  between  hoping  for  and  holding 
supreme  command.  Observers  have  already  noticed  how  many  liberal 
crown-princes  there  are  and  how  few  liberal  kings — or,  one  might  say, 
how  many  promising  young  men  there  are  in  this  country,  and  how 
few  wise  Presidents — and  Plato's  Republic,  with  its  full  discussion  of 
society,  may  serve  to  show  how  some  liberal  thinkers  would  like  to 
establish  free  thought.  There  is  no  occasion  for  surprise ;  for  persecu- 
tion, if  not  a  proof  of  wisdom,  is  certainly  one  of  zeal. 

That  Aristotle  should  have  become  the  instrument  of  authority  is 
very  natural,  for  at  the  very  moment  when  intellectual  liberty  most 
languished,  the  chosen  guide  would  not  be  the  man  whose  words  were 
animated  by  the  utmost  enthusiasm  for  freedom,  even  if  he  preached 
absolutism.  The  Platonic  Socrates  would  have  been  a  disturbing 
citizen  in  his  own  state,  and  the  one  of  Plato's  dialogues  that  had  the 
most  influence  on  mediaeval  thought  was  the  Timaeus,  which  was  far 
from  supplying  either  scientific  or  spiritual  nutriment  of  a  lasting  kind. 
In  Aristotle  there  was  found  a  man  who  at  least  laid  down  the  law,  if 
not  always  perfectly  intelligibly,  yet  with  firmness  and  vigor,  and  he 
became  an  authority  who  was  regarded  as  inspired. 

While  it  is  one  advantage  of  the  present  time  that  the  past  is 
studied  in  a  scientific  spirit,  Aristotle's  reputation  has  still  suffered 
from  the  exaggerations  of  those  admirers  who  maintain  that  in  his 
writings  are  to  be  found  all  the  germs  of  modern  science,  clearly 
visible,  if  indeed  not  almost  wholly  developed.  These  statements  are 
met  by  the  counter-afifirmation  that  nothing  of  the  sort  is  to  be  seen 
there.  In  the  examination  of  the  works  of  a  metaphysician  and  of  a 
scientific  man,  obviously  the  first  of  these,  who  makes  absolute  state- 
ments about  what  transcends    human  experience,  runs  less  risk   of 


ESTIMATE   OF  ARISTOTLE'S  SCIENTIFIC    THEORIES.  719 

refutation  than  does  a  man  who  speaks  on  subjects  that  can  be  tested 
by  all  his  readers  who  have  trained  eyes.  Hence,  Plato  may  be 
ignored  or  not  counted  as  a  contributor  to  our  knowledge  of  the 
unseen,  but  Aristotle  is  exposed  to  the  disapprobation  of  those  who 
care  to  make  a  comparison  between  his  assertions  and  the  facts  that  have 
been  discovered  by  modern  science.  Examined  in  this  way, — and  the 
test  is  a  severe  one, — Aristotle  can  not  fail  to  receive  an  unfavorable 
judgment ;  what  he  said  he  saw,  has  never  been  seen  by  mortal  man  ; 
what  he  failed  to  see,  is  obvious  to  even  superficial  observers.  His 
alleged  anticipations  of  recent  discoveries  are  few  and  unimportant,  not 
so  interesting  as  many  of  the  happy  conjectures  of  his  predecessors, 
although  many  of  those  were  the  merest  guesses,  built  upon  no  foun- 
dations, and  as  valueless  scientifically  as  were  the  wishes  of  many  peo- 
ple that  they  could  talk  together  by  means  of  an  electric  wire  valueless 
as  prior  claims  to  the  invention  of  the  telephone.  Many  of  these 
earlier  hypotheses  he  treated  with  disdain  for  reasons  which  were 
inaccurate  and  misleading ;  and  the  explanations  of  his  own  which  he 
offered  in  their  place  were  frequently  trivial  and  generally  wrong. 
Yet,  to  judge  Aristotle  in  this  way,  while  it  may  serve  to  correct 
intemperate  praise,  is  scarcely  fairer  than  it  would  be  to  determine  the 
value  of  Solon's  legislation  by  comparing  it  with  the  common  law  of 
England.  We  can  not  estimate  the  value  of  his  work  by  what  we  have 
learned  to  perceive  by  simple  observation.  It  is  easy  to  sneer  at 
Aristotle  for  making  statements  of  so-called  facts  which  may  be  con- 
tradicted even  by  beginners  in  modern  times,  yet  we  should  remember 
that  intelligent  observation  is  the  difficult  result  of  long  training  ;  that 
preconceived  notions,  the  tendency  to  exaggerate,  and  overlook  what 
may  support  or  contradict  an  existing  theory,  are  likely  to  mislead  the 
student.  The  history  of  science,  as  of  literature  and  of  art,  is  a  long 
record  of  the  obstacles  that  thwart  simplicity  and  directness. 

II. 

A  safer  way  of  examining  Aristotle's  contributions  to  knowledge 
is  by  comparing  it  with  what  preceded  it  and  what  followed.  To 
expect  that  by  sheer  effort  of  genius  he  should  have  solved  questions 
that  only  reluctantly  unfolded  their  secret  to  patient  toil,  made  easier 
by  instruments  undreamt  of  in  antiquity,  merely  shows  how  thin  is 
the  veneering  of  scientific  training  when  men  imagine  that  its  results 
will  be  miraculously  attained.  Looked  at  in  this  way,  that  is  to  say, 
with  regard  to  its  position  in  the  history  of  thought,  Aristotle's  per- 
formance deserves  to  be  called  the  first  real  scientific  work  that  the 
world  had  known.     The  earlier  philosophers  who  had  grappled  with 


7  20  ARISTOTLE. 

the  cosmos  had  devised  theories  of  a  poetical  kind,  each  one  fasten- 
ing, as  Grote  has  said,  "  upon  some  one  grand  and  imposing  general- 
ization (set  forth  often  in  verse)  which  he  stretched  as  far  as  it  would 
go  by  various  comparisons  and  illustrations,  but  without  any  attention 
to  adverse  facts  or  reasonings.  Provided  that  his  general  point  of 
view  was  impressive  to  the  imagination,  as  the  old  religious  scheme 
was  to  the  vulgar,  he  did  not  concern  himself  about  the  conditions  of 
proof  or  disproof."  Zeno  and  Socrates  began  the  dialectical  discus- 
sion which  showed  how  vague  and  unsatisfactory  were  such  systems, 
Zeno  by  the  baffling  arguments  that  landed  his  opponents  in  absurdi- 
ties, and  Socrates  by  making  ethics  of  more  importance  than  the  trans- 
cendental physics  of  his  predecessors.  And  the  method  of  Socrates 
was  full  of  instruction  for  Aristotle,  whose  endeavor  it  was  to  give 
not  merely  to  ethics,  but  to  the  whole  subject  of  philosophy,  a  ground 
to  stand  on  that  did  hot  depend  on  fancy  or  taste,  but  was  fixed,  abso- 
lute, and  undeniable  ;  in  short,  to  give  it  a  scientific  basis.  This  step, 
which,  it  will  be  noticed,  is  anything  but  miraculous,  follows  closely 
on  the  work  of  his  predecessors;  without  that, it  could  not  have  been 
taken,  and  its  direction  was  in  the  line,  though  in  advance,  of  the 
natural  development  of  thought,  only  intensified  and  made  more 
urgent  by  reaction  from  Plato.  The  brilliancy  and  eloquence  of  this 
famous  idealist  indubitably  went  for  much  in  accenting  Aristotle's  dis- 
trust of  intuitions  as  the  ground  of  all  real  knowledge,  and  his  confi- 
dence in  sensuous  perception.  The  method  which  he  established, 
the  principle  of  induction,  is  simply  the  method  of  our  whole  lives, 
so  far  as  they  are  under  the  control  of  reason,  and  of  the  great  wealth 
of  modern  science.  Errors  in  his  statement  of  this  instrument  of 
thought,  as  well  as  far  more  numerous  and  more  curious  errors  in  its 
application,  have  been  often  pointed  out,  but  every  beginner  stumbles 
over  obstacles  that  do  not  in  the  least  trouble  his  followers.  In  spite 
of  crudity  and  blundering,  Aristotle  saw,  even  if  not  with  perfect  clear- 
ness, what  seemed  to  be  the  only  profitable  method  for  scientific  work, 
and  endeavored  to  apply  it  to  the  whole  field  of  human  knowledge. 
This  is  what  gave  him  his  enormous  influence  later,  and  wins  for  him 
the  respect  which  is  still  his  due.  So  much  good  work  does  not  need 
to  be  exaggerated  in  order  to  be  admired,  or  to  be  overpraised  to  prove 
interesting. 

Aristotle's  writings,  which  are  fortunately  many  in  number,  demand 
careful,  dispassionate  criticism.  His  style  is  as  unlike  Plato's  as  possible. 
He  is  never  eloquent,  or  pathetic,  or  brilliant ;  all  the  grace  and  charm 
of  the  earlier  philosopher  died  with  him  ;  all  the  dramatic  vividness 
is  missing  in  the  somewhat  professorial  utterance  of  the  "  Stagirite, 
whose  writings  often  read  like  the  notes  of  a  lecturer  who  is  very  indif- 


SYSTEM  OF  RHETORIC— VICISSITUDES  OF  HIS    WRITINGS.      ']2\ 

ferent  to  literary  form.  It  is  easy  to  believe  that  his  instruction  in 
rhetoric  was  very  unlike  that  of  most  of  the  Greek  teachers  of  this  art, 
and  that  he  had  but  little  in  common  with  the  flowery  Isocrates,  who 
was  by  far  the  most  prominent  of  them  all,  and  his  most  powerful 
rival.  Certainly,  the  habit  of  the  professional  instructors,  of  compel- 
ling their  pupils  to  learn  approved  speeches  by  heart, may  well  have 
dissatisfied  others  than  Aristotle,  who  compared  such  counselors  to 
a  master  who  should  teach  his  apprentices  how  to  make  shoes,  by 
giving  them  a  large  number  already  made,  to  study.  His  own  plan 
bears  a  likeness  rather  to  instructing  them  in  the  anatomy  of  the  foot, 
a  method  which  is  tardily  producing  good  shoes,  as  a  similar  scientific 
method  raises  rhetoric  from  the  state  of  mere  imitation.  In  dialectics, 
too,  the  teachers  made  their  pupils  learn  a  certain  number  of  dia- 
logues by  rote,  and  the  same  objection  applied  here.  Aristotle's 
method,  which  he  acknowledged  might  be  defective,  was  one,  however, 
in  the  right  direction,  toward  a  scientific  study  of  logic. 

A  curious  difficulty  exists  with  regard  to  the  writings  of  Aristotle. 
Not  only  have  many  been  lost,  and  have  ungenuine  works  found  a 
place  among  those  ascribed  to  him,  while  the  authenticity  of  others  is 
a  matter  of  controversy,  but  there  is  also  a  curious  lack  of  harmony 
between  the  list  of  his  writings  mentioned  by  the  ancients  and  those 
that  have  come  down  to  us.  What  seems  probable  is  that  most  of 
his  early  writings,  which  possessed  a  literary  charm  wholly  absent  in 
what  has  reached  us,  have  been  lost,  and  that  we  possess  his  later  and 
more  serious  work.  The  story  of  the  preservation  of  his  work  is  most 
romantic  ;  whether  it  has  other  claims  to  attention  may  be  doubted. 
The  story  hangs  together  with  suspicious  exactness.  It  seems,  if  the 
report  is  to  be  believed,  that  when  Aristotle  died  his  library  and  manu- 
scripts came  into  the  possession  of  Theophrastus,  who  was  the  head  of 
the  Peripatetic  school  until  he  died  in  287  B.C.  This  collection  Theo- 
phrastus left  to  Neleus,  who  carried  it  to  his  home  at  Shepsis,  in  ^olis, 
and  there  it  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  descendants  of  Neleus  for 
nearly  two  hundred  years.  Rather,  not  in  the  hands,  but  in  their 
cellar,  to  preserve  it  from  the  kings  of  Pergamos,  who,  like  modern 
borrowers,  used  to  enlarge  their  libraries  by  helping  themselves  to  the 
books  of  others.  When  this  region  came  into  the  possession  of  the  Ro- 
mans, the  ban  was  removed,  and  the  cellar  emptied.  The  manuscripts 
were  purchased  by  Apellicon,  a  rich  Athenian,  who  tried  his  hand, 
though  unsuccessfully,  at  editing  the  treasures  thus  exhumed.  When 
Sylla  captured  Athens,  he  found  the  fashion  of  annexing  libraries 
supported  by  good  authority,  and  he  took  the  library  of  Apellicon  to 
Rome,  where  the  Aristotelian  writings  were  classified  and  edited  by 
the  Rhodian  Andronicus,  and  the  popular  works  of  Aristotle  fell  into 


722  ARISTOTLE. 

disrepute  while  these  solider  ones  began  to  be  studied.  What  we 
have  of  the  Stagirite  is  due  to  this  lucky  chance.  Such,  at  least,  is 
the  story,  which  comes  down  to  us  full  of  detail ;  but,  it  may  be  worth 
our  while  to  notice,  we  treat  the  ancients  with  a  manifestation  of 
gratitude  that  is  the  delight  of  cynics.  That  is  to  say,  when  they 
slur  over  the  incidents,  we  abuse  them  for  their  reticence  ;  and  when 
they  recount  them  at  considerable  length,  we  refuse  to  believe  them. 

III. 

Philosophy,  according  to  Aristotle,  is  a  science  apart  with  a  distinct 
aim,  the  knowledge  of  the  absolute,  and  thus  including  all  the  sepa- 
rate sciences,  each  one  of  which  is  a  distinct  philosophy.  Herein  he 
affirmed  what  the  Sophists  and  Skeptics  denied,  namely,  the  possi- 
bility of  science  as  something  attainable  by  the  human  intellect. 
Man  alone  possesses  speech,  whereby  we  can  give  utterance  to  our 
conceptions ;  and  by  means  of  our  reason  we  conceive  things  as  they 
are.  The  general  methods  of  expression,  or  parts  of  speech,  the  cate- 
gories, enumerated  below,  correspond  to  the  different  forms  in  which 
we  conceive  them  or  to  the  categories  of  our  perception  of  them  these 
categories  again  expressing  the  possible  relation  of  objects  to  one  an- 
other. Such,  briefly  stated,  was  the  groundwork  of  Aristotle's  notion 
of  the  possible  ends  to  be  accomplished  by  the  human  mind,  and  its 
universality  marks  a  new  period  in  thought,  when  a  wide,  general 
scheme  could  be  conceived.  Naturally,  this  is  incomplete  in  view  of 
the  enormous  enlargement  of  men's  knowledge,  but  this  objection,  if 
it  be  an  objection,  is  insignificant  when  we  consider  the  conditions 
under  which  it  was  formed.  Obviously,  too,  we  shall  find  the  method 
by  which  it  was  carried  out  depending  on  the  contemporaneous  con- 
dition of  men's  knowledge. 

Logic,  Physics,  and  Ethics  were  the  main  subjects  of  philosophy 
before  the  time  of  Aristotle,  and  they  thus  demanded  and  received  his 
especial  study.  Yet  while  in  Plato  all  these  matters  were  blended  to- 
gether under  the  head  of  intellectual  interests,  in  Aristotle  we  find 
them  sharply  discriminated  and  further  divided  into  Logic,  Rhetoric, 
Metaphysics,  Physics,  Psychology,  Ethics,  Politics,  and  Esthetics. 
In  what  order  these  subjects  are  to  be  studied  is  a  question  with 
many  diverse  answers,  for  what  Aristotle  said  and  what  he  meant 
have  been  for  many  centuries  never-ending  topics  of  controversy  for 
hosts  of  commentators.  A  useful  and  generally  accepted  division, 
however,  is  that  into  practical,  constructive,  and  theoretical  subjects. 
Practical  science  may  be  taken  as  treating  of  man  and  human  action, 
and  includes  the  Ethics  and  Politics.     Constructive  science  deals  with 


THE    ORGANON—ITS   CONSTITUENT  PARTS.  723 

art  and  its  laws,  as  studied  in  his  Poetics ;  and  the  theoretical  science 
has  to  do  with  physics,  mathematics,  and  theology,  or  metaphysics. 
It  is  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  these  divisions  are  more  of  the 
nature  of  a  mnemonic  device  than  a  representation  of  any  distinction 
which  Aristotle  anywhere  sets  down,  but,  accepting  them  with  this 
understanding,  we  find  the  main  boundary-lines  are  those  between 
theoretical  and  practical  science. 

Underlying  the  whole  course  of  studies  which  he  pursued  and  in 
great  measure  established  on  a  solid  footing,  was  the  dialectic  method, 
by  which  alone  any  results  could  be  obtained.  All  of  this  subject  we 
include  under  the  head  of  Logic,  a  name  which  it  did  not  receive  until 
after  the  time  of  Aristotle,  but  to  his  early  editors  it  was  known  as  the 
Organon,  or  instrument,  a  title  that  obviously  suggested  to  Bacon  his 
Novum  Organon.  To  the  Organon  belong  six  separate  treatises,  the 
Categories,  On  Interpretation,  The  First  Series  of  Analytics,  The  Sec- 
ond Series  of  Analytics,  Topics,  and  Fallacies.  The  genuineness  of 
the  first  two  of  these  is  doubted  by  some,  although,  even  if  these 
skeptics  are  right,  it  is  yet  true  that  the  doctrines  which  they  teach 
are  distinctly  Aristotelian,  and  during  the  Middle  Ages  they  were 
studied  more  busily  than  any  of  his  works.  These  categories  were 
a  test  of  the  various  predicaments  possible  in  any  imaginable  propo- 
sition ;  they  were  :  First,  Essence,  or  substance, — as,  man,  horse.  Sec- 
ond, How  much,  or  quantity, — as,  two  or  three  cubits  long.  Third, 
What  manner  of,  or  quality, — as,  white,  black,  learned.  Fourth,  To 
something,  or  relation, — as,  double,  half,  greater,  or  smaller.  Fifth, 
Where, — as,  in  Athens,  Sixth,  When, — as,  last  week,  to-morrow.  Sev- 
enth, In  what  position, — as,  standing,  or  sitting.  Eighth,  Having, — as, 
to  be  shod  or  armed.  Ninth,  Activity, — as,  burning  or  cutting.  Tenth, 
Passivity, — as,  being  cut  or  being  burned.  As  an  ingenious  writer  has 
pointed  out,  this  curious  catalogue  of  the  possibilities  of  human 
thought  are  but  general  expressions  of  all  the  simple  forms  of  inter- 
rogation existing  in  the  Greek  language  ;  but,  great  as  was  the  atten- 
tion paid  to  the  Categories  in  the  Middle  Ages,  Aristotle  appears  not 
to  have  set  any  great  store  by  them.  The  essay  On  Interpretation 
is  far  more  important ;  and  although  now  much  it  says  is  become 
familiar  and  trite,  at  the  time,  the  student  of  Plato  may  be  sure,  it 
must  have  prepared  the  way  for  clearness  of  thought  and  statement. 
The  subject  that  he  treats  here  is  the  proposition,  regarded  as  to  its 
truth  or  falsity,  and  the  early  attempt  to  state  what  a  proposition  is 
has  great  importance  in  the  history  of  thought.  In  Rhetoric,  as  Aris- 
totle said,  he  had  been  preceded  by  many,  but  Logic  he  practically 
worked  out  for  himself.  In  the  Topics  he  treated  the  science  of  dis- 
putation, or  Dialectics,  so  well  known  to  the  Athenians,  wherein  he 


724  ARISTOTLE. 

endeavored  to  establish  such  general  principles  as  would  enable  a 
pupil  to  discover  and  to  judge  reasons  for  and  against  any  subject  of 
discussion.  Naturally  the  consideration  of  this  matter  brought  him 
to  the  examination  of  the  theory  of  the  syllogism,  which  he  expressly 
states  that  he  was  the  first  to  formulate.  To  this  work  his  Analytics 
was  devoted,  the  first  dealing  with  demonstration,  the  second  with 
dialectic  and  sophistic.  The  work  on  Fallacies,  or  Sophistic  Refuta- 
tion, took  up  a  subject  that  distinctly  called  for  the  attention  of  a 
logical  thinker.  The  indulgence  which  Aristotle  asked  for  the  inevi- 
table crudity  of  his  work  is  not  always  granted  him  by  those  who  for- 
get how  very  hard  are  just  those  first  steps  in  the  foundation  of  a 
science. 

In  his  Metaphysics,  Aristotle  in  the  first  place  gave  a  historical 
sketch  of  the  work  of  his  predecessors,  to  which  we  are  indebted  for 
almost  all  that  we  know  of  their  efforts  in  this  direction,  and  what  he 
mentioned  of  their  theories  he  criticised  freely,  in  order  to  build  up 
on  the  ruins  of  their  work  the  theory  which  he  had  formed  for  himself. 
He  has  been  accused  of  harshness  and  misrepresentation  in  this 
part  of  his  metaphysical  writings ;  if  the  accusation  is  accurate,  it 
shows,  for  one  thing,  that  he  regarded  the  old  systems  as  dangerous 
foes,  for  one  is  impartial  only  when  all  peril  has  disappeared.  Against 
Plato's  notion  of  ideas  Aristotle  spoke  with  considerable  warmth, 
maintaining  against  it  his  own  theory  that  the  idea  is  nothing  but  the 
form  in  which  the  phenomenon  or  the  material  comes  into  existence, 
and  that  it  does  this  through  a  third  principle,  namely,  movement.  In 
his  view,  the  form  is  the  actual  thing,  and  matter  more  the  potential 
thing,  that  may  become  this  or  that,  but  not  necessarily  any  single 
object.  Thus  a  piece  of  wood  is  only  potentially,  say,  the  leg  of  a 
table,  only  when  it  has  assumed  that  form  does  it  become  a  sensible, 
concrete  object.  Matter  has  a  natural  disposition  for  acquiring  form, 
and  form  is  the  actual  condition  as  distinguished  from  the  potential 
condition  of  matter.  Only  through  movement  can  these  concrete  ob- 
jects attain  existence.  This  movement  is  an  eternal,  unbroken  process, 
which  is  inconceivable  without  a  beginning,  and  without  an  unmoved 
thing  which  is  the  source  of  all  movement.  There  are  then  three 
divisions,  that  which  is  only  moved  and  does  not  move — matter ;  that 
which  moves  and  is  moved — nature  ;  and  that  which  moves  and  is  not 
moved — God.  This  God,  the  cause  of  all  movement,  must  be  material, 
indivisible,  and  unbounded  by  space,  without  motion,  change,  or 
passion  ;  it  must  be  actual  reality,  pure  energy.  This  pure  activity 
can  be  found  only  in  pure  thought  ;  God  is  then  absolute  thought, 
and,  so  far  as  he  is  this,  is  the  real  and  living  source  of  all  life. 
But   this   thought  can  be  directed  only  upon  what  is  highest   and 


SCIENTIFIC    THEORIES— COSMOGONY.  725 

best,  that  is,  upon  himself ;  hence,  God  is  both  thinking  and  the  thing 
thought. 

In  Physics  Aristotle  worked  hard  and  long ;  what  he  did  has  been 
absurdly  praised  and  violently  ridiculed,  two  wrongs  that  counter- 
balance each  other.  Many — indeed,  most — of  his  explanations  of  facts 
that  have  since  been  set  in  a  proper  light  by  science  may  not  bear 
serious  consideration,  but  what  is  more  important  is  his  attitude 
before  questions  then  insoluble.  All  the  forces  of  nature,  he  main- 
tained, were  forms  of  movement,  which  caused  all  changes  and  all 
development  and  decay.  The  differences  between  the  elementary 
bodies  were  original,  their  number  was  four,  and  they  were  thus  com- 
posed :  warmth  and  dryness  produced  fire  ;  warmth  and  moisture, 
air ;  cold  and  moisture,  water ;  cold  and  dryness,  earth.  These  ele- 
mentary substances  are  found  united  in  all  compound  bodies,  and 
the  changes  among  them  produce  all  development  and  decay.  Out- 
side of  these  things  lies  the  ether  with  a  circular  movement ;  this 
ether  is  an  eternal,  unchangeable  substance,  far  above  all  the  con- 
flict of  material  objects.  Its  relation  to  the  elements,  and  of  the  ele- 
ments to  one  another,  constitutes  the  nature  of  the  universe.  The 
earth  appeared  to  him  to  be  a  globe-shaped  body,  about  which  other 
globe-shaped  bodies  moved  in  concentric  circles,  arranged  in  layers, 
one  beyond  the  other.  The  limit  of  this  universe  was  heaven,  the 
region  of  divine  things,  where  is  neither  space  nor  time.  In  the 
better  known  universe  everything  was  arranged  by  divine  foresight, 
for  specific  benefit  to  men  ;  outside  of  this  is  the  heaven  of  the  gods, 
unaffected  by  our  laws  as  by  our  misdeeds.  Let  us  leave  these  fan- 
tastic guesses  to  consider  Aristotle's  statements  about  the  earth.  He 
wrote  on  natural  history,  meteorology,  mechanics,  on  the  soul,  carry- 
ing his  encyclopaedic  studies  far  and  into  many  regions.  What  is 
worthy  of  attention  is  not  his  power  of  observation,  but  rather  his 
accumulation  of  facts.  In  this  respect  he  showed  that  he  was  at 
least  moving  toward,  if  not  in,  the  right  path.  Some  of  his  remarks 
are  full  of  wisdom  ;  thus  he  says,  speaking  of  the  parthogenesis  of  bees: 
"  There  are  not  facts  enough  to  warrant  a  conclusion,  and  more  de- 
pendence must  be  placed  on  facts  than  on  reasonings,  which  must 
agree  with  facts,"  but  these  golden  words,  which  are  the  very  core  of 
science,  were  not  always  the  inspiration  of  his  thought.  Aristotle 
was  after  all  a  human  being,  and  habit,  authority,  and  prejudice 
combined  to  lead  him  astray.  Often  he  saw  the  truth,  but  more  often 
he  wandered  away  from  it  ;  like  others,  he  failed  to  practice  what  he 
was  competent  to  preach. 

The  list  of  his  errors  that   the  most  indifferent   observation  might 
have  corrected  is  very  long,  and  doubtless  came  from  a  hasty  accumu- 


726  ARISTOTLE. 

lation  of  alleged  facts  from  various  sources  rather  than  from  direct 
study.  Apparently  he  regarded  the  work  of  science  as  already  com- 
pleted, and  consequently  all  the  work  of  the  ancients  that  has  formed 
the  basis  of  modern  science  was  the  work  of  later  men  who  had 
learned  to  doubt  the  principles  on  which  he  rested  with  such  compla- 
cency. The  coherence  and  the  absoluteness  of  his  theories  gave  them 
force  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but  a  real  advance  has  been  made  only  when 
his  system  has  fallen  into  neglect.  No  part  of  it,  however,  was  longer- 
lived  than  his  teleological  notions,  which  permeated  modern  thought 
with  their  apparent  proof  that  everything  in  the  universe  was  created 
for  the  ends  of  practical  utility.  This  notion  of  a  cause  still  lies  deep 
in  men's  minds,  dimming  and  modifying  direct  study  by  imposing  a 
theory  with  which  their  investigations  must  comply.  A  great  deal  of 
thinking  has  been  saved  for  men  by  falling  back  on  Plato's  ideals  and 
Aristotle's  arguments  from  design. 

The  practical  philosophy,  as  it  is  called,  of  Aristotle, consists  of  his 
treatises  on  Ethics  and  on  Politics;  and  that  on  Rhetoric  may  also  be 
included  in  this  list,  for  in  his  discussion  of  this  subject  he  treats 
many  questions  of  ethics  that  one  is  not  accustomed  to  find  in  such 
books.  They  were  not  common  in  Aristotle's  time  ;  the  ordinary 
book  of  rhetoric  of  his  day  was  a  practical  manual  of  directions,  like 
its  modern  representative,  while  Aristotle's  is  a  serious  discussion  of 
the  principles  of  human  nature  as  they  are  affected  by  oratory.  The 
sources  of  persuasion  he  stated  to  be,  first,  the  personal  character 
which  the  speaker  is  able  to  exhibit  or  assume ;  second,  the  condition 
of  mind  into  which  he  can  bring  his  audience  ;  and,  third,  the  argu- 
ments, real  or  apparent,  which  he  can  bring  forward.  He  distin- 
guishes, too,  the  different  kinds  of  oratory,  and  discusses  the  various 
passions  to  which  the  speaker  may  appeal.  These  divisions  of  his 
work  are  followed  by  sundry  technical  rules  concerning  the  art  of  the 
rhetorician.  These  are  curious  and  interesting  enough,  but  obviously 
the  most  important  part  of  the  book  is  that  in  which  the  more  gen- 
eral part  of  the  subject  comes  under  discussion.  A  similar  discussion 
occupies  the  greater  part  of  the  treatise  on  Ethics,  the  Nichomachaean 
Ethics,  as  it  is  called,  after  Nichomachus,  the  son  of  Aristotle,  who 
may  have  edited  it  and  so  have  connected  his  name  with  the  work. 
In  this  book  Aristotle,  who  defines  happiness  as  the  ultimate  and 
highest  purpose  of  all  action,  tries  to  ascertain  by  what  means  it  may 
be  attained.  It  is,  he  says,  the  energy  of  life  existing  for  its  own 
sake,  according  to  virtue  which  exists  by  and  for  itself.  Virtue  again 
is  of  two  sorts,  intellectual  and  moral  ;  the  moral  virtues  being  capable 
of  being  acquired  by  practice.  Training  in  right-doing  will  help  to 
form  habits  of  right-doing.     The  man  who  practises  abstinence  will 


THE  POLITICS— THEORY  OF  GOVERNMENT.  72? 

help  to  form  the  habit  of  abstinence,  a  statement  that  is  full  of  physio- 
logical as  well  as  moral  truth.  Furthermore,  virtue  is  a  matter  that 
can  not  be  defined  with  a  fullness  that  shall  cover  all  cases  ;  it  is  a 
course  that  lies  between  two  extremes,  as  prudent  economy,  for  ex- 
ample, has  to  steer  its  way  between  extravagance  and  niggardliness, 
and  to  detect  the  golden  mean  requires  extreme  tact  and  care.  Aris- 
totle draws  many  vivid  pictures  of  the  wise  application  of  the  virtues, 
in  which  he  shows  his  own  full  comprehension  of  the  honorable  char- 
acteristics of  a  worthy  man,  especially  in  what  he  says  about  friend- 
ship. Closely  connected  with  the  Ethics  is  his  Politics,  in  which  he 
discusses  the  happiness  of  whole  peoples  and  not  of  individuals.  He 
discusses  the  various  civic  relations  of  people  and  the  different  forms 
of  government,  and  then  takes  up  the  consideration  of  what  state 
would  be  the  one  best  suited  for  human  beings,  or,  in  other  words, 
what  mode  of  life  is  the  most  desirable  ?  Among  the  conditions  he 
gives  prominence  to  the  education  of  the  young  in  such  a  way  that 
the  harmonious  cultivation  of  all  physical  and  mental  powers  shall 
establish  the  virtue  which  was  inculcated  in  his  Ethics. 

The  two  books  are  full  of  the  shrewdest  judgments  of  human  nature, 
and  acute  criticisms, — the  Politics  especially, — of  Greek  civic  life.  At 
times  he  speaks  like  a  modern  man,  that  is  to  say,  with  scientific  in- 
sight, although  his  range  of  vision  is  limited  to  a  narrow  field  by  the 
fact  that  the  Greeks  had  not  attained  a  conception  of  the  greatness 
of  a  nation  as  compared  with  the  more  limited  importance  of  a  single 
city.  Even  Plato  started  from  the  conditions  of  Hellenic  civilization 
when  he  constructed  his  theoretic  state,  and  we  may  be  prepared  to 
find  in  Aristotle  acceptance  of  facts  as  they  were.  A  few  lines  from 
the  eighth  chapter  of  the  .eighth  book  of  the  Politics  will  illustrate  his 
clearness  and  wisdom  : 

"  In  any  polity  in  which  a  successful  fusion  of  various  elements  has  been 
achieved,  we  ought  above  everything  to  be  on  our  guard  against  illegality, 
and  especially  to  take  precautions  against  insignificant  steps  in  this  direc- 
tion. For  illegality  is  imperceptibly  admitted  into  States  and  brings  them 
to  ruin,  as  small  expenses  frequently  incurred  are  the  ruin  of  properties. 
The  reason  why  the  delusive  process  is  not  observed  is  that  it  does  not  take 
place  all  at  once  ;  for  the  judgment  is  deluded  by  petty  acts  of  illegality, 
according  to  the  sophistical  argument  that  if  every  part  is  small,  so  is  the 
whole.  But  although  there  is  one  sense  in  which  this  is  true,  there  is  an- 
other in  which  it  is  false.  The  truth  is  that  the  whole  or  the  sum  total  is 
not  small,  but  is  only  composed  of  small  parts. 

We  must  be  on  our  guard  then  in  the  first  place  against  this  beginning 
of  revolution,  and  secondly  we  must  put  no  trust  in  the  measures  concocted 
as  artifices  to  impose  upon  the  masses,  as  they  are  proved  by  experience  to 
be  failures." 

But  brief  extracts  can  not  do  justice  to  a  treatise  that  depends  for 


728  *  ARISTOTLE. 

its  value  on  a  large  number  of  closely  connected  links.  It  is  not  in 
single  sentences  that  Aristotle's  merit  is  most  conspicuous,  but  rather 
the  grasp  that  he  gets  of  his  subject,  and  the  coherence  of  this  treat- 
ment,that  are  admirable. 

The  examination  of  these  two  treatises  is  not  a  simple  matter. 
Aristotle's  style  is  without  the  grace  and  poetic  fancy  to  be  found  in 
Plato,  who  continually  delights  us  so  that  in  yielding  to  his  charm  we 
forget  the  obstacles  about  which  he  leads  us.  To  be  sure,  Aristotle 
often  attracts  us  by  a  shrewd  and  homely  wit,  but  the  value  of  this  is 
far  less  than  that  of  Plato's  impassioned  eloquence  ;  it  is  indeed  the 
customary  quality  of  those  safer  guides  who,  if  it  may  be  said  with- 
out opprobrium,  creep  rather  than  fly.  Then,  too,  it  presents  other 
difficulties.  He  moves  backwards  and  forwards  in  confusing  uncer- 
tainty ;  at  times  he  knots  the  thread  of  his  argument  so  that  we 
can  not  readily  make  out  in  which  direction  he  is  tending ;  his  digres- 
sions are  many  and  vexatious  ;  he  repeats  himself  unnecessarily  when 
his  point  is  already  clear,  and  again  omits  needed  explanation — like  a 
bad  annotator — when  his  meaning  is  obscure.  And  when  these  difficul- 
ties are  taken  into  account,  there  remains  to  be  considered  the  quality 
of  his  work,  his  continual  effort  to  maintain  an  equable  position 
between  extravagance  and  a  sordid  precision.  He  refuses  to  abandon 
the  solid  ground  of  facts  ;  he  shuns  an  appeal  to  the  ideal ;  he  seeks 
the  safe  and  sure  middle-ground  ;  he  dreads  illusions.  Thus, while  he 
winds  up  one  great  era  by  the  accumulation  of  its  vast  experience,  he 
opens  another  in  which  the  force  of  law  is  felt  as  something  universal. 
The  boundless  ardor  of  the  Greeks  is  transmuted  into  a  quality  that 
can  flourish  outside  of  Greece  ;  his  strong  monotheism,  his  monarchical 
tastes,  his  cold  morality,  his  inclination  towards  a  distinct  mate- 
rialism, all  mark  a  great  change.  It  may  well  have  seemed  that 
inspiration  had  expired,  and  that  all  that  was  left  for  men  was  the 
capacity  for  taking  pains. 

This  statement  makes  clear  the  distinction, that  is  continually  forced 
upon  the  reader,  between  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  in  the  work  of  the 
later  writer  we  find  frequent  criticism  of  his  master.  This  is  espe- 
cially true  of  the  Politics,  when  his  aim  is  not,  like  that  of  Plato,  the 
formation  of  an  ideal  state,  but  the  definition  of  the  best  system  that 
can  be  devised.  The  subject  was  a  burning  one,  and  they,  although 
the  greatest,  were  not  the  only  men  who  were  discussing  it.  We 
know  Xenophon's  contributions  to  the  question,  and  history  tells  us 
what  solution  was  given  to  the  need  that  the  narrow  boundaries  of 
Hellas  should  be  broken  and  that  the  civilized  world  should  receive 
its  teachings,  and  in  Aristotle  we  may  read  a  most  important  docu- 
ment regarding  the  theory.     In   his  Politics  he  sets  down  the  natural 


THE  HAPPINESS  OF  STATES.  729 

rights  of  the  state,  resting  on  the  double  basis  of  the  family  and  the 
slave.  He  sharply  criticises  Plato's  communism  in  wives  and  prop- 
erty, and  proceeds  to  discuss  the  various  forms  of  government. 
These  he  enumerates  in  the  following  order  of  merit:  i,  monarchy, 
2,  aristocracy,  3,  constitutional  republic,  4,  democracy,  5,  oligarchy, 
6,  tyranny  ;  deciding,  however,  that,  human  nature  being  what  it  is,  a 
constitutional  republic  is  the  form  to  be  preferred.  The  best  state  is 
that  which  grants  the  best  lives  to  its  inhabitants,  and  what  this  is, 
and  how  it  is  to  be  attained,  he  defines  by  a  most  practical  exposition 
of  his  notions  concerning  the  aims  and  methods  of  education ;  here 
as  everywhere  we  see  him  legislating,  not  for  a  Utopia,  but  for  the 
world  that  he  saw  about  him,  and  we  observe  his  continual  tendency 
to  keep  near  the  earth,  to  examine  things  as  they  are  and  not  as 
they  might  be.  The  peril  of  this  habit  of  mind  we  may  detect  in  his 
contempt  for  the  happier  guesses  of  the  Ionic  philosophers  ;  its  value, 
in  his  continual  shrewd  wisdom.  After  all,  jesting  Pilate's  question, 
"  What  is  Truth  ?  "  is  not  yet  answered. 

In  the  Ethics  we  may  see  more  vivid  instances  of  his  safe  medio- 
crity, if  this  word  may  be  accepted  without  any  evil  flavor,  or,  if  the 
phrase  is  preferred,  of  his  hard-headedness.  The  first  part  of  the  dis- 
cussion is  not  devoid  of  a  certain  obscurity,  but  the  upshot  of  his 
argumentation  is  that  the  happiness  which  is  the  chief  end  of  life 
must  rest  on  human  nature,  or  the  facts  of  life,  and  not  be  a  remote 
ideal. 

It  is  not  the  lofty  preaching  of  a  seer  or  an  enthusiastic  instructor 
that  we  find  in  his  cooler  pages,  but  a  philosopher's  exposition  of  the 
virtues  that  reminds  us  of  the  legislator's  discussion  of  right  and 
wrong.  Happiness,  according  to  him,  is  not  an  exalted  state,  but  the 
result  of  the  equilibrium  between  the  intellect  and  the  animal  elements 
of  human  nature.  It  is  like  Aristotle  himself  in  its  avoidance  of 
extremes  ;  it  is  this  harmonious  wisdom,  the  mean,  at  which  he  ever 
aims,  that  he  sets  before  the  world.  The  extracts  given  below  will 
make  clear  what  in  comparison  with  Plato's  fervent  appeals  sounds  like 
a  tepid  inculcation  of  discreet  conduct.  Yet  there  is  room  for  both ; 
the  world  has  never  been  overcrowded  by  discretion.  His  way  of 
commending  it  by  continual  examination  of  possible  conditions  is 
full  of  the  seeds  of  future  casuistry,  and  the  nature  of  his  answers 
corresponds  closely  with  the  common  sense  of  his  Politics  and  with  the 
general  yearning  of  his  fellow-countrymen  for  a  precise  statement  of 
formial  law.  Just  as  he  recommended  a  state  that  admitted  to  citizen- 
ship only  men  who  enjoyed  an  honorable  leisure,  so  here  he  presup- 
posed a  cool  wisdom,  guiding  and  controlling  every  action ;  he  thus 
contributed  to  the  establishment   of  an  aristocracy  of  the  intelligent. 


730  ARISTOTLE. 

and  made  himself  a  safe  master  for  men  who  accepted  authority  and 
discipline.  A  Platonist  would  make  a  bad  slave, — at  any  moment  he 
might  perceive  the  divine  vision,  and  then  obedience  would  fall  from 
him;  but  an  Aristotelian  would  never  know  such  mutiny;  active  en- 
thusiasm would  be,  to  his  mind,  a  mere  outbreak  of  ignorance,  leading 
only  to  confusion.  And  between  these  two  tendencies  the  world  is 
ever  moving;  to  condemn  either  is  as  unwise  as  it  is  ineffectual,  and. 
has  for  its  main  result  only  information  about  the  man  who  sees 
fit  to  blame  or  praise. 

Every  fault  has  been  found  in  Aristotle  as  well  as  every  virtue,  but 
his  historical  importance  has  never  been  diminished  ;  this  was  due,  in 
some  measure,  to  his  packing  up  the  results  of  Greek  thought  into 
portable  manuals  for  other  people.  He  prepared  condensed  intellectual 
nutriment  for  foreign  races;  and  when  Greece  was  almost  as  wholly  for- 
gotten as  Carthage  or  the  Etruscan  civilization,  Aristotle  kept  the 
sacred  fire  burning,  even  if  dimly,  against  its  more  brilliant  rekindling 
in  the  Renaissance. 

There  remains  to  be  considered  his  treatise  on  Poetics,  a  book  which, 
as  has  been  said,  has  exercised  a  long-lived  and  important  influence 
on  later  literature.  That  it  has  had  this  influence  is  natural  enough. 
Men  prefer  to  learn  their  ethics  and  politics  in  the  costly  school  of 
experience.  Theories  on  these  subjects  have  as  little  seeming  practi- 
cal importance  for  most  of  us  as  do  investigations  in  the  higher  math- 
ematics, but  instruction  in  literature  is  always  welcome,  and  the  more 
authoritatively  it  is  uttered,  the  more  willingly  is  it  obeyed.  Certainly 
Aristotle's  Poetics  has  never  lacked  admirers  and  disciples  ;  until  very 
recently  it  was  the  corner-stone  on  which,  one  might  say,  a  good  part 
of  modern  literature  was  built.  So  long  as  literature  grew  up  under 
fear  of  what  had  been  done  by  Greece  and  Rome,  and  it  was  thought 
that  the  only  way  of  writing  an  epic  poem  was  by  imitating  the  epics 
of  the  ancients,  and  that  no  other  tragedies  than  theirs  were  at  all 
worthy  of  consideration,  critics  and  writers  combined  in  enforcing  the 
rules  of  Aristotle,  whose  authority  in  literature  naturally  grew  greater 
from  the  reverence  his  name  still  inspired.  Naturally  enough,  they 
regarded  Romans  and  Greeks  as  together  composing  the  ancients, 
and  remained  contented  with  reading  Seneca's  plays  and  Aristotle's 
Poetics,  which  last  formed  the  basis  of  Horace's  rules,  without 
troubling  themselves  to  examine  the  great  Greek  tragedies.  The 
famous  three  unities  which  so  long  held  control  over  the  classic 
tragedies  of  Europe  rested  on  the  words  of  Aristotle,  and  on  what 
it  was  supposed  he  would  have  said  if  he  had  not  deemed  the  state- 
ment superfluous.  The  unity  of  time  seemed  secure  in  obedience  to 
his  assertion  that  tragedy  is  limited  by  one  period  of  the  sun,  with 


LITERARY  PRECEPTS.  73^ 

but  little  variation  permissible.  The  question,  to  be  sure,  arose 
whether  this  meant  twelve  or  twenty-four  hours,  but  the  incon- 
venience of  either  limit  was  accepted  when  authority  was  triumph- 
ant. The  unity  of  action  none  questioned  ;  that  of  place  was  the  one 
that  rested  on  what  Aristotle  would  have  said  if  he  had  thought  it 
worth  while.  Of  the  four  divisions  of  poetry  mentioned  by  him,  the 
epic,  tragic,  comic,  and  dithyrambic,  it  is  only  the  second  that  is 
spoken  of  at  any  considerable  length.  And  while  it  is  not  wise  to 
spend  time  in  discussing  what  might  have  happened,  we  may  yet  find 
some  consolation  for  our  loss  in  the  thought  of  how  much  heavier 
would  have  been  the  load  under  which  pseudo-classical  literature  stag- 
gered, if  more  direct  precepts  of  Aristotle  had  come  down  to  us.  A 
fuller  collection  of  rules  would  have  meant  a  longer  pupilage  and  a 
harder  struggle  before  men  dared  to  write  without  an  eye  on  their 
Greek  or  Roman  masters.  As  it  was,  this  fragmentary  treatise,  which 
after  all  may  not  have  been  written  by  Aristotle,  has  been  the  subject 
of  never-ending  controversy.  One  phrase  that  it  contains — a  defini- 
tion of  the  function  of  tragedy — has  received  from  commentators  as 
much  attention  as  if  it  dealt  with  an  uncertain  point  in  theology. 

"  Tragedy,"  Aristotle  says,  "  is  an  imitation  of  a  worthy  or  illustrious  and 
perfect  action,  possessing  magnitude,  in  pleasing  language,  using  separately 
the  several  species  of  imitation  in  its  parts,  by  men  acting,  and  not  through 
narration,  through  pity  and  fear  effecting  a  purification  from  such  like 
passions." 

It  is  the  last  words  that  have  proved  a  stumbling-block  that  has 
called  for  nearly  a  hundred  explanations.  Possibly,  as  some  have  sug- 
gested, the  real  meaning  is  not  so  remote  as  others  have  thought,  and 
Aristotle  merely  referred  to  the  relief  from  the  weight  of  one's  own 
cares  that  one  feels  after  seeing  some  intense  tragedy  represented  on 
the  stage. 

In  general,  however,  his  remarks  are  simpler,  and  they  are  for  the 
most  part  of  a  sort  that  commend  themselves  to  the  reader.  The 
aim  of  tragedy  he  takes  to  be  the  moral  instruction  or  elevation  of  the 
spectator,  thus  differing  from  those  who  maintain  that  artistic  excel- 
lence should  be  the  poet's  sole  aim,  but  also  differing  from  those  who 
maintain  that  literature  should  be  only  didactic.  Perhaps,  as  we  have 
said  before,  the  truth  lies  between  the  exaggeration  of  the  two  ex- 
tremes, and  every  picture  of  life,  like  all  experience,  has  unavoidably 
an  instructive  quality. 


732  ARISTOTLE. 


V. 


No  one  will  doubt  that  the  legislator  should  direct  his  attention  above  all 
to  the  education  of  youth,  or  that  the  neglect  of  education  does  harm  to 
states.  The  citizen  should  be  moulded  to  suit  the  form  of  government 
under  which  he  lives.  For  each  government  has  a  peculiar  character  which 
originally  formed  and  which  continues  to  preserve  it.  The  character  of 
democracy  creates  democracy,  and  the  character  of  oligarchy  creates  oli- 
garchy ;  and  always  the  better  the  character,  the  better  the  government. 
Now  for  the  exercise  of  any  faculty  or  art  a  previous  training  and  habituation 
are  required  ;  clearly,  therefore,  for  the  practice  of  virtue.  And  since  the 
whole  city  has  one  end  it  is  manifest  that  education  should  be  one  and  the 
same  for  all,  and  that  it  should  be  public,  and  not  private, — not  as  at  present, 
when  every  one  looks  after  his  own  children  separately,  and  gives  them 
separate  instruction  of  the  sort  which  he  thinks  best ;  the  training  in  things 
which  are  of  common  interest  should  be  the  same  for  all.  Neither  must  we 
suppose  that  any  one  of  the  citizens  belongs  to  himself,  for  they  all  belong 
to  the  state,  and  are  each  of  them  a  part  of  the  state,  and  the  care  of  each 
part  is  inseparable  from  the  care  of  the  whole.  In  this  particular  the  Lace- 
daemonians are  to  be  praised,  for  they  take  the  greatest  pains  about  their 
children,  and  make  education  the  business  of  the  state. 

That  education  should  be  regulated  by  law  and  should  be  an  affair  of  state 
is  not  to  be  denied; but  what  should  be  the  character  of  this  public  education, 
and  how  young  persons  should  be  educated,  are  questions  which  remain  to 
be  considered.  For  mankind  are  by  no  means  agreed  about  the  things  to 
be  taught,  whether  we  look  to  virtue  or  the  best  life.  Neither  is  it  clear 
whether  education  is  more  concerned  with  intellectual  or  with  moral  virtue. 
The  existing  practice  is  perplexing  ;  no  one  knows  on  what  principle  we 
should  proceed — should  the  useful  in  life,  or  should  virtue,  or  should  the 
higher  knowledge,  be  the  aim  of  our  training  ;  all  three  opinions  have  been 
entertained.  Again,  about  the  means  there  is  no  agreement ;  for  different 
persons,  starting  with  different  ideas  about  the  nature  of  virtue,  naturally 
disagree  about  the  practice  of  it.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  children 
should  be  taught  those  useful  things  which  are  really  necessary,  but  not  all 
things  ;  for  occupations  are  divided  into  liberal  and  illiberal ;  and  to  young 
children  should  be  imparted  only  such  kinds  of  knowledge  as  will  be  useful 
to  them  without  vulgarizing  them.  And  any  occupation,  art,  or  science, 
which  makes  the  body  or  soul  or  mind  of  the  freeman  less  fit  for  the  practice 
or  exercise  of  virtue,  is  vulgar ;  wherefore  we  call  those  arts  vulgar  which 
tend  to  deform  the  body,  and  likewise  all  paid  employments,  for  they  absorb 
and  degrade  the  mind.  There  are  also  some  liberal  arts  quite  proper  for  a 
freeman  to  acquire,  but  only  in  a  certain  degree,  and  if  he  attend  to  them 
too  closely,  in  order  to  attain  perfection  in  them,  the  same  evil  effects  will 
follow.  The  object  also  which  a  man  sets  before  him  makes  a  great 
difference  ;  if  he  does  or  learns  anything  for  his  own  sake  or  for  the 
sake  of  his  friends,  or  with  a  view  to  excellence,  the  action  will  not  appear 
illiberal ;  but  if  done  for  the  sake  of  others,  the  very  same  action  will  be 
thought  menial  and  servile.  The  received  subjects  of  instruction,  as  I 
have  already  remarked,  are  partly  of  a  liberal  and  partly  of  an  illiberal 
character.  The  customary  branches  of  education  are  in  number  four  ;  they 
are — (i)  reading  and  writing,  (2)  gymnastic  exercises,  (3)  music,  to  which  is 


734  ARISTOTLE. 

sometimes  added  (4)  drawing.  Of  these  reading  and  writing  and  drawing 
are  regarded  as  useful  for  the  purpose's  of  life  in  a  variety  of  ways,  and 
gymnastic  exercises  are  thought  to  infuse  courage.  Concerning  music  a 
doubt  may  be  raised ;  in  our  own  day  most  men  cultivate  it  for  the  sake  of 
pleasure,  but  originally  it  was  included  in  education  because  nature  herself, 
as  has  often  been  said,  requires  that  we  should  be  able,  not  only  to  work 
well,  but  to  use  leisure  well  ;  for,  as  I  must  repeat  once  and  again,  the  first 
principle  of  all  action  is  leisure.  Both  are  required,  but  leisure  is  better 
than  occupation  ;  and  therefore  the  question  must  be  asked  in  good  earnest, 
what  ought  we  to  do  when  at  leisure  ?  Clearly  we  ought  not  to  be  amusing 
ourselves,  for  then  amusement  would  be  the  end  of  life.  But  if  this  is  incon- 
ceivable, and  yet  amid  serious  occupations  amusement  is  needed  more  than 
at  other  times  (for  he  who  is  hard  at  work  has  need  of  relaxation,  and 
amusement  gives  relaxation,  whereas  occupation  is  always  accompanied  with 
exertion  and  effort),  at  suitable  times  we  should  introduce  amusements,  and 
they  should  be  our  medicines; for  the  emotion  which  they  create  in  the  soul 
is  a  relaxation,  and  from  the  pleasure  we  obtain  rest.  Leisure  of  itself  gives 
pleasure  and  happiness  and  enjoyment  of  life,  which  are  experienced,  not  by 
the  busy  man,  but  by  those  who  have  leisure.  For  he  who  is  occupied  has 
in  view  some  end  which  he  has  not  attained  ;  but  happiness  is  an  end  which 
all  men  deem  to  be  accompanied  with  pleasure  and  not  with  pain.  This 
pleasure,  however,  is  regarded  differently  by  different  persons,  and  varies 
according  to  the  habit  of  individuals  ;  the  pleasure  of  the  best  man  is  the 
best,  and  springs  from  the  noblest  sources.  It  is  clear  then  that  there  are 
branches  of  learning  and  education  which  we  must  study  with  a  view  to 
enjoyment  of  leisure,  and  these  are  to  be  valued  for  their  own  sake  ;  whereas 
those  kinds  of  knowledge  which  are  useful  in  business  are  to  be  deemed 
necessary  and  exist  for  the  sake  of  other  things.  And  therefore  our  fathers 
admitted  music  into  education,  not  on  the  ground  either  of  its  necessity  or 
utility,  for  it  is  not  necessary,  nor  indeed  useful  in  the  same  manner  as 
reading  and  writing,  wliich  are  useful  in  money-making,  in  the  management 
of  a  household,  in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  and  in  political  life,  nor  like 
drawing,  useful  for  a  more  correct  judgment  of  the  works  of  artists,  nor 
again  like  gymnastic,  which  gives  health  and  strength  ;  for  neither  of  these 
is  to  be  gained  from  music.  There  remains,  then,  the  use  of  music  for  intel- 
lectual enjoyment  in  leisure ;  which  appears  to  have  been  the  reason  of  its 
introduction;  this  being  one  of  the  ways  in  which  it  is  thought  that  a  freeman 
should  pass  his  leisure  ;  as  Homer  says — 

'  How  good  it  is  to  invite  men  to  the  pleasant  feast '; 

and  afterwards  he  speaks  of  others  whom  he  describes  as  inviting 

'  The  bard  who  would  delight  them  all.' 

And  in  another  place  Odysseus  says  there  is  no  better  way  of  passing  life 
than  when  '  men's  hearts  are  merry,  and  the  banqueters  in  the  hall,  sitting  in 
order,  hear  the  voice  of  the  minstrel.' 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  there  is  a  sort  of  education  in  which  parents  should 
train  their  sons,  not  as  being  useful  or  necessary,  but  because  it  is  liberal  or 
noble.  Whether  this  is  of  one  kind  only,  or  of  more  than  one,  and  if  so, 
what  they  are,  and  how  they  are  to  be  imparted,  must  hereafter  be  deter- 
mined. Thus  much  we  are  now  in  a  position  to  say  that  the  ancients  witness 
to  us  ;  for  their  opinion  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  music  is  one  of 
the  received  and  traditional  branches  of  education.     Further,  it  is  clear  that 


THE  NICHOMACH^AN   ETHICS.  -  735 

children  should  be  instructed  in  some  useful  things, — for  example,  in  reading 
and  writing, — not  only  for  their  usefulness,  but  also  because  many  other  sorts 
of  knowledge  are  acquired  through  them.  With  a  like  view  they  may  be  taught 
drawing,  not  to  prevent  their  making  mistakes  in  their  own  purchases,  or  in 
order  that  they  may  not  be  imposed  upon  in  the  buying  or  selling  of  articles, 
but  rather  because  it  makes  them  judges  of  the  beauty  of  the  human  form. 
To  be  always  seeking  after  the  useful  does  not  become  free  and  exalted  souls. 
Now  it  is  clear  that  in  education  habit  must  go  before  reason,  and  the  body 
before  the  mind  ;  and  therefore  boys  should  be  handed  over  to  the  trainer, 
who  creates  in  them  the  proper  habit  of  body,  and  to  the  wrestling-master, 
who  teaches  them  their  exercises. 

EXTRACT  FROM  THE  NICHOMACH^AN  ETHICS. 

We  have  next  to  speak  of  equity  and  of  that  which  is  equitable,  and  to 
inquire  how  equity  is  related  to  justice,  and  that  which  is  equitable  to  that 
which  is  just.  For,  on  consideration,  they  do  not  seem  to  be  absolutely 
identical,  nor  yet  generically  different. 

At  one  time  we  praise  that  which  is  equitable  and  the  equitable  man,  and 
even  use  the  word  metaphorically  as  a  term  of  praise  synonymous  with  good, 
showing  that  we  consider  that  the  more  equitable  a  thing  is  the  better  it  is. 
At  another  time  we  reflect  and  find  it  strange  that  what  is  equitable  should 
be  praiseworthy,  if  it  be  different  from  what  is  just ;  for,  we  argue,  if  it  be 
something  else,  either  what  is  just  is  not  good,  or  what  is  equitable  is  not 
good  ;  if  both  be  good,  they  are  the  same. 

These  are  the  reflections  which  give  rise  to  the  difficulty  about  what  is 
equitable.  Now,  in  a  way,  they  are  all  correct  and  not  incompatible  with 
one  another ;  for  that  which  is  equitable,  though  it  is  better  than  that  which 
is  just  (in  one  sense  of  the  word),  is  itself  just  (in  another  sense),  and  is  not 
better  than  what  is  just  in  the  sense  of  being  something  generically  distinct 
from  it.  What  is  just,  then,  and  what  is  equitable  are  generically  the  same, 
and  both  are  good,  though  what  is  equitable  is  better. 

But  what  obscures  the  matter  is  that  though  what  is  equitable  is  just,  it  is 
not  identical  with,  but  is  a  correction  of,  that  which  is  just  according  to  law. 

The  reason  of  this  is  that  every  law  is  laid  down  in  general  terms,  while 
there  are  matters  about  which  it  is  impossible  to  speak  correctly  in  general 
terms.  Where,  then,  it  is  necessary  to  speak  in  general  terms,  but  impossible 
to  do  so  correctly,  the  legislator  lays  down  that  which  holds  good  for  the 
majority  of  cases,  being  quite  aware  that  it  does  not  hold  good  for  all. 

The  law,  indeed,  is  none  the  less  correctly  laid  down  because  of  this 
defect ;  for  the  defect  lies  not  in  the  law,  nor  in  the  lawgiver,  but  in  the 
nature  of  the  subject-matter,  being  necessarily  involved  in  the  very  con- 
ditions of  human  action.  When,  therefore,  the  law  lays  down  a  general  rule, 
but  a  particular  case  occurs  which  is  an  exception  to  this  rule,  it  is  right, 
where  the  legislator  fails  and  is  in  error  through  speaking  without  qualifica- 
tion, to  make  good  this  deficiency,  just  as  the  lawgiver  himself  would  do  if 
be  were  present,  and  as  he  would  have  provided  in  the  law  itself  if  the  case 
had  occurred  to  him.  What  is  equitable,  then,  is  just,  and  better  than  what 
is  just  in  one  sense  of  the  word — not  better  than  what  is  absolutely  just,  but 
better  than  that  which  fails  through  its  lack  of  qualification.  And  the  essence 
of  what  is  equitable  is  that  it  is  an  amendment  of  the  law  in  those  points 
where  it  fails  through  the  generality  of  its  language. 

The  reason  why  the  law  does  not  cover  all  cases  is  that  there  are  matters 


736  ARISTOTLE. 

about  which  it  is  impossible  to  lay  down  a  law,  so  that  they  require  a  special 
decree.  For  that  which  is  variable  needs  a  variable  rule,  like  the  leaden 
rule  employed  in  the  Lesbian  style  of  masonry  ;  as  the  leaden  rule  has  no 
fixed  shape,  but  adapts  itself  to  the  outline  of  each  stone,  so  is  the  decree 
adapted  to  the  occasion. 

We  have  ascertained,  then,  what  the  equitable  course  is,  and  have  found 
that  it  is  just,  and  also  better  than  what  is  just  in  a  certain  sense  of  the 
word.  And  after  this  it  is  easy  to  see  what  the  equitable  man  is  :  he  who  is 
apt  to  choose  such  a  course  and  to  follow  it,  who  does  not  insist  on  his  rights 
to  the  damage  of  others,  but  is  ready  to  take  less  than  his  due,  even  when 
he  has  the  law  to  back  him,  is  called  an  equitable  man  ;  and  this  type  of 
character  is  called  equitableness,  being  a  sort  of  justice,  and  not  a  different 
kind  of  character. 

Is  it  in  prosperity  or  adversity  that  we  most  need  friends  ?  For  under 
both  circumstances  we  have  recourse  to  them  :  in  misfortune  we  need  help, 
in  prosperity  we  need  people  to  live  with  and  to  do  good  to  ;  for  we  wish  to 
do  good.  In  adversity,  it  may  be  answered,  the  need  is  more  pressing  ;  we 
then  require  useful  friends  ;  but  friendship  is  a  nobler  thing  in  prosperity  ; 
we  then  seek  out  good  men  for  friends;  for  it  is  more  desirable  to  do  good  to 
and  live  with  such  people.  The  mere  presence  of  friends  is  sweet,  even  in 
misfortune;  for  our  grief  is  lightened  when  our  friends  share  it.  And  so  it 
might  be  asked  whether  they  literally  take  a  share  of  it  as  of  a  weight,  or 
whether  it  is  not  so,  but  rather  that  their  presence,  which  is  sweet,  and  the 
consciousness  of  their  sympathy,  make  our  grief  less.  But  whether  this  or 
something  else  be  the  cause  of  the  relief,  we  need  not  further  inquire  ;  the 
fact  is  evidently  as  we  said.  But  their  presence  seems  to  be  complex  in  its 
effects.  On  the  one  hand,  the  mere  sight  of  friends  is  pleasant,  especially 
when  we  are  in  adversity,  and  contributes  something  to  assuage  our  grief  ; 
for  a  friend  can  do  much  to  comfort  us  both  by  sight  and  speech,  if  he  has 
tact :  he  knows  our  character,  and  what  pleases  and  what  pains  us.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  see  another  grieving  over  our  misfortunes  is  a  painful 
thing  ;  for  every  one  dislikes  to  be  the  cause  of  sorrow  to  his  friends.  For 
this  reason,  he  who  is  of  a  manly  nature  takes  care  not  to  impart  his  grief 
to  his  friends,  shrinking  from  the  pain  that  it  would  give  them,  unless  this  is 
quite  outweighed  by  the  relief  it  would  give  him  ;  and  generally  he  does  not 
allow  others  to  lament  with  him,  as  he  is  not  given  to  lamentations  himself  ; 
but  weak  women  and  effeminate  men  delight  in  those  who  lament  with  them, 
and  love  them  as  friends  and  sympathizers.  (But  evidently  we  ought  in  all 
circumstances  to  take  the  better  man  for  our  model.) 

In  prosperity,  again,  the  presence  of  friends  not  only  makes  the  time  pass 
pleasantly,  but  also  brings  the  consciousness  that  our  friends  are  pleased  at 
our  good  fortune.  And  for  this  reason  it  would  seem  that  we  should  be 
eager  to  invite  our  friends  to  share  our  prosperity,  for  it  is  noble  to  be  ready 
to  confer  benefits, — but  slow  to  summon  them  to  us  in  adversity,  for  we 
ought  to  be  loth  to  give  others  a  share  of  our  evil  things  :  whence  comes 
the  saying,  "  That  I  am  in  sorrow  is  sorrow  enough."  But  we  should  be 
least  unwilling  to  call  them  in  when  they  will  be  likely  to  relieve  us  much 
without  being  greatly  troubled  themselves. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  when  our  friends  are  in  trouble,  we  should,  I 
think,  go  to  them  unsummoned  and  readily  (for  it  is  a  friend's  office  to  serve 
his  friend,  and  especially  when  he  is  in  need  and  does  not  claim  assistance, 
for  then  it  is  nobler  and  pleasanter  to  both)  :  when  they  are   in  prosperity. 


THE  PERIPATETIC    SCHOOL.  737 

we  should  go  readily  to  help  them  (for  this  is  one  of  the  uses  of  a  friend), 
but  not  so  readily  to  share  their  good  things  ;  for  it  is  not  a  noble  thing  to 
be  very  ready  to  receive  a  benefit.  But  we  may  add  that  we  ought  to  be 
careful  that  our  refusal  shall  not  seem  ungracious,  as  sometimes  happens. 

The  presence  of  friends,  then,  in  conclusion,  is  manifestly  desirable  on  all 
occasions. 

VI. 

After  the  death  of  its  founder,  the  Peripatetic  school  continued  its 
existence,  first  under  the  charge  of  Aristotle's  favorite  disciple,  Theo- 
phrastus  of  Lesbos.  This  new  leader  was  a  busy  student  whose 
writings  covered  a  long  list  of  subjects,  the  most  important  being 
a  continuation  of  Aristotle's  work  in  natural  history,  especially  in 
botany  and  geology.  But  we  have  little  of  what  he  wrote :  his 
Characters,  which,  however,  have  survived,  are  amplifications  of  the 
ethical  studies  which  are  to  be  found  in  Aristotle,  and  throw  consid- 
erable light  on  the  thought  of  the  time,  with  their  delicate  study  of 
the  dispositions  of  various  sorts  of  men.  This  little  book  of  Charac- 
ters, though  its  genuineness  has  been  doubted,  and  it  bears  no  rela- 
tion to  formal  philosophy,  is  of  interest  as  showing  how  far  the  general 
attention  of  the  public  was  turned  to  the  minutiae  of  daily  life,  to  the 
study  of  the  individual — a  movement  that  is  very  distinct  in  the  more 
solemn  works  of  literature,  and  naturally  to  be  expected  here.  The 
acuteness  that  the  book  shows  is  exactly  that  of  a  time  when  obser- 
vation is  busy  with  apparent  trifles,  and  the  most  interesting  object 
of  study  is  the  minor  qualities  of  human  nature.  And  it  is  these 
little  details — each  one  of  which,  taken  by  itself,  is  petty — that  sur- 
vive changes  of  religion,  of  politics,  and  of  philosophy;  whatever  else 
may  alter,  the  flatterer  never  forgets  his  cunning,  nor  does  his  victim 
ever  fail  to  know  the  smile  of  delight  that  his  wiles  infallibly  pro- 
duce. Stupidity,  superstition,  vainglory,  have  the  same  immortality ; 
the  weaknesses  of  mankind  belong  to  all  times  and  all  nations,  like 
illness  or  old  age,  and  their  delineation  records  our  wide  relationship. 
He  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  lead  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle 
in  the  sensualistic  direction,  which  it  soon  followed.  He  was  the 
head  of  the  school  until  286  B.C.  Heracleides  of  Pontus  and  Aris- 
toxenus  of  Tarentum  were  among  his  fellow-pupils.  The  latter  was 
a  famous  musician,  of  whose  philosophy  we  know  only  that  he  re- 
garded the  soul  as  the  harmony  of  the  body,  therein  differing  from 
his  master.  Most  of  the  other  Peripatetics  gave  their  main  atten- 
tion to  physical  science ;  thus,  Dicaearchus  tried  to  prove  that  the 
soul  was  mortal,  resting  his  belief  on  the  theory  that  it  was  merely 
the  harmony  of  corporeal  elements  and  so  ceasing  with  them.  The 
loss  of  his  other  writings — especially  one  on  the  geography,  history. 


738 


ARISTOTLE. 


and  the  moral  and  religious  state  of  Greece — is  much  to  be  lamented. 
Straton  also    pursued    physical  problems,   abandoning  the  study    of 

ethics  and  avowing  purely 
materialistic  doctrines.  The 
successors  of  these  men  occu- 
pied themselves  with  editing, 
repeating,  and  discussing  the 
writings  of  Aristotle. 

Along  with  the  later  fol- 
lowers of  Plato  and  the  Peri- 
patetics there  flourished  the 
Epicureans,  the  Stoics,  and 
the  Skeptics.  The  influence 
of  all  of  these,  however,  was 
more  fully  felt  in  Rome  than 
in  Greece,  and  their  principles 
may  be  more  justly  discussed 
later.  Now  it  will  be  sufifi- 
cient  to  say  that  Zeno,  the 
founder  of  the  Stoics,  was 
born  on  the  island  of  Cy- 
prus, though  the  date  of  his 
birth  is  unknown.  He  flour- 
ished about  300  B.C.  Epicu- 
rus, the  founder  of  the  Epicu- 
rean school,  was  born  in  the 
island  of  Samos,  342  B.C.,  and 
was  thus  a  contemporary  of 
Zeno.  He  taught  in  Athens, 
and  the  gardens  where  he  gave 
his  lessons  became  the  rival 
of  the  porch  where  Zeno  taught 
his  philosophy.  While  the 
Stoics  derived  a  good  part  of 
their  theories  from  the  Cynics, 
the  Epicureans  were  also  a 
later  outgrowth  of  the  Cyre- 
naic  school.  The  name  of 
Epicurus  acquired  an  evil 
fame  as  a  teacher  of  rank 
luxury,  but  only  by  misrepresentation,  for  his  philosophy  was  a 
serious  pursuit  of  truth.  The  main  difference  between  the  two 
sects  was  between  two  different  ways  of   regarding  the    universe — 


EPICURUS. 


PLA  TONIC  AND  ARISTOTELIAN  PHILOSOPHY.  739 

the  difference  between  spiritualism  and  materialism.  Pyrrho,  the 
founder  of  the  Skeptics,  also  flourished  about  300  B.C.  ;  he  appears 
to  have  carried  on  the  line  of  thought  which  marked  the  Sophists, 
and  to  have  maintained  the  impossibility  of  any  real  knowledge.  In 
these  five  general  paths  philosophy  moved  until  the  extinction  of 
the  intellectual  life  of  the  Greeks. 

The  decay  began  with  the  death  of  Aristotle,  and  he  and  Plato 
still  survive  as  the  two  greatest  philosophers  of  Greece,  as  the  men 
who  drew  the  lines  on  which  posterity  was  to  move.  All  that  emotion, 
eloquence,  poetry  can  do  for  the  thought  of  men  is  what  Plato  has 
represented  as  no  other  writer  has  ever  done,  while  Aristotle  stands  for 
the  cooler,  unimpassioned  work  of  science.  Every  one,  said  Friederich 
Schlegel,  is  either  a  Platonist  or  an  Aristotelian,  and  although  the  ac- 
curacy of  the  statement  is  often  denied,  and  great  pains  are  taken  to 
show  that  Aristotle's  science  is  no  science,  it  yet  remains  true  that 
the  two  men  mark  the  two  attitudes  in  which  the  universe  may  be 
regarded.  Here,  as  in  almost  every  department  of  intellectual  exer- 
cise, the  Greeks  left  the  rest  of  the  world  to  follow  them. 

That  after  the  work  of  these  two  illustrious  leaders  what  may  be 
called  constructive  philosophy  should  have  languished  in  Greece,  is 
not  surprising  when  we  consider  the  political  history  of  that  country. 
The  hope  of  material  power  under  the  new  conditions  faded  away, 
and  the  resignation  to  the  change  expressed  itself  by  modifying  the 
philosophic  thought  into  something  like  religious  enthusiasms,  for 
such  were  the  essential  qualities  of  these  new  schools.  In  Stoicism, 
for  instance,  we  find  a  very  fervent  feeling  of  devotion,  and  a  most 
marked  insistence  upon  the  necessity  of  morality.  The  Epicureans, 
too,  in  spite  of  their  bad  name,  and  the  convenience  of  an  epithet 
often  outweighs  its  justice, -tempered  the  austerity  of  the  Stoics  by 
enlarging  the  field  of  morality,  and  by  including  cultivation  within  the 
desirable  aims  of  men.  With  the  suppression  of  an  outlet  in  political 
life,  men's  energies  were  turned  to  the  study  of  individuals,  and  thus 
the  sage  prepared  himself  to  meet  the  troubles  of  life  as  best  he 
could,  and  lost  the  civic  sense  of  the  old  times  to  become  a  citizen  of 
the  whole  world.  Their  full  development  will  be  seen,  however,  when 
we  come  to  study  the  Romans.  Yet  here  it  is  curious  to  notice  how 
much  the  philosophy  of  the  Epicureans  resembled  some  of  the  most 
important  modern  theories,  and  while  it  thus  held  out  one  hand  to 
the  future,  its  connection  with  the  early  teachings  of  Democritus  is 
equally  close.  The  atomic  theories  of  that  wonderful  man  were 
brought  forward  again  with  new  vigor, — to  be  sure,  as  a  hypothesis 
incapable  of  verification,  yet  with  a  tendency  towards  probability  that 
was  of  vast  influence  upon  many  leaders  of  thought.     And  in  the  ethi- 


740 


ARISTOTLE. 


cal  side  of  his  lessons  there  was  an  equal  force,  not  the  force  of  fanati- 
cism, but  that  of  quiet  conviction,  as  we  see  it  in  the  statement  that 
"  it  is  impossible  to  live  pleasantly  without  living  wisely,  and  well, 
and  justly;  and  it  is  impossible  to  live  wisely,  and  well,  and  justly, 
without  living  pleasantly." 

Curiously  enough,  the  lessons  of  utilitarianism  underlie  the  princi- 
ples of  Epicureanism,  the  bad  name  of  which  only  shows  that  rival 
philosophers  are  as  earnest  as  rival  politicians.  Instead  of  dividing  the 
world  into  Platonists  and  Aristotelians,  it  may  be  fairer  to  class  all 
thinking  men  as  either  materialists  or  spiritualists,  and  to  this  latter 
class  would  belong  followers  of  both  Plato  and  Aristotle. 


BOOK  VII.    HELLENISM. 
•*  CHAPTER  I.    ALEXANDRIA,  THEOCRITUS. 

I. — The  Succession  of  Alexandria  to  Athens.  The  Intimate  Relation  of  Alexan- 
drinism  to  Modern  Literature,  through  the  Roman.  The  Survival  of  Greek 
Intellectual  Influence  after  Political  Decay.  The  Gradualness  of  the  Change. 
II. — The  Importance  of  Alexandria  for  the  Cosmopolitan  Sway  of  Greek  Influ- 
ence. Its  Generous  Equipment  for  its  New  Duties.  The  Beginnings  of  Schol- 
arship. III. — The  Learning  Influences  the  Literature.  Theocritus,  and  his  Work. 
Its  Relation  to  Contemporary  Art.     Bion  and  Moschus.     IV. — Extracts. 

1. 

WHEN  Greece  succumbed  to  the  Macedonian  power,  its  art  and 
literature  underwent  a  modification  that  coincided  with  the 
political  changes  whereby  that  country  was  reduced  to  the  condition 
of  a  dependent  state.  Demosthenes  and  Aristotle  died  within  a  year 
of  each  other,  and  they  were  followed  by  no  great  men ;  intelligence, 
wit,  learning  survived,  and  in  new  conditions  helped  to  bridge  the 
gulf  between  the  wonderful  past  and  the  later  civilizations,  between 

"  the  glory  that  was  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome," 

but  the  original  harmony  of  political  enthusiasm  and  artistic  produc- 
tion was  broken,  and  Greece  became  a  name.  Yet  the  various  quali- 
ties remained  even  when  the  controlling  and  guiding  inspiration  was 
lacking,  and  in  studying  the  lines  on  which  they  moved  we  are  actu- 
ally much  nearer  the  beginnings  of  modern  literature  than  we  have 
been  hitherto  in  examining  what  may  be  called  the  national  work  of 
Greece.  Until  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  the  classics  were 
the  sole  approved  model,  but  it  was  the  Roman  classics  that  served 
this  useful  purpose,  and  the  Romans,  like  our  ancestors,  really  pre- 
ferred the  Alexandrine  copies  to  the  severer  originals.  The  change 
may  be  called  a  most  important  process  of  transformation  from  art  to 
artifice,  rather  than  mere  decay,  and  it  can  be  profitably  studied  only 
when  we  refuse  to  condemn  the  steps  that  slowly  led  to  making  our 
literature  what  it  is.  Hence,  our  study  of  the  later  developments  is 
no  less  important  and  interesting  than  that  of  what  preceded  it. 

As  an  incident  in  the  history  of  Greece,  the  Macedonian  supremacy 
was  a  fatal  blow ;  that  country  was  at  once  relegated  to  the  condition 


742  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

of  a  dependent  province,  and  all  the  springs  that  had  fed  its  literature 
were  at  once  dried  up.  The  drama  lingered  as  a  picture  of  social 
complications,  but  the  early  national  spirit  was  broken,  and  the 
comedy  only  reflected  the  many-sided  possibilities  perhaps  rather 
than  the  actual  incidents  of  every-day  life  ;  and  the  philosophy  became 
mainly  an  instrument  of  moral  instruction.  But  while  this  condition 
of  things  is  most  lamentable  for  those  who  study  history  in  sections, 
there  is  another  side  to  the  matter  which  is  full  of  interest.  As  an 
event  in  the  history  of  the  world,  the  breaking  of  the  old  limits  of 


ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT. 


national  existence  was  something  of  incalculable  importance,  because 
thereby  the  Greek  intelligence  was  set  free  to  make  its  way  through- 
out all  contemporary  civilization.  It  was  readily  understood  that 
material  power  had  slipped  from  the  hands  of  the  Greeks,  but  their 
intellectual  authority  remained  without  a  rival,  and  towards  asserting, 
defending,  explaining,  and  promulgating  this,  every  effort  was  bent. 
It  was  here  that  its  power  lay,  and  since  the  conquests  of  Alexander 
practically  laid  open  the  East,  and  the  establishment  of  Alexandria 
created  a  new  capital  of  the  world  where  men  of  all  races  were  welcomed, 
the  Greek  superiority  had  an  opportunity  to  make  new  conquests. 


THE   SUPREMACY  OF  GREEK  LITERATURE.  743 

It  is,  however,  of  the  first  importance  to  remember  that  the  change 
was  not  a  sudden  one,  which  is  only  to  be  detected  when  a  compari- 
son is  made  between  any  book  written  in  Athens  and  any  book  written 
in  Alexandria.  No  such  sudden  alteration  is  possible  ;  the  process  of 
transformation  is  always  gradual  ;  just  as  summer  shades  into  winter 
by  a  series  of  differences  each  one  of  which  contains  qualities  of  both 
seasons,  the  belated  warm  day  and  the  moderate  frost,  so  here  the 
development  of  literature  took  place  with  no  violent  cataclysm,  but 
by  comparatively  distinct  processes.  Already  in  Menander  we  may 
detect  the  underlying  basis  of  individualism  which  is  discernible  in 
Euripides ;  and  in  the  graceless  pose  of  Aristotle  we  may  see  the  sev- 
erance between  science  and  literature  that  was,  like  individualism,  so 
prominent  in  Alexandria,  and  the  late  separation  between  letters  and 
life  is  clearly  to  be  seen  in  the  efforts  of  the  last  Athenian  writers, 
more  especially  in  the  work  of  Menander.  Isocrates,  too,  as  we  have 
seen,  abounds  with  instances  of  the  use  of  oratory  as  a  thing  of 
artifice. 

The  whole  Alexandrine  literature  was  but  the  legitimate  develop- 
ment of  Greek  literature ;  what  was  implicit  in  the  later  writings  of 
Athens  found  explicit  utterance,  furthered,  to  be  sure,  by  the  condi- 
tions of  the  new  civilization,  but  not  created  by  them  alone.  The 
political  change  was  itself  the  natural  outcome  of  the  disorganization 
of  Greece,  to  which  its  aversion  to  union  naturally  led,  and  a  strong 
hand  took  control  of  affairs  and  so  gave  to  the  Greeks  a  material 
power  which  they  were  unable  to  acquire  of  themselves.  Thereby 
their  literary  and  scientific  authority  was  able  to  prevail  over  the 
whole  ancient  world.  Not  only  were  peace  and  leisure  obtained  for 
study  and  experiment,  but  the  scattered  intellectual  forces,  thus  com- 
bined, formed  an  impressive  mass  that  stood  without  a  rival.  Its 
effect  was  felt  in  the  East  as  well  as  in  the  West,  though  of  course  more 
extensively  in  the  Roman  empire,  where  there  existed  more  curiosity 
and  a  readier  capacity  for  absorbing  the  manifold  results.  But  every- 
where Greek  physicians,  for  example,  made  their  way,  and  carried 
with  them  more  or  less  science  and  literature.  The  possible  depend- 
ence of  the  Sanskrit  drama  upon  the  new  Greek  comedy,  of  which 
mention  has  been  made,  the  authority  of  Aristotle  wherever  he 
became  known,  testify  to  the  extent  of  Grecian  fame  in  remote 
regions.  Only  in  this  way  was  Greece  able  to  find  expression  in  the 
literature  of  the  world.  The  disintegration  of  individualism  which 
in  Greece  seemed  to  lead  only  to  divided  effort  was  succeeded  by 
a  keen  enthusiasm  to  which  all  modern  literature  and  science  have 
been  deeply  indebted. 


744 


ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 


II. 

The  home  of  the  new  spirit  that  manifested  itself  in  Greek  literature 
was  then  Alexandria  in   Egypt,  a  city  established  by  Alexander  the 


PTOLEMY    I.   AND   HIS    WIFE  EURYDICE. 


Great  for  his  capital,  which  should  serve  as  a  connecting  link  between 
the  cultivation  of  the  Greeks  and  the  Asiatic  civilizations  that  had 
succumbed  before  his  armies.     The  plan  of  the  town  he  drew  himself, 


LITERARY  ADVANTAGES  OF  ALEXANDRIA.  745 

and  it  was  worthy  of  the  metropolis  of  his  vast  empire.  The  city  was 
about  fifteen  miles  long  and  four  broad,  and  was  advantageously  situ- 
ated for  commerce.  Its  population  was  large,  and  included  Jews, 
Greeks,  and  Egyptians,  who  dwelt  in  separate  divisions  of  the  city. 
Strangers  from  other  quarters  also  flocked  in  large  numbers  to  this 
first  cosmopolitan  center.  On  the  early  death  of  Alexander,  this  city, 
where  his  body  was  buried,  fell  to  the  share  of  Ptolemy  the  First — 
Soter,  or  Saviour,  as  he  was  called — one  of  the  most  prominent  of  the 
great  general's  Macedonian  lieutenants,  who  founded  a  line  that  long 
ruled  in  this  region.  The  Ptolemies  were  patrons  of  literature  and 
art  ;  the  first  of  the  line  invited  men  of  distinction  from  Greece  to 
adorn  his  court,  after  the  familiar  fashion  of  Macedonian  rulers.  Poets 
and  philosophers  gathered  around  him,  attracted  by  the  most  gener- 
ous and  flattering  offers.  Hegesias  the  Cyrenaic  philosopher,  Stilpo 
of  Megara,  Diodorus  Cronus,  Philetas  the  poet,  Euclid  the  mathema- 
tician, Straton  of  Lampsacus,  accepted  his  invitations,  and  naturally 
attracted  others  in  their  wake.  Moreover,  he  or  his  successor, — for  the 
testimony  is  conflicting,—  made  residence  in  Alexandria  indispensable 
to  scholars  by  the  foundation  of  the  library  and  the  museum.  The 
library  was  the  storehouse  of  a  rich  mass  of  Greek  literature ;  in  the  reign 
of  the  second  Ptolemy — Ptolemy  Philadelphus — it  was  combined  with 
the  museum,  thus  forming  an  institution  of  learning  such  as  the  world 
had  never  seen.  This  museum,  or  place  dear  to  the  muses,  was  appa- 
rently modeled  on  the  similar  philosophical  schools  which  were  to  be 
found  in  almost  every  city  in  Greece.  These  places  were  the  resort  of 
men  of  letters,  who  found  a  pleasing  shelter  when,  unable  longer  to  share 
in  public  life,  they  could  prosecute  their  favorite  studies.  Generally,  a 
library  was  collected  within  ;  and  without  were  gardens,  groves,  and 
walks  ;  the  place  was  further  adorned  with  statues  of  gods  and  famous 
men,  as  were  Plato's  Academy  and  Aristotle's  Lyceum.  Those  who 
resorted  thither  took  their  meals  in  common  ;  sometimes  they  lived 
within  its  walls.  These  schools  bore  a  close  resemblance  to  the  mediae- 
val monasteries,  where  were  found  the  same  seclusion  and  security  for 
the  interests  neglected  by  the  outside  world.  Indeed,  it  may  not  be 
impossible  to  trace  the  influence  of  the  museum  at  Alexandria,  to 
some  extent  an  outgrowth  of  the  schools  of  the  ancient  philosophers, 
upon  the  monasteries  themselves. 

Thus  the  museum  was  much  greater  and  more  important  than  the 
various  schools  on  which  it  was  modeled,  as  the  work  that  was  done 
within  its  walls  was  of  more  lasting  authority.  It  served  as  a  sort  of 
university,  at  which  there  assembled  men  of  science,  grammarians, 
critics,  and  students  of  every  branch  of  learning.  Instruction  was 
given  to  the  young,  and   every  form  of  research  was  carried  on  by 


746 


ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 


competent  investigators.  The  literature  of  the  past  was  collected, 
read,  revised,  and  put  in  order ;  catalogues  were  made,  texts  deci- 
phered and  explained.  As  a  dying  man  is  anxious  to  arrange  his 
affairs,  these  later  Greeks  sought  to  leave  the  glories  of  the  past  civili- 
zation in  perfect  condition  for  their  successors.  The  most  eminent 
scholars  were  put  in  charge  of  the  institution  ;  the  first  was  Zenodotus, 


PTOLEMY   II,    AND   ARSINOE. 


the  famous  editor  of  the  text  of  the  Homeric  poems ;  he  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Callimachus,  Eratosthenes,  Apollonius  of  Rhodes,  Aris- 
tophanes of  Byzantium,  and  Aristarchus.  We  shall  see  later  that  the 
claims  of  these  men  to  admiration  for  their  various  contributions  to 
the  work  of  their  time  cover  the  various  fields  of  literature,  science, 
and  research  for  which  Alexandria  was  famous. 

The  building  itself  was  generously   equipped   for  various  kinds  of 


THE  ALEXANDRINE  LEARNING.— EFFECT  ON  LITERATURE.      747 

work,  with  the  addition  of  accommodations  for  relaxation.  There 
was  a  grove  in  the  inner  courtyard,  provided  with  abundant  springs. 
On  the  side  of  this  were  porches,  adorned  with  pictures,  and  here  the 
students  could  meet  and  discuss  various  questions.  In  a  large  hall 
meals  were  provided  ;  and  probably  there  were  lodging-rooms  for  the 
teachers  and  officials.  The  most  important  part  was  the  library  itself ; 
another  useful  division  was  that  where  medicine  and  surgery  were 
practised.  A  zoological  garden  may  have  been  in  close  proximity, 
although  its  exact  position  is  uncertain.  Astronomical  investigations 
might  have  been  pursued  on  the  roof  of  the  large  edifice,  whither 
students  resorted  in  large  numbers  to  study  under  the  celebrated 
men  who  here  laid  the  foundations  of  scientific  teaching.  The 
number  of  the  books  accumulated  there  is  uncertain  ;  various  esti- 
mates are  to  be  found  in  different  writings  of  the  ancients  ;  it  doubt- 
less contained  the  greater  part  of  Greek  literature,  more  definite 
statement  can  not  be  made.  Even  the  round  and  large  numbers  of 
the  manuscripts  that  it  is  said  to  have  contained  are  unsatisfactory 
unless  we  know  just  how  many  of  these  would  go  to  the  making  of  a 
printed  volume.  We  may  only  be  sure  that  the  books  were  many, 
and  in  general  that  the  world  had  never  seen  before,  and  has  never 
seen  since,  such  generous  provision  for  all  manner  of  scientific  and 
literary  work. 

The  most  striking  quality  of  the  period  was  its  learning.  The 
whole  equipment  of  the  place  and  the  enthusiasm  of  those  who 
gathered  there  ran  in  that  direction.  The  whole  literature  felt  the 
impulse  of  the  new  movement,  and  in  the  absence  of  other  sources  of 
inspiration  began  anew  by  making  itself  over  after  approved  models  ; 
in  other  words,  instead  of  being  a  natural  growth,  it  began  to  be 
literary.  Not  that  this  change  appeared  suddenly,  without  fore- 
bodings, for  nothing  of  the  kind  has  ever  happened  by  a  violent 
movement.  Even  when  a  change  in  external  circumstances  has  paved 
the  way,  old  traditions  survive,  as  in  the  languid  American  imitation 
of  English  models  after  a  violent  political  rupture,  or  else  the  liter- 
ature has  long  borne  the  marks  that  have  made  clear  to  later  stu- 
dents how  much  the  revolution  was  the  final  expression  of  a  protracted 
struggle  between  new  and  old  thoughts  and  ideas.  In  the  later  mani- 
festations of  the  Greek  drama,  in  the  plays  of  Euripides  and  Menan- 
der,  modern  literature  began.  The  former  public  spirit  had  faded 
away  ;  the  perfection  of  the  art  of  Sophocles  is  a  sign  that  the  old 
forni  had  reached  its  highest  mark  and  was  to  be  succeeded  by  an- 
other movement,  and  in  this  the  old  religious  feeling  had  no  place. 
The  uncertainty,  the  unevenness  of  Euripides  were  the  gropings  of  a 
man  with  a  magnificent  inheritance  in  Greek  verse  who  was  wandering 


74^  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

in  the  mazes  of  free  thought  that  forbade  his  receiving  any  traditional 
explanation  of  the  universe.  He  was  the  representative  of  the  new 
spirit  that  knew  nothing  of  authority,  that  set  the  human  mind  face 
to  face  with  ethical  problems  which  were  not  to  be  settled  by  any 
appeal  to  divine  injunctions  or  warnings,  but  had  to  be  solved  by 
human  efforts  alone.  Only  in  such  an  atmosphere  could  philosophy 
thrive,  only  when  thought  was  free  from  authority  could  Plato  utter 
the  golden  statement  that  it  is  better  to  suffer,  than  to  do, injustice. 
In  the  contemporary  tragedy  we  see  reflected  the  struggle  of  men 
with  these  new  questions,  and  then  it  is  that  individuals,  with  their 
strongly  marked  personal  characteristics,  make  their  appearance,  tak- 
ing the  place  formerly  held  by  more  or  less  ideal  figures.  This  was 
the  first  step  in  the  direction  in  which  modern  literature  has  made  its 
most  important  advance.  The  change  in  comedy  was  very  similar, 
fiamely,  from  the  lofty  teaching  of  Aristophanes  to  the  acuter  but 
narrower  study  of  manners ;  the  devotion  to  great  principles  being 
followed  by  a  keen  criticism  of  human  nature,  thus  foretelling  the 
departure  from  the  old  instruction  to  mere  amusement. 


III. 

The  new  literature  of  Alexandria  was  unable  to  go  back  to  the 
homogeneity  of  early  Athenian  life,  and  it  became  the  expression  of 
the  learning  that  was  now  the  only  form  of  intellectual  excitement. 
All  the  approved  methods  were  conscientiously  followed  :  epics  were 
manufactured  with  the  same  painful  sincerity  that  at  the  present  day 
is  employed  upon  making  old-fashioned  furniture  ;  elegies  and  lyrics 
were  repeated  with  wonderful  success ;  didactic  poetry  found  its  own 
horhe  where  science  was  beginning.  The  most  important  of  these 
later  poets  was  Theocritus,  the  Sicilian,  whose  bucolics  sounded  a 
fascinating  note  of  nature  amid  this  medley  of  artificialities.  Of  his 
life  almost  nothing  is  known,  except  that  he  was  born  at  Syracuse,  and 
that  at  some  time  or  other — probably  about  250  B.C. — he  was  at  Alex- 
andria. He  is  said,  too,  to  have  been  a  pupil  of  Philetas,  but  of  him, 
as  well  as  of  Asclepiades  and  Lycidas — all  known  in  antiquity  as 
writers  of  verse — almost  nothing  but  his  name  has  come  down  to  us 

The  work  of  Theocritus  as  we  have  it  consists  of  thirty  idyls  and 
almost  as  many  epigrams,  which  were  probably  collected  after  his 
death  by  the  grammarians.  The  genuineness  of  some  pieces  ascribed 
to  Theocritus  is  contested  by  many  editors,  and,  in  some  cases,  on 
excellent  grounds;  but  with  few  exceptions  the  different  poems  appar- 
ently belong  to  the  same  time  and  were  the  product  of  similar  circum- 


THE  THEME  OF  THE  POEMS  OF  THEOCRITUS.  749 

stances.  His  most  important  subject  is  rustic  life, — whence  the  name 
bucolics  often  loosely  applied  to  all  the  idyls, — which  he  treats  in  various 
ways  that  set  forth  the  emotions,  passions,  and  interests  of  shepherds. 
The  origin  of  these  representations  of  pastoral  scenes  is  traced  to 
Sicily,  although  in  much  Greek  poetry,  from  Homer  down,  are  to  be 
found  many  graceful  pictures  of  country  life,  partly  due  at  first  to 
vague  memories  of  the  nomadic  existence  that  preceded  the  early 
civilization,  and  later  to  the  contrast  between  the  eager,  artificial  life 
of  the  city  and  the  rather  apparent  than  real  simplicity  and  innocence 
of  country-people.  It  was  among  the  Alexandrines  that  its  represen- 
tatives first  became  a  separate  literary  form,  according  to  the  law  that 
has  since  been  very  often  exemplified,  that  in  a  very  conventional 
period  men's  tastes  turn  for  refreshment  to  a  deliberate  imitation  of 
nature  ;  they  do  this  exactly  as  in  a  hot  summer  day  one  seeks  the  cool 
shade.  The  term  "  nature  "  is  as  vague  here,  however,  as  it  is  every 
where,  and  in  artificial  times  it  becomes  highly  conventional,  just  as  in 
the  days  of  Louis  XIV.  the  gardens  were  laid  out  in  trim  walks  and 
parterres,  and  the  trees  were  cut  into  formal  shapes.  Theocritus  may 
well  have  heard  shepherds  singing  together  in  friendly  or  angry 
rivalry,  and  singing  with  the  grace  that  still  lingers  in  modern  Greek 
folk-songs ;  it  was  his  merit  that  he  gave  it  a  place  in  literature,  and 
that  the  time  in  which  he  lived  was  not  wholly  given  up  to  purely 
artificial  verse  is  proved  by  the  many  charming  touches  with  which 
the  poems  are  filled. 

In  some  of  his  idyls  Theocritus  followed  the  early  Sicilian  mimics, 
or  little  pieces  of  dramatic  action,  without  music  or  any  of  the  formali- 
ties of  the  comedy,  that  caricatured  or  simply  portrayed  bits  out  of 
life ;  such  was  the  one  that  represents  the  chattering  women  at  the 
festival  of  Adonis,  which  will  be  found  below.  The  one  quality  to  be 
found  in  all  that  can  be  fairly  ascribed  to  him  is  the  brevity,  the  ar- 
tistic conciseness  of  his  work.  The  name  idyls,  from  the  Greek  word 
meaning  little  pictures,  is  most  fortunately  chosen,  for,  as  has  been 
often  said,  the  poems  are  like  a  gallery  of  genre  pictures,  and  critics 
have  often  pointed  out  the  close  resemblance  between  many  of  the 
scenes  that  he  describes  and  the  Pompeian  wall-paintings  that  are  the 
only  relics  that  we  have  of  this  branch  of  Alexandrine  art,  for  the 
Romans  copied  the  work  of  their  more  immediate  predecessors  in 
painting  as  well  as  letters. 

Examples  of  the  similarity  are  very  common  ;  thus,  in  his  sixth 
idyl,  Polyphemus,  we  are  told,  awaits  a  messenger  from  Galatea ; 
this  messenger  would  have  been  one  of  the  countless  figures  of  Eros 
who  flourished  in  the  Alexandrine  paintings,  dancing  attendance, 
holding   flowers,    lifting   a   corner    of    drapery,    in   all    the    graceful 


75°  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

and  suggestive  attitudes  for  which  their  legitimate  descendants,  the 
modern  Cupids  of  the  valentine,  are  famous.  More  striking  still  is  the 
description  Moschus  gives  us  of  the  Rape  of  Europa,  whose  attitude 
and  gestures  appear  to  be  copied  from  what  was  a  favorite  and  often 
repeated  picture  of  the  scene.  "  Europa,  riding  on  the  back  of  the 
divine  bull,  with  one  hand  clasped  the  beast's  great  horn,  and  with 
the  other  caught  up  her  garment's  purple  fold,  lest  it 
should  trail  and  be  drenched  in  the  spray  of  the  sea. 
And  her  deep  robe  was  blown  out  in  the  wind,  like  a 
ship's  sail,  and  it  wafted  the  maiden  onward." 

The  whole  scene  as  thus  described  is  like  an  account 
EUROPA    RID-     of  a  picture. 
iNG  ON  A  jt  is  not  merely  the  fact  of  the  resemblance  between 

certain  lines  of  the  poems  and  certain  paintings  that 
needs  to  be  pointed  out,  but  rather  the  tendency  common  to  the  two 
arts  towards  the  representation  of  minute  circumstance.  That  they 
should  move  on  parallel  lines  will  surprise  no  one  who  has  ever  given 
the  subject  a  moment's  consideration,  for  history  abounds  with 
examples  of  similar  coincidence.  Some  incidents  have  been  already 
pointed  out  in  this  book,  and  others  readily  suggest  themselves,  such 
as  that  between  the  work  of  Hogarth  and  the  vein  of  realism  that 
appeared  in  the  works  of  Fielding  and  Smollett  in  the  last  century. 
The  new  interest  in  the  work  of  classical  antiquity  left  its  memorial 
in  the  paintings  of  the  school  of  which  David  was  the  head,  as  well 
as  in  the  poems  of  Andr^  Ch^nier,  Landor,  and  the  classical  attempts 
of  Goethe  and  Schiller.  Millet  recorded  in  painting  the  novel  impor- 
tance of  the  peasants  as  this  had  found  expression  in  the  poetry  of 
Burns  and  in  the  tendency  of  modern  politics.  There  is  no  need  of 
multiplying  instances  to  corroborate  what  has  every  qualification  for 
its  proper  position  as  a  trite  commonplace  save  general  acceptance. 
So  strenuous  have  been  the  efforts  to  bind  up  the  study  of  painting 
and  writing  as  wholly  separate  entities  that  this  most  obvious  truth 
has  been  often  overlooked  by  men  who  have  forgotten  that  all  that 
men  do  is  but  the  resultant  of  the  countless  influences  of  their  time, 
and  that  thus  is  secured  a  striking  similarity  of  result.  That  there 
should  have  been  this  resemblance  between  the  poetry  and  the  paint- 
ing of  Alexandria  need  not  then  surprise  us,  and  that  painting  should 
have  taken  the  lead  is  readily  explicable. 

The  really  great  literature  of  Greece  found  its  counterpart  in  the 
sculpture,  where  there  breathes  the  same  repose  of  perfect  art ;  but  both 
of  these — or,  to  state  it  more  exactly,  all  this — had  died  with  the  loss 
of  political  power,  and  the  artistic  utterances  of  Alexandria  had  their 
origin  elsewhere.     What  had  made  Athens  so  great — the  identity  of 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  EAST  UPON  GREEK  LITERATURE. 


751 


the  citizen  with  the  state  was  a  condition  that  found  no  existence 
under  the  despotic  rule  of  the  Ptolemies,  and  the  conditions  most 
prominent  were  the  opportunities  for  learning,  and  the  wealth  of  the 
East  then  first  opened  to  the  Greeks.  Before  the  end  of  the  Athenian 
civilization;  communication  had  begun,  but  it  was  the  conquests  of 
Alexander  that  made  intercourse  generally  possible,  and  at  once  traces 
of  Asiatic  influence  made  their  appearance  in  decorative  art,  exactly 
as  the  opening  of  Japan  has  affected  the  art  of  all  modern  civilized 
peoples.  Oriental  dress  became  common,  metal  work,  vases,  paintings, 
all  felt  the  change  ;  a  new  spur  was  given  to  Greek  art,  and  Alexandria 
learned  to  know  something  that  bore  a  great  likeness  to  modern 
luxury  with  its  far-reaching  cosmopolitanism.  Literature  expressed 
the  change  as  well  as  the  fine  arts,  and  the  two- forms  of  expression 
were  modified  in  very  nearly  the  same  way,  mov- 
ing towards  refinement,  a  graceful  realism,  and 
attractive  delicacy.  We  have  seen  the  corre- 
spondence between  the  genre  paintings  and  the 
idyls ;  we  may  also  notice  that  between  the 
gems  and  the  epigrams,  a  title  that  bore  among 


GEMS   OF   ALEXANDRINE    EPOCH. 


the  ancients  not  the  significance  that  it  has  with  us,  but  merely 
that  of  an  inscription.  The  Alexandrines  excelled  in  the  gem  and  the 
epigram,  and  at  the  same  time.  Both  called  for  the  same  qualities: 
grace,  facility  of  execution,  and  conciseness,  and  these  were  all  to  be 
found  in  this  new  home  of  letters  and  the  arts,  where  men  had  no 
serious  message  to  deliver,  and  were  free  to  bring  into  their  work  all 
the  refinement  that  learning  could  furnish,  and  the  strong  note  of 
individuality  that  took  the  place  of  the  great  general  principles  that 
Greece  uttered  to  the  world.  We  shall  see  later  in  what  respects  the 
Alexandrine  epigram  differed  from  the  earlier  models ;  it  is  sufficient 


752  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

to  point  out  here  the  same  similarity  to  the  contemporary  gem  that 
we  may  notice  to-day  between  the  common  forms  of  exotic  household 
decoration  and  the  fantastic  forms  of  verse  that  delight  our  poets. 

Certainly  in  Theocritus  there  are  abundant  instances  of  grace  and 
facility.  Everything  is  nearly  in  miniature  ;  miniature  epic,  as  in  the 
twenty-fifth  idyl  recounting  some  of  the  deeds  of  Heracles  ;  miniature 
drama,  as  in  the  fourteenth,  wherein  ^schines  describes  his  quarrel 
with  his  mistress,  to  say  nothing  of  the  brief  pastorals ;  and  in  all  the 
effect  of  vivid  reality  is  produced  by  the  lightest  touches.  Thus, 
Castor  and  Polydeuces,  in  the  twenty-second  idyl, — 

CASTOR     AND     POLYDEUCES   (POLLUX). 

"  Went  wandering  alone,  apart  from  their  fellows,  and  marvelling  at  all 
the  various  wildwood  on  the  mountain.  Beneath  a  smooth  cliff  they  found 
an  ever-flowing  spring  filled  with  the  purest  water,  and  the  pebbles  shone 
like  crystal  or  silver  from  the  deep.  Tall  fir-trees  grew  thereby,  and  white 
poplars  and  planes,  and  cypresses  with  their  lofty  tufts  of  leaves,  and  there 
bloomed  all  fragrant  flowers  that  fill  the  meadows  when  early  summer  is 
waning — dear  worksteads  of  the  hairy  bees." 

Again  in  the  fifth  : 

"Here  be  oak-trees,  and  here  the  galingale,  and  sweetly  here  hum  the 
bees  about  the  hives.  There  are  two  waves  of  chill  water,  and  on  the  tree 
the  birds  are  warbling,  and  the  shadow  is  beyond  compare  with  that  where 
thou  liest,  and  from  on  high  the  pine-tree  pelts  us  with  her  cones." 

And  his  dramatic  skill  is  as  marked  as  his  descriptive,  as  the 
specimens  given  below  will  show.  To  prove  the  fascinations  of  his 
style  one  need  scarcely  to  add  to  those  further  examples.  Yet,  how 
graceful  is  the  artifice  here  with  which  mythology  and  observation  are 
mingled  : 

"  Never  was  Heracles  apart  from  Hylas,  not  when  mid-noon  was  high  in 
heaven,  not  when  Dawn  with  her  white  horses  speeds  upwards  to  the  dwell- 
ing of  Zeus,  not  when  the  twittering  nestlings  look  towards  the  perch,  while 
their  mother  flaps  her  wings  above  the  smoke-browned  beam  ;  and  all  this 
that  the  lad  might  be  fashioned  to  his  mind,  and  might  drive  a  straight  fur- 
row, and  come  to  the  true  measure  of  man." 

But  there  would  be  no  end  of  the  quotations  that  might  establish, 
what  is  already  sufficiently  obvious,  that  he  who  introduced  pastoral 
poetry  into  literature  had  the  charm  of  naturalness  above  those  who 
have  imitated  him.  The  characters  of  his  idyls  possess  a  reality  which 
not  all  his  rivals  have  caught ;  they  have  done  their  best  to  make  their 
shepherds  superfine.  Those  of  Theocritus  wore  the  skin  of  the  he- 
goat  ;  they  pricked  their  feet  on  thorns ;  ever  since  then  they  have 
worn  rich  clothes  and  have  protected  their  feet  with  red-heeled  shoes, 
as  they  have  gradually  dwindled  away  into  the  choruses  of  the  Italian 


754  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

opera.  Even  Bion  and  Moschus,  who  were  apparently  his  contem- 
poraries, fall  far  short  of  him.  We  are  far  from  Sicily  and  near  Alex- 
andria when  we  read  their  sophisticated  poems.  Of  Bion  we  have 
a  Lament  for  Adonis  which  might  have  been  sung  at  the  festival 
described  in  the  fifteenth  idyl  of  Theocritus,  a  fragment  of  a  poem 
about  the  youth  of  Achilles,  and  a  few  other  idyllic  bits  about  the 
Loves  and  Spring, — all  charming ;  of  Moschus,  the  Rape  of  Europa, 
the  Lament  for  Bion,  the  earliest  of  a  long  line  of  pastoral  elegies ;  a 
dialogue  between  the  mother  and  wife  of  Heracles,  and  a  handful  of 
smaller  fragments.  Of  the  lives  of  these  later  men  we  know  nothing 
except — from  Moschus's  Lament — that  Bion  died  from  poison  ;  but 
their  work,  while  it  seems  to  show  traces  of  the  influence  of  Theo- 
critus, is  also  full  of  the  spirit  of  Alexandria. 

IV. 

THE  TWO  WORKMEN. 

MiLO. 

Well,  my  poor  ploughman,  and  what  ails  thee  now  ? 

Thy  ifurrow  lies  not  even  as  of  yore  : 

Thy  fellows  leave  behind  thy  lagging  plough. 

As  the  flock  leaves  a  ewe  whose  feet  are  sore  : 

By  noon  and  midday  what  will  be  thy  plight 

If  now,  so  soon,  thy  coulter  fails  to  bite  } 

Battus. 
Hewn  from  hard  rocks,  untired  at  set  of  sun, 
Milo,  didst  ne'er  regret  some  absent  one  ? 

MiLO. 

Not  I.     What  time  have  workers  for  regret  ? 

Battus. 
Hath  love  ne'er  kept  thee  from  thy  slumbers  yet  ? 

MiLO. 

Nay,  heaven  forbid  !     If  once  the  cat  taste  cream  ! 

Battus. 
Milo,  these  ten  days  love  hath  been  my  dream. 

Milo. 
You  drain  your  wine,  while  vinegar's  scarce  with  me. 

Battus. 
Hence  since  last  spring  untrimmed  my  borders  be. 

Milo. 
And  what  lass  flouts  thee  ? 

Battus. 

She  whom  we  heard  play 
Amongst  Hippocoon's  reapers  yesterday. 


THEOCRITUS :    THE  TWO   WORKMEN  755 

MiLO. 

Your  sins  have  found  you  out  —  you're  e'en  served  right : 
You'll  clasp  a  corn-crake  in  your  arms  all  night. 

Battus. 

You  laugh  :  but  headstrong  Love  is  blind  no  less 
Than  Plutus :  talking  big  is  foolishness. 

MiLO. 

I  don't  talk  big.     But  lay  the  corn-ears  low 
And  sing  the  while  some  love-song  —  easier  so 
Will  seem  your  toil :  you  used  to  sing,  I  know. 

Battus. 
Maids  of  Pieria,  of  my  slim  lass  sing ! 
One  touch  of  yours  ennobles  everything. 

[S/wg-J.]     My  sweet !  on  thy  complexion  men  remark ; 

Call  thee  shrunk,  swart :  I  call  thee  olive-brown. 
Violets  and  pencilled  hyacinths  are  dark. 
Yet  first  of  flowers  they're  chosen  for  a  crown. 
As  goats  pursue  the  clover,  wolves  the  goat, 
And  cranes  the  ploughman,  upon  thee  I  dote. 

Had  I  but  Croesus'  wealth,  we  twain  should  stand. 

Gold-sculptured,  in  Love's  temple:  thou  should'st  play 

Thy  pipe,  a  rose  or  apple  in  thy  hand, 

I  flaunt  my  minstrel's  robe  and  sandals  gay. 

Bombyca !  twinkling  ebony  are  thy  feet, 

Honey  thy  mouth,  thy  ways  none  knows  how  sweet ! 

MiLO. 
Fine  verses  can  this  unknown  herdsman  make  — 
How  shone  the  artist  in  each  measured  line  ! 
Why,  lad,  that  beard  grew  on  thee  by  mistake ! 
List  to  this  stave,  by  Lytierse  the  divine. 

\Sings.\     O  rich  in  fruit  and  cornblade  :  be  this  field 
Tilled  well,  Demeter,  and  fair  fruitage  yield  ! 

Bind  the  sheaves,  reapers :  lest  one,  passing,  say  — 
'  A  fig  for  these,  they're  never  worth  their  pay.' 

Let  the  mown  swathes  look  northward,  ye  who  mow, 
Or  westward  —  for  the  ears  grow  fattest  so. 

Avoid  a  noontide  nap,  ye  threshing  men  : 

The  chaff  flies  thickest  from  the  corn-ears  then. 

Wake  when  the  lark  wakes  ;  when  he  slumbers,  close 
Your  work,  ye  reapers  :  and  at  noontide  doze. 

Boys,  the  frogs'  life  for  me !     They  need  not  him 
Who  fills  the  flagon,  for  in  drink  they  swim. 

Better  boil  herbs,  thou  toiler  after  gain, 

Than,  splitting  cummin,  split  thy  hand  in  twain. 

This  that  I've  sung  thee,  ploughman,  is  a  tune 
For  men  to  sing  that  swelter  in  the  sun. 
Thy  meagre  love-tale  is  a  thing  to  croon 
In  thy  mamma's  ear  when  her  dreams  are  done. 


75^  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

Id.  XV. 

THE  TWO  LADIES  OF  SYRACUSE. 

GORGO.  —  Praxinoa. 

GORGO. 
Is  Dame  Praxinoa  in  ? 

Praxinoa. 

Yes,  Gorgo  dear. 
How  late  you  are  —  the  only  marvel  is 
You're  here  at  all !    Quick,  Eunoa,  find  a  chair 
And  fling  a  cushion  on  it. 

GORGO. 

Thanks. 
Praxinoa. 

Sit  down. 
Gorgo. 
Oh  what  a  thing  is  spirit !     Here  I  am, 
Praxinoa,  safe  at  last  from  all  that  crowd 
And  all  those  chariots  ....  every  street  a  mass 
Of  boots  and  soldiers'  jackets !  ....  Oh !  the  road 
Seemed  endless  ....  and  you  live  so  far  away ! 

Praxinoa. 
This  land's-end  den  —  for  dwelling  it  is  not  — 
My  madcap  hired  to  keep  us  'twain  apart 
And  stir  up  strife.     'Twas  like  him,  odious  pest ! 

Gorgo. 
Nay,  call  not,  dear,  your  lord,  your  Deinon,  names 
To  the  babe's  face.     Look  how  it  stares  at  you. 

Praxinoa. 
There,  baby  sweet,  I  never  meant  Papa ! 

Gorgo, 
It  understands,  by'r  lady  !  dear  Papa ! 

Praxinoa. 
Well,  yesterday  (that  means  what  day  you  like) 
'  Papa '  had  rouge  and  hair-powder  to  buy ; 
He  brought  back  salt !  this  oaf  of  six-foot-one. 

Gorgo. 
Just  such  another  is  that  pickpocket 
My  Diocleides  !     He  bought  t'other  day 
Six  fleeces  at  seven  drachms,  his  last  exploit. 
What  were  they  }     Scraps  of  worn-out  pedlar's-bags. 
Sheer  trash. — But  put  your  gown  and  kirtle  on  ; 
And  we'll  to  Ptolemy's,  the  sumptuous  king, 
To  see  the  Adonis.     As  I  hear,  the  queen 
Provides  us  entertainment  of  the  best. 

Praxinoa. 
The  grand  can  do  things  grandly.     Tell  me  more. 
You  that  have  seen  :  be  eyes  unto  the  blind. 


THEOCRITUS:     THE  TWO  LADIES  OF  SYRACUSE.  757 

GORGO. 
'Twere  time  we  went  —  but  all  time's  noliday 
With  idlers. 

Praxinoa. 
Eunoa,  pampered  minx,  the  jug ! 
Set  it  down  here  —  you  cats  would  sleep  all  day 
On  cushions  —  stir  yourself,  fetch  water,  quick  ! 
Water's  our  first  want.     How  she  holds  the  jug  ! 
Now,  pour  —  not,  cormorant,  in  that  wasteful  way  — 
You've  drenched  my  dress,  bad  luck  t'  you  !     There, 

enough : 
I  have  made  such  toilet  as  my  fates  allowed. 
Now  for  the  key  o'  the  plate-chest.     Bring  it,  quick  ! 

GORGO. 
My  dear,  that  full  pelisse  becomes  you  well. 
What  did  it  stand  you  in,  straight  off  the  loom  } 

Praxinoa. 
Don't  ask  me,  Gorgo :  two  good  pounds  and  more. 
Then  I  gave  all  my  mind  to  trimming  it. 

GORGO. 
Well,  'tis  a  great  success.     Where  have  you  left 
My  mantle,  Eunoa,  and  my  parasol } 
Arrange  me  nicely.     Babe,  you'll  bide  at  home  : 
Horses  might  eat  you,  ghosts  !  —  yes,  cry  your  fill. 
But  we  won't  have  you  maimed.     Now  let's  be  off. 
You,  Phrygia,  take  and  nurse  the  tiny  thing : 
Call  the  dog  in :  make  fast  the  outer  door. 

Praxinoa. 

Gods  !  what  a  crowd  !     How,  when  shall  we  get  past 

This  nuisance,  these  unending  ant-like  swarms .'' 

Yet,  Ptolemy,  we  owe  thee  thanks  for  much 

Since  heaven  received  thy  sire  !     No  miscreant  now 

Creeps  Thug-like  up,  to  maul  the  passer-by. 

What  games  men  played  erewhile — men  shaped  in  crime, 

Birds  of  a  feather,  rascals  every  one ! 

—  We're  done  for,  Gorgo  darling —  here  they  are, 

The  Royal  horse  !  Sweet  sir,  don't  trample  me  ! 

That  bay  —  the  savage  !  —  reared  up  straight  on  end  ! 

Fly,  Eunoa,  can't  you  !     Doggedly  she  stands. 

He'll  be  his  rider's  death  !  —  How  glad  I  am 

My  babe's  at  home. 

GORGO. 
Praxinoa,  never  mind  ! 
See,  we're  before  them  now,  and  they're  in  line. 

Praxinoa. 
There,  I'm  myself.     But  from  a  child  I  feared 
Horses  and  slimy  snakes.     But  haste  we  on  : 
A  surging  multitude  is  close  behind. 

GORGO  {to  Old  Lady]. 
From  the  palace,  mother  ? 

Old  Lady. 

Ay,  child. 


75^  ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 

GORGO. 

Is  it  fair 
Of  access  ? 

Old  Lady. 

Trying  brought  the  Greeks  to  Troy. 
Young  ladies,  they  must  try  who  would  succeed. 

GORGO. 
The  crone  hath  said  her  oracle  and  gone. 
Women  know  all  —  how  Adam  married  Eve. 
—  Praxinoa,  look  what  crowds  are  round  the  door ! 

Praxinoa. 
Fearful.     Your  hand,  please,  Gorgo.     Eunoa,  you 
Hold  Eutychus  —  hold  tight  or  you'll  be  lost. 
We'll  enter  in  a  body —  hold  us  fast ! 
Oh  dear,  my  muslin  dress  is  torn  in  two, 
Gorgo,  already !     Pray,  good  gentleman, 
(And  happiness  be  yours)  respect  my  robe  ! 

Stranger. 
I  could  not  if  I  would  —  nathless  I  will. 

Praxinoa. 
They  come  in  hundreds,  and  they  push  like  swine. 

Stranger. 
Lady,  take  courage :  it  is  all  well  now. 

Praxinoa. 
And  now  and  ever  be  it  well  with  thee, 
Sweet  man,  for  shielding  us  !     An  honest  soul 
And  kindly.     Oh!  we're  smothering  Eunoa: 
Fight  your  way,  trembler  !     Good  !     '  We're  all  in  now. 
As  quoth  the  goodman,  and  shut  out  his  wife. 

Gorgo. 
Praxinoa,  look  !     Note  well  this  broidery  first. 
How  exquisitely  fine  —  too  good  for  earth  ! 
Empress  Athene,  what  strange  sempstress  wrought 
Such  work  ?     What  painter  painted,  realized 
Such  pictures  ?     Just  like  life  they  stand  or  move. 
Facts  and  not  fancies  !     What  a  thing  is  man  ! 
How  bright,  how  lifelike  on  his  silvern  couch 
Lies,  with  youth's  bloom  scarce  shadowing  his  cheek, 
That  dear  Adonis,  lovely  e'en  in  death ! 

A  Stranger. 
Bad  luck  t'  you,  cease  your  senseless  pigeon's  prate ! 
Their  brogue  is  killing  —  every  word  a  drawl. 

Gorgo. 
Whence  did  he  spring  from  }     What  is  it  to  thee 
If  we  two  prattle  ?     Order,  sir,  your  slaves  : 
You're  ordering  Syracusan  ladies  now! 
Corinthians  bred  (to  tell  you  one  fact  more) 
As  was  Bellerophon  :  islanders  in  speech. 
For  Dorians  may  talk  Doric,  I  presume  ? 

Praxinoa. 
Persephone  !     Our  master's  yet  unborn. 
I've  but  one  terror,  lest  he  soil  my  gown. 


THEOCRITUS:    THE  TWO  LADIES  OF  SYRACUSE.  759 

GORGO. 
Hush,  dear,  Argeia's  daughter's  going  to  sing 
The  Adonis :  that  accomplished  vocalist 
Who  has  no  rival  in  "  The  Sailor's  Grave." 
Mark  her  coquetting  with  her  music  now. 

Song. 
Queen,  who  lov'st  Golgi  and  the  Sicel  hill 
And  Ida ;  Aphrodite  radiant-eyed  ; 
The  dainty-footed  Hours  from  Acheron's  rill 
Brought  once  again  Adonis  to  thy  side. 
How  changed  in  twelve  short  months  !     They  travel  slow. 
Those  precious  Hours :  we  hail  their  advent  still, 
For  blessings  do  they  bring  to  all  below. 
O  Sea-born !  thou  didst  erst,  or  legend  lies. 
Shed  on  a  woman's  soul  thy  grace  benign. 
And  Berenice's  dust  immortalize. 
O  called  by  many  names,  at  many  a  shrine  ! 
For  thy  sweet  sake  doth  Berenice's  child 
(Herself  a  second  Helen)  deck  with  all 
"That's  fair,  Adonis.     On  his  right  are  piled 
Ripe  apples  fallen  from  the  oak-tree  tall ; 
And  silver  caskets  at  his  left  support 
Toy-gardens,  Syrian  scents  enshrined  in  gold 
And  alabaster,  cakes  of  every  sort 
That  in  their  ovens  the  pastrywomen  mould, 
When  with  white  meal  they  mix  all  flowers  that  bloom. 
Oil-cakes  and  honey-cakes.     There  stand  portrayed 
Each  bird,  each  butterfly  ;  and  in  the  gloom 
Of  foliage  climbing  high,  and  downward  weighed 
By  graceful  blossoms,  do  the  young  Loves  play 
Like  nightingales,  and  perch  on  every  tree, 
And  flit,  to  try  their  wings,  from  spray  to  spray. 
Then  see  the  gold,  the  ebony  !     O  see 
The  ivory-carven  eagles,  bearing  up 
To  Zeus  the  boy  who  fills  his  royal  cup  ! 
Soft  as  a  dream,  such  tap'stry  gleams  o'erhead 
As  the  Milesian's  self  would  gaze  on,  charmed. 
But  sweet  Adonis  hath  his  own  sweet  bed  : 
Next  Aphrodite  sleeps  the  roseate-armed, 
A  bridegroom  of  eighteen  or  nineteen  years. 
Kiss  the  smooth  boyish  lip  —  there's  no  sting  there  ! 
The  bride  hath  found  her  own  :  all  bliss  be  hers ! 
And  him  at  dewy  dawn  we'll  troop  to  bear 
To  where  the  breakers  hiss  against  the  shore : 
Thee,  with  dishevelled  dress  and  unbound  hair, 
Bare-bosomed  all,  our  descant  wild  we'll  pour  : 

"  Thou  haunt'st,  Adonis,  earth  and  heaven  in  turn, 

Alone  of  heroes.     Agamemnon  ne'er 

Could  compass  this,  nor  Aias  stout  and  stern  : 

Not  Hector,  eldest-born  of  her  who  bare 

Ten  sons,  not  Patrocles,  nor  safe-returned 

From^Ilium  Pyrrhus,  such  distinction  earned  ; 

Nor,  elder  yet,  the  sons  of  Lapithae, 

Of  Pelops  and  Deucalion,  and  the  crown 

Of  Greece,  Pelasgians.     Gracious  may'st  thou  be, 

Adonis,  now  :  pour  new-year's  blessings  down  ! 

Right  welcome  dost  thou  come,  Adonis  dear  : 

Come  when  thou  wilt,  thou'lt  find  a  welcome  here." 


760 


ALEXANDRIA,    THEOCRITUS. 


GORGO. 

'Tis  fine,  Praxinoa  !     How  I  envy  her 

Her  learning,  and  still  more   her   luscious 

voice  ! 
We   must  go   home :    my   husband's   sup- 

perless : 
And,  in  that  state,  he's  simply  vinegar. 
Don't   cross  his   path   when    hungry !     So 

farewell, 
Adonis,  and  be  housed  'mid  welfare  aye  ! 

THE   LAMENT  FOR  ADONIS. 

Woe,  woe  for  Adonis,  he  hath  perished, 
the  beauteous  Adonis,  dead  is  the  beauteous 
Adonis,  the  Loves  join  in  the  lament.  No 
more  in  thy  purple  raiment,  Cypris,  do  thou 
sleep ;  arise,  thou  wretched  one,  sable- 
stoled,  and  beat  thy  breasts,  and  say  to  all, 
'  he  hath  perished,  the  lovely  Adonis  ! ' 

Woe,  woe  for  Adonis,  the  Loves  join  i?t  the 
lament ! 

Low  on  the  hills  is  lying  the  lovely 
Adonis,  and  his  thigh  with  the  boar's  tusk, 
his  white  thigh  with  the  boar's  tusk  is 
wounded,  and  sorrow  on  Cypris  he  brings, 
as  softly  he  breathes  his  life  away. 

His  dark  blood  drips  down  his  skin  of 
snow,  beneath  his  brows  his  eyes  wax  heavy 
and  dim,  and  the  rose  flees  from  his  lip,  and 
thereon  the  very  kiss  is  dying,  the  kiss  that 
Cypris  will  never  forego. 

To  Cypris  his  kiss  is  dear,  though  he 
lives  no  longer,  but  Adonis  knew  not  that 
she  kissed  him  as  he  died. 

Woe,  woe  for  Adonis,  the  Loves  join  in  the 
lament ! 
A  cruel,  cruel  wound  on  his  thigh  hath 
Adonis,  but  a  deeper  wound  in  her  heart 
doth  Cytherea  bear.  About  him  his  dear 
hounds  are  loudly  baying,  and  the  nymphs 
of  the  wild  wood  wail  him  ;  but  Aphrodite 
with  unbound  locks  through  the  glades 
goes  wandering, — wretched,  with  hair  un- 
braided,  with  feet  unsandaled,  and  the  thorns 
as  she  passes  wound  her  and  pluck  the  blos- 
som of  her  sacred  blood.  Shrill  she  wails 
as  down  the  long  woodlands  she  is  borne, 
lamenting  her  Assyrian  lord,  and  again 
calling  him,  and  again.  But  round  his 
navel  the  dark  blood  leapt  forth,  with  blood 
from  his  thighs  his  chest  was  scarlet,  and 
beneath  Adonis'  breast,  the  spaces  that 
afore  were  snow-white,  were  purple  with 
blood. 

Woe,  woe  for  Cytherea,  the  Loves  join  in 
the  lament ! 


THEOCRITUS:     THE  LAMENT  FOR  BION.  761 

She  hath  lost  her  lovely  lord,  with  him  she  hath  lost  her  sacred  beauty.  Fair  was 
the  form  of  Cypris,  while  Adonis  was  living,  but  her  beauty  has  died  with  Adonis. 
Woe,  woe  for  Cypris,  the  mountains  all  are  saying,  and  the  oak-trees  answer,  woe 
for  Adonis.  And  the  rivers  bewail  the  sorrows  of  Aphrodite,  and  the  wells  are 
weeping  Adonis  on  the  mountains.  The  flowers  flush  red  for  anguish,  and 
Cytherea  through  all  the  mountain-knees,  through  every  dell,  doth  shrill  the  piteous 
dirge. 

Woe,  woe  for  Cytherea,  he  hath  perished,  the  lovely  Adonis. 

THE  LAMENT  FOR  BION. 

Wail,  let  me  hear  you  wail,  ye  woodland  glades,  and  thou  Dorian  water ;  and  weep 
ye  rivers,  for  Bion,  the  well-beloved !  Now  all  ye  green  things  mourn,  and  now  ye 
groves  lament  him,  ye  flowers  now  in  sad  clusters  breathe  yourselves  away.  Now 
redden  ye  roses  in  your  sorrow,  and  now  wax  red  ye  wind-flowers,  now  thou  hyacinth, 
whisper  the  letters  on  thee  engraved,  and  add  a  deeper  ai  ai  to  thy  petals  ;  he  is  dead, 
the  beautiful  singer. 

Begin,  ye  Sicilian  Muses,  begin  the  dirge. 

Ye  nightingales  that  lament  among  the  thick  leaves  of  the  trees,  tell  ye  to  the 
Sicilian  waters  of  Arethusa  the  tidings  that  Bion  the  herdsman  is  dead,  and  that  with 
Bion  song  too  has  died,  and  perished  hath  the  Dorian  minstrelsy. 
Begin,  ye  Sicilian  Muses,  begin  the  dirge. 

Ye  Strymonian  swans,  sadly  wail  ye  by  the  waters,  and  chant  with  melancholy 
notes  the  dolorous  song,  even  such  a  song  as  in  his  time  with  voice  like  yours  he  was 
wont  to  sing.  And  tell  again  to  the  (Eagrian  maidens,  tell  to  all  the  Nymphs  Bis- 
tonian,  how  that  he  hath  perished,  the  Dorian  Orpheus. 

Begin,  ye  Sicilian  Muses,  begin  the  dirge. 

No  more  to  his  herds  he  sings,  that  beloved  herdsman,  no  more  'neath  the  lonely 
oak  he  sits  and  sings,  nay,  but  by  Pluteus'  side  he  chants  a  refrain  of  oblivion.  The 
mountains  too  are  voiceless  :  and  the  heifers  by  the  bulls  that  wander  lament  and 
refuse  their  pasture. 

Begin,  ye  Sicilian  Muses,  begin  the  dirge. 

Thy  sudden  doom,  oh  Bion,  Apollo  himself  lamented,  and  the  Satyrs  mourned 
thee,  and  the  Priapi  in  sable  raiment,  and  the  Panes  sorrow  for  thy  song,  and  the  foun- 
tain-fairies in  the  wood  made  moan,  and  their  tears  turned  to  rivers  of  waters.  And 
Echo  in  the  rocks  laments  that  thou  art  silent,  and  no  more  she  mimics  thy  voice. 
And  in  sorrow  for  thy  fall  the  trees  cast  down  their  fruit,  and  all  the  flowers  have 
faded.  From  the  ewes  hath  flowed  no  fair  milk,  nor  honey  from  the  hives,  nay,  it 
hath  perished  for  mere  sorrow  in  the  wax,  for  now  hath  thy  honey  perished,  and  no 
more  it  behoves  men  to  gather  the  honey  of  the  bees. 

Begin,  ye  Sicilian  Muses,  begin  the  dirge. 

Not  so  much  did  the  dolphin  mourn  beside  the  sea-banks,  nor  ever  sang  so  sweet 
the  nightingale  on  the  cliffs,  nor  so  much  lamented  the  swallow  on  the  long  ranges 
of  the  hills,  nor  shrilled  so  loud  the  halcyon  o'er  his  sorrows  ; 

{Begin,  ye  Sicilian  Muses,  begin  the  dirge?) 
Nor  so  much,  by  the  grey  sea  waves,  did  ever  the  sea-bird  sing,  nor  so  much  in  the 
dells  of  the  dawn  did  the  bird  of  Memnon  bewail  the  son  of  the  Morning,  fluttering 
around  his  tomb,  as  they  lamented  for  Bion  dead. 

Nightingales,  and  all  the  swallows  that  once  he  was  wont  delight,  that  he  would 
teach  to  speak,  they  sat  over  against  each  other  on  the  boughs  and  kept  moaning, 
and  the  birds  sang  in  answer  '  Wail,  ye  wretched  ones,  even  ye  ! ' 


CHAPTER  II.— THE  VOETKV .—Continued. 

I. — The  Relation  of  the  New  Movement  to  the  Later  Condition  of  Athens.  Changed 
Treatment  of  Women,  and  their  Influence.  The  Pastorals  and  Elegies.  An- 
timachus.  The  Growth  of  Literary  Art,  and  Various  Writers  of  Forgotten  Fame. 
IL — Callimachus.  The  Lyric  Poetry.  The  Drama.  IIL — The  Epic  Writers. 
ApoUonius  Rhodius,  and  his  Argonautics  ;  its  Influence  on  Roman  Writers.  The 
Didactic  Poets:  Aratus,  Nicander,  etc.,  etc.  Some  Minor  Writers  of  Verse. 
IV. — Nonnus,  and  his  Learned  Epic.  Musaeus.  V. — Quintus  Smyrnaeus,  and 
his  Unexpected  Vigor.  The  Gradual  Dwindling  of  Poetry,  VI. — The  Anthol- 
ogy. Its  Gradual  Formation.  Its  Abundance.  The  Epigram.  VII. — Extracts 
from  the  Anthology. 


THE  spirit  of  Alexandria,  very  naturally,  was  but  the  full  develop- 
ment of  what  had  made  its  appearance  in  the  preparatory 
enfeeblement  of  the  Athenian  power.  We  saw  in  examining  the 
work  of  Euripides  the  new  way  in  which  the  gods  were  treated,  and 
the  continual  tendency  towards  diminishing  the  difference  between 
them  and  human  beings,  as  well  as  the  growing  prominence  of  personal 
characteristics  in  the  human  heroes  and  heroines.  The  heroic  pas- 
sions, which  were  necessarily  abstract  because  they  dealt  with  the 
needs  of  such  abstractions  as  the  state,  vanished  with  the  growth  of 
political  hopefulness,  to  be  succeeded  by  a  greater  interest  in  the 
emotions  of  the  separate  individuals.  As  the  controlling  bonds  that 
held  the  citizens  together  were  loosened,  their  own  interests  became 
prominent  and  found  expression  in  literature,  and  what  was  indicated 
by  Euripides  became  the  sole  motive  in  Alexandria.  In  the  last  of 
the  three  great  Athenian  tragedians  we  noticed  how  much  stress  was 
laid  on  love.  Aristophanes  perceived  the  change  ;  in  the  Frogs  he 
lets  -^schylus  boast  that  he  had  never  brought  a  woman  in  love  upon 
the  stage,  and  although  Sophocles  could  not  have  said  the  same  thing, 
the  love  that  he  represented  was  distinctly  a  heroic  passion,  while  in 
Euripides  it  became,  as  we  saw,  a  leading  subject.  Phedrus  and  Hip- 
polyta,  Perseus  and  Andromeda,  Meleager  and  Atalanta,  Jason  and 
Medea,  Protesialaus  and  Laodameia,  at  once  suggest  themselves  as 
examples  of  the  tragedian's  manifold  treatment  of  the  passion,  as  it 
showed  itself  in  unmarried  girls  or  married  women,  employing  mytho- 
logical stories,  but  giving  them  a  human  treatment.  In  comedy  a 
similar  change  took  place  ;  we  have  the  testimony  of   both  Plutarch 


WOMEN,  AND   THEIR  INFLUENCE. 


763 


and  Ovid  that  all  his  plays  treated  love,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
important  elements  of  all  the  Alexandrine  poetry. 

In  the  new  capital  women  escaped  from  many  of  the  bonds  that 
had  weighed  heavy  upon  them  in  the  Athenian  civilization  which 
granted  them  few  privileges,  but  demanded  that  they  should  busy 
themselves  with  housekeeping  alone.  There  are  a  thousand  indica- 
tions of  this  great  social  change ;  whereas  we  find  in  Euripides  fre- 
quent expressions  of  the  duty  of  women  to  keep  at  home  or  to  go  out 
only  under  the  escort  of  a  slave, — so  often  indeed  is  this  advice 
repeated  that  one  is  led  to  suppose  that  the  rule  was  often  broken — 
whereas,  in  the  idyl  of  Theocritus  quoted  above,  Gorgo  and  Praxinoa 
are  represented  as  going  forth  unaccompanied  to  see  the  festival  of 
Adonis,  falling  into  talk  with  an  unknown  man  without  embarrassment, 
after  a  fashion  impossible  in  any  picture  of  Athenian  life.     Women, 


GIRLS    READING. 


too,  at  this  time  became  active  in  political  intrigues,  and  the  literature 
is  full  of  references  indicating  their  growing  importance.  We  hear  of 
them  devoting  themselves  to  study,  writing  poetry,  and  painting 
pictures. 

It  is  clear  that  these  changes  helped  to  bring  into  prominence 
everything  that  had  to  do  with  the  widened  influence  of  women,  and 
love  with  all  its  various  complications  became  a  main  source  of  inspira- 
tion with  Alexandrine  writers.  We  have  seen  how  much  was  made 
of  it  by  the  poets  in  their  pastorals ;  in  the  elegies,  too,  we  find  it 
holding  a  leading  place.  For  a  long  time  this  form  of  composition 
had  lost  the  importance  that  belonged  to  it  before  the  Persian  war, 
and  when  the  drama  arose,  with  its  fuller  significance,  the  elegy 
shriveled  into  the  epigram  or  became  the  vehicle  of  mere  personal 


764  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED). 

interest.  We  hear  for  some  time  of  no  one  famous  writer  of  elegies, 
yet  they  were  still  composed  by  some  of  the  men  who  acquired  fame 
in  other  ways,  with  their  lyrics  or  tragedies,  and  they  formed  a  literary 
accomplishment  of  orators,  philosophers,  and  statesmen,  thus  occupy- 
ing very  much  the  same  position  as  translations  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  classics  still  hold  among  men  who  rest  their  reputation  on  very 
different  things.  Time  has  discreetly  winnowed  out  most  of  these 
domestic  compositions,  and  we  have  but  little  left  of  the  elegies  of 
-^schylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  and  Aristotle.  Fragments  survive 
of  the  work  of  Ion  of  Chios,  Dionysius  Chaleus  of  Athens,  Enenus  of 
Paros,  a  sophist,  and  Kritias  of  Athens,  the  well-known  statesman ; 
none,  however,  convey  a  message  of  great  importance,  but  are  rather 
of  the  nature  of  a  host's  encouragement  to  his  guests,  while  some 
express  the  political  opinions  of  their  writers. 

Of  far  higher  reputation  was  Antimachus  of  Colophon,  who 
flourished  about  400  B.C.,  at  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  war,  and 
it  is  interesting  to  see  how  much  he  was  affected  by  the  change 
already  noticed  in  the  poetical  literature  of  the  time.  His  most 
famous  elegiac  composition  in  this  sort  was  a  series  of  elegies  collected 
under  the  name  of  Lyde,  after  the  real  or  imaginary  mistress  whose 
charms  and  coyness  inspired  his  busy  pen.  Already  Mimnermus,  two 
centuries  earlier,  had  given  the  name  of  his  mistress,  Nanno,  to  some 
of  the  elegies  in  which  he  bemoaned  with  all  the  sadness  of  the 
lonians  his  own  unhappiness,  the  brevity  of  human  life,  and  the  swift 
flight  of  its  joys.  But  what  the  earlier  writer  did  naturally,  Anti- 
machus is  said  to  have  done  with  artifice;  instead  of  using  the  emo- 
tions for  the  production  of  literature,  he  used  literary  memories  for 
the  purpose  of  kindling  emotion,  and  made  a  complete  statement  of 
the  sufferings  of  others,  consoling  himself  for  her  death  by  the  vastness 
of  his  learning,  which  enabled  him  to  recall  those  heroes  of  antiquity 
who  had  suffered  like  bereavements.  Instead  of  describing  his  own 
despair  he  narrated  theirs,  and  drew  comfort,  so  Plutarch  tells  us, 
from  the  abundance  of  his  knowledge.  Even  if — which  is  unlikely — 
this  statement  is  a  mere  anecdote,  it  yet  portrays  with  indubitable 
accuracy  the  widespread  and  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  trait 
of  Alexandrine  poetry,  namely,  the  disposition  to  let  classical 
reminiscences  be  the  current  form  of  literary  expression,  as  if  the 
people  of  this  foreign  land  felt  it  necessary  to  give  constant  proof 
of  their  legitimate  descent  from  Greece.  Political,  social,  religious 
interest  had  been  lost ;  there  remained  only  literary  culture  which 
busied  itself  with  a  husk  of  fine  words  and  charming  phrases.  We 
have  known  men  in  these  later  days  who  have  thought  that  the  sole 
profit  to  be  derived  from  the  study  of  the  classics  was   the  ability  to 


THE  GROWTH  OF  LITERARY  ART.  765 

quote  ;  this  feeble  sentiment  is  a  faint  echo  of  the  literary  enthusiasm 
of  Alexandria,  which  valued  this  form  of  accomplishment  above  every- 
thing and  made  it  for  a  long  time  the  most  valuable  test  of  cultivation. 
This  method  of  treatment,  which  substituted  learning  for  the  lyric 
passion  of  the  first  writers  of  elegies,  soon  took  the  lead  among  the 
Alexandrines  and  among  the  Romans,  their  close  imitators.  Thus 
Antimachus  and  Euripides  are  the  forerunners  of  the  change  appearing 
in  literature.  Of  the  writings  of  Philetas  of  Cos,  already  mentioned 
as  an  instructor  of  Theocritus,  very  little  has  come  down  to  us,  and  of 
his  life  we  have  but  mere  scraps  of  information,  that  he  took  charge 
of  the  education  of  the  son  of  Ptolemy  Soter  in  294  B.C.  Apparently 
then  he  had  a  reputation  for  learning,  and  this  hypothesis  is  borne  out 
by  what  little  of  his  work  has  escaped  ruin.  These  fragments  indicate 
a  mastery  of  versification,  and  it  is  curious  to  notice  in  them  some  of 
the  characteristics  of  a  mature  civilization.  The  resemblance  of 
Alexandrinism  to  our  own  condition  at  the  present  day  has  been  often 
pointed  out ;  the  reader  will  recall  Mr.  Stedman's  ingenious  parallel 
between  Theocritus  and  Tennyson  in  his  "  Victorian  Poets,"  and  here 
we  find  Philetas  falling  into  line  as  a  representative  of  a  ripe,  nearly 
over-ripe  period.  Thus,  he  lent  a  new  grace  to  the  long-used  metres, 
employing  the  familiar  forms  with  the  facility  of  a  school  that  inherits 
long  practice,  like  the  later  mediaeval  poets,  the  last  of  the  Eliza- 
bethans, and  those  contemporary  poets  whose  control  of  the  vehicle 
of  expression  is  superior  to  the  importance  of  their  message.  Again, 
we  find  traces  of  the  employment  by  Philetas  of  long  words,  a  favorite 
device  of  the  Alexandrines,  and  one  that  in  its  modern  form  will  be 
recognized  by  every  reader  of  Rossetti :    e.g., 

"  Powers  of  the  impassioned  hours  prohibited." 

Philetas,  too,  employed  other  devices  for  procuring  sonority,  such 
as  assonance,  rare  words,  and  new  phrases,  whereby  he  secured  the 
unanimous  praise  of  his  successors  and  the  honor  of  frequent  imita- 
tion, notably  by  the  Latin  poet  Propertius.  Similar  traits  distin- 
guished other  Alexandrine  writers  of  elegies,  as  Phanocles  and  Her- 
mesianax.  Fortunately,  a  fragment  of  the  last-named  writer,  con- 
taining nearly  a  hundred  lines,  has  been  preserved  in  that  storehouse 
of  curiosities,  the  works  of  Athenaeus,  and  from  this  longest  represen- 
tative of  the  Alexandrine  elegies  we  may  corroborate  the  opinion 
already  formed  of  their  general  condition.  Hermesianax  sings  love- 
ditties,  and  in  this  extract  he  proves  the  dignity  of  the  lover  by  giving 
a  list  of  his  fellow-sufferers  in  the  long  roll  of  Greek  literature.  Thus, 
Homer,  he  tells  an  incredulous  world,  sang  of  Ithaca,  because  he  was 


766  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED). 

consumed  by  love  of  Penelope ;  his  own  sufferings  inspired  him. 
Hesiod  was  another  victim  of  the  tender  passion.  Socrates  was  the 
rejected  lover  of  Aspasia.  Alcaeus,  Mimnernus,  and  Antimachus 
obviously  found  a  place  in  his  list.  Probably,  if  any  one  had  been 
anxious  to  give  us  a  specimen  of  the  mingled  pedantry  and  amorous 
elegance  of  the  school,  he  could  not  have  found  a  more  characteristic 
extract  than  this.  The  school  was  certainly  moving  far  away  from 
the  models  set  by  the  early  elegiasts  ;  yet,  since  pedantry  cannot 
thrive  away  from  the  worship  of  antiquity,  Hesiod  enjoyed  extreme 
popularity  among  the  Alexandrines.  Hermesianax  called  him  the 
master  of  all  learning,  while  Callimachus  entitled  him  the  sweetest  of 
poets.  It  is  not  hard  to  see  what  it  was  that  seemed  to  them  admir- 
able ;  in  some  of  his  work  that  has  disappeared  he  collected  a  number 
of  stories  concerning  famous  heroines  after  a  fashion  that  appealed 
directly  to  these  later  students. 

Phanocles  sang,  too,  of  the  power  of  love,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
notice  how  much  of  modern  poetry  is  closely  connected  with  the 
work  of  the  Alexandrines.  The  reader  will  recall  the  famous  lines  in 
Milton's  Lycidas : 

"  What  could  the  muse  herself  that  Orpheus  bore, 
The  muse  herself,  for  her  enchanting  son 
Whom  universal  Nature  did  lament ; 
When  by  the  rout  that  made  the  hideous  roar, 
His  gory  visage  down  the  stream  was  sent, 
Down  the  swift  Hebrus  to  the  Lesbian  shore  ?  " 

These  lines  hand  down  to  us  the  tradition  which,  so  far  at  least  as 
our  definite  knowledge  goes,  was  first  treated  by  Phanocles,  whom 
Virgil  again  imitated  in  his  Georgics,  where  the  same  story  is  recounted 
in  plaintive  verse. 

Alexander  of  Etolia  was  another  writer  of  elegies,  and  like  most  of 
his  contemporaries  he  also  tried  his  hand  at  other  forms  of  poetical 
composition.  He  was  one  of  the  seven  tragic  poets  who  composed 
the  Alexandrine  pleiad,  and  he  won  fame  as  an  epic  bard,  besides 
being  known  as  a  grammarian.  But  a  fragment  of  his  work  remains. 
A  similar  fate  has  fallen  on  the  work  of  Eratosthenes  (276-146  B.C.), 
who  had  charge  of  the  library  of  Alexandria  and  acquired  deserved 
fame  for  his  astronomical  and  geographical  investigations.  He  was  also 
known  as  a  philosopher  and  historian.  These  severer  studies  did  not 
render  him  insensible  to  the  demands  of  literature.  Besides  measuring 
the  earth  and  the  sun,  and  raising  geography  and  chronology  to  the 
rank  of  sciences,  he  wrote  an  epic  poem  on  Hermes,  and  an  elegy, 
Erigone.  His  versatility  throws  much  light  on  the  intellectual 
enthusiasm  then  existing. 


CALLIMACH us— ELEGIAC  POEMS.  767 

II. 

The  most  important,  however,  of  all  these  writers  of  elegies  was 
Callimachus  of  Cyrene,  who  died  about  240  B.C.     He  wrote  in  prose  as 
well  as  in  verse,  composing  the  first  full  history  of  Greek  literature,  and 
a  variety  of  other  books,  of  which  only  the  names  have  survived.     His 
elegies  have  been  scarcely  more  fortunate,  although  their  popularity 
at  the  time  and  among  the  Romans,  who  imitated  them  freely,  was  very 
great.     Yet,  we  do  know  what  was  the  most  admired  form  of  that  day, 
and  the  one  on  the  hair  of  Berenice  which  was  translated  by  Catullus 
may  serve  as  an  example  of  the  lavish  and  extravagant  invention  and 
compliment  that  seemed  the  height  of  poetical  excellence.     Berenice, 
the  wife  of  Ptolemy  Euergetes,  had  made  a  vow  to  consecrate  to 
Aphrodite  a  lock  of  her  hair,  in   case  her  husband  should  return  in 
safety  from  a  campaign  against  the  Assyrians.     Her  prayers  had  been 
granted,  Ptolemy  returned  unharmed,  the  lock  was  duly  devoted  to  the 
goddess,  when  Conon,  an  astronomer,  probably  the 
court-astronomer,  announced  that  he  had  seen  it  in         ^^ — ©fl^Tfev 
the  sky  metamorphosed  into  a  new  constellation.      /f  ^^^^^^\ 
This  is  the  subject  of  the  poem,  and  its  far-fetched     /<^^^^?,^^  \\ 
flattery,    its   curious  mixture  of   compliment   and    f/\"^^^       ;^  r  I 
science,   bring   us   into   the   very  air   of    Alexan-    \^^'''y<^-^^  J 
dria.      Artifice    is    absolutely    triumphant    here:      %^^^\m/ 
mountains,  Callimachus  sings,  have  yielded  before        ^'^".Ol^iJ^'^^ 
steel,  what  could  a  poor  lock  of  hair  do?     Such   ptolemy  and  Berenice. 
was  the  argument,  repeated  by  Pope  in  his  Rape 
of  the  Lock,  that  marked  how  poetry  had  become  a  matter  of  inge- 
nuity.    Learning  was  never  in  stranger  company. 

From  this  specimen  it  is  not  difificult  to  imagine  what  was  the  nature 
of  the  lost  elegies  of  Callimachus.  Fragments  corroborate  what  is  the 
natural  presumption  that  is  inspired  by  this  specimen,  and  by  what  is 
left  of  the  work  of  his  immediate  predecessors  and  contemporaries. 
Yet,  even  if  what  we  have  fails  to  arouse  keen  poetical  delight,  we 
may  yet  regret  that  so  little  of  his  writings  have  escaped  ruin. 
Although  it  was  he  who  said  that  a  great  book  is  a  great  evil,  perhaps 
because  he  said  it,  he  wrote  a  vast  number  of  short  ones,  no  less  than 
eight  hundred,  we  are  told.  The  most  famous  was  the  Aitia,  a  collec- 
tion of  elegies  in  which  he  recounted  a  number  of  legends,  and  under- 
took to  explain  the  recondite  allusions  that  they  contained  to  his 
readers,  who  must  have  begun  to  lose  their  familiarity  with  them. 
Here,  too,  it  will  be  noticed,  we  may  observe  the  scientific  tendency 
of  the  time. 

Some  of  the  hymns  of  Callimachus  are  extant,  but  whether  their 


768  THE  POE THY— {CONTINUED). 

survival  is  due  to  chance,  or  on  account  of  their  greater  popularity,  is 
obscure.  They  are  for  the  most  part  frosty  work,  full  of  curious 
mythological  lore,  recounted  often  with  dramatic  vividness  and  literary 
care,  but  full  of  the  marks  of  a  period  of  decadence.  The  subjects 
were  of  the  customary  sort :  Zeus,  Apollo,  Artemis,  Delos,  Demeter, 
the  Bath  of  Pallas,  and  we  come  across  traces  of  the  influence  that 
came  from  the  so-called  Homeric  hymns,  but  the  most  distinctly 
marked  quality  is  the  workmanship  of  Callimachus.  Some  of  the 
epigrams  and  a  piece  of  an  epic  of  this  writer  will  be  spoken  of  later. 
We  have  almost  nothing  left  of  the  lyric  poetry  of  the  Alexandrines, 
and  indeed  in  ancient  Greece  this  form  of  verse  had  lost  its  old  sig- 
nificance since  the  development  of  the  drama.  Yet  even  there  it  had 
not  wholly  died,  although  it  underwent  a  change  which  carried  it  far 
from  its  earlier  nature.  We  left  it  at  its  perfection  in  the  hands  of 
Pindar,  surviving  in  Thebes,  and  so  outside  of  the  intellectual  move- 
ment that  was  making  itself  felt  in  Athens.  Its  perfection  foreboded 
the  change  which  was  inevitable  as  tragedy  took  its  place,  and  the  old 
form  was  much  modified  by  its  new  and  greater  rival.  It  is  Melanip- 
pides  of  Melos  who  is  mentioned  as  the  first  to  introduce  the  changes. 
He  lived  at  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century,  and  was  honored  by 
an  attack  of  the  writer  of  comedies,  Pherecrates,  for  abandoning  the 
old  music  and  substituting  the  new,  for  Aristophanes  was  not  the  only 
comedian  to  believe  that  the  cause  of  morality  demanded  conservatism 
in  music.  Plato  in  his  Republic  expressed  similar  opinions.  Philox- 
enus  of  Cythera  was  denounced  in  the  same  way.  He  flourished 
about  400  B.C.,  and  lived  at  one  part  of  his  life  in  Sicily,  at  the  court 
of  Dionysius,  where  he  learned  the  disadvantages  of  despotism  by 
being  cast  into  prison.  Why  he  was  thus  punished  is  uncertain  amid 
a  variety  of  conflicting  explanations,  although  the  usual  statement  is 
that  he  refused  to  admire  the  tyrant's  poems.  The  subject  of  one  of 
his  own  poems  was  the  love  of  Cyclops  for  Galatea,  a  theme  employed 
by  Theocritus,  it  will  be  remembered.  Other  corrupters  of  music  were 
Cinesias  and  Phrynis;  more  important  than  either  was  Timotheus  the 
Milesian,  446-357  B.C.,  whose  musical  innovations  brought  him  trouble 
more  severe  than  the  abuse  of  the  conservative  writers  of  comedies. 
He  ventured  to  add  additional  strings  to  the  cithara,  which  Terpander 
had  provided  with  seven,  and  on  taking  one  of  his  improved  instru- 
ments to  a  musical  contest  in  Sparta  he  had  it  snatched  from  his  hands 
by  an  enraged  magistrate,  who  tore  off  the  new  strings  and  hung  up 
the  instrument  as  a  warning  to  future  inventors.  The  story  retains 
its  Spartan  flavor  in  its  continuation,  which  says  that  he  was  oflficially 
censured  for  dishonoring  ancient  music,  as  well  as  for  his  unworthy 
and  modern  treatment  of  the  myth  he  sang.     Whether  these  state- 


LYRIC  POETRY  OF  THE  ALEXANDRINES.  769 

ments  are  true  or  not,  there  is  abundant  proof  that  the  change  in  the 
art  was  great  and  provocative  of  discussion.  In  his  hands  the  music 
became  mimetic,  thereby  winning  for  him  a  reputation  as  something 
scarcely  better  than  a  blasphemer.  Yet,  if  Plato  and  Lacedaemonian 
elders  blamed,  Euripides  praised,  and  the  new  musicians  proved  that 
he  formed  a  true  estimate  of  the  music  of  the  future.  Telestes,  Ion, 
Diagoras,  Licymnius,  Crexus,  all  followed  in  the  path  he  pursued,  and 
broke  away  from  the  old  bonds.  Even  this  new  development  had 
nearly  died  out  without  reaching  Alexandria,  and  just  as  the  music 
had  undergone  a  series  of  changes  that  destroyed  its  old  rigid 
divisions,  so  the  poetry  had  become  modified,  as  we  have  seen  ;  the 
idyls  could  become  little  epics,  and  we  shall  see  the  long  epics 
written  with  all  the  minutiae  of  the  idyls ;  the  elegies  were  only  in 
part  lyric,  and  the  dithyramb  went  out.  The  lyric  expression  was 
more  than  anything  a  vehicle  for  courtly  praise,  or  a  mere  idle  amuse- 
ment, such  as  it  became  in  the  hands  of  Simmias,  to  whom  belongs  all 
the  glory  of  inventing  poems  in  the  shape  of  various  material  objects, 
such  as  the  axe.  The  Sotadic  verses,  as  they  were  called  after  their 
inventor  Sotades,  were  even  less  commendable. 

The  drama  also  faded  into  something  quite  as  lifeless  as  the  modern 
English  play.  Seven  writers  composed  the  inevitable  Pleiad  which 
flourished  in  the  reign  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  285-247  B.C.;  these 
were  Alexander  of  ^Etolia,  already  mentioned  as  an  elegiac  poet,  Sosi- 
theus,  Philiseus,  Homer  the  Younger,  Acantides,  Sosiphanes,  and  Lyco- 
phron  of  Chalcis.  Yet  again  we  must  mourn  the  loss  of  nearly  all 
their  work ;  the  few  fragments  that  remain  are  not  sulificient  to  authorize 
any  reconstruction  of  their  endeavors  to  imitate  every  form  of  litera- 
ture. The  testimony  of  the  Romans,  and  the  titles  of  the  plays,  do, 
however,  make  it  clear  that  they  made  love  their  eternal  subject, 
therein  following  the  example  set  by  Euripides.  Possibly,  too,  some 
at  least  of  their  tragedies  were  composed  rather  for  the  delight  of 
readers  than  for  performance  on  the  stage.  Such  a  supposition  finds 
a  slight  warrant  in  the  only  poem  of  Lycophron's  that  has  been  pre- 
served. It  is  a  long  monologue  placed  in  the  mouth  of  Cassandra, 
foretelling  the  fall  of  Troy  and  the  fate  of  all  the  principal  contestants, 
as  well  as  the  subsequent  events  down  to  the  time  of  the  kings  of 
Alexandria.  It  is  well  entitled  the  dark  poem,  for  its  learning,  which 
is  immense,  is  wrapped  up  in  every  device  for  securing  obscurity;  and 
while  its  literary  merit  is  modest,  it  offers  a  rare  treat  to  the  gram- 
marian and  the  historian.  Its  mythological  lore  shows  the  taste  of 
the  writer's  age.  The  comedy  probably  followed  the  methods  of 
Menander ;  had  it  not  we  should  probably  find  traces  of  its  influence 
in  Roman  literature ;  as  it  is,  however,  we  must  content  ourselves  with 


77°  THE  POETRY.— {CONTINUED). 

the  names  of  Machon,  250  B.C.,  and  Aristonymus.     The  satyric  drama 
appears  to  have  been  a  vehicle  for  personal  abuse. 

Epic  poetry  found  much  favor  at  a  time  when  it  seemed  as  if  every 
quality  of  the  past  could  be  renewed  in  a  better  condition  by  strenuous 
effort,  and  the  seven  names  that  we  find  in  the  list  of  Alexandrine 
writers  of  epics  are  Lycophron,  Theocritus,  Callimachus,  Aratus,  Ap- 
pollonius  of  Rhodes,  Nicander,  and  Homer  of  Byzantium.  Long 
before  this  time  a  species  of  epic  poetry  had  existed  in  Greece,  part 
of  it  continuing  the  Homeric  poems,  the  cyclic  epics  as  they  were 
called.  These  have  already  been  mentioned.  Another  division  had 
treated  specially  the  legends  about  Heracles ;  at  least  Peisander,  640 
B.C.,  and  Panyasis,  who  lived  in  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  chose  him  for 
their  subject,  but  it  was  only  in  Alexandria  that  they  found  admirers. 
Antimachus,  whose  elegies  have  been  mentioned,  also  wrote  a  long 
Thebaid,  of  which  we  are  told  that  it  was  not  until  after  the  twenty- 
fourth  book  that  the  heroes  arrived  in  Thebes  and  the  action  began. 
Certainly,  whatever  its  qualities  might  have  been,  it  was  not  Homeric. 


HI. 

We  have  seen  the  brief  epic  poems  of  Theocritus,  but  Apollonius 
Rhodius  was  not  satisfied  with  such  piecemeal  performances.  His 
epic  was  of  considerable  length,  and  ran  through  four  books.  Like 
many  of  his  contemporaries,  he  was  also  famous  for  his  learning  and 
his  knowledge  of  grammar  as  well  as  for  his  poetical  achievements. 
He  was  at  one  time  a  pupil  of  Callimachus,  but  the  two  men  quar- 
reled, and  Apollonius  betook  himself  to  Rhodes,  whence  the  title 
Rhodian,  and  finally  he  returned  to  Alexandria,  where  he  received  the 
usual  reward  of  literary  merit  by  being  given  charge  of  the  library. 
His  poem,  the  Argonautica,  is  on  the  whole  a  favorable  specimen  of 
this  glacial  period  of  Greek  literature.  It  must  have  satisfied  all  the 
demands  of  the  critics  of  that  time  :  the  narration  recounts  the  events 
in  the  order  of  their  occurrence ;  Homer  is  conscientiously  imitated, 
similes  devised  with  ingenuity  are  inserted  with  the  most  laudable 
regularity ;  the  myths  are  many,  and  doubtless  correctly  given  ;  the 
geography  is  commendably  accurate.  Indeed,  many  occasional  bits 
have  a  real  charm  of  vividness  and  pathos,  but  the  whole  poem  is  a 
piece  made  to  order  by  a  learned,  clever,  and  painstaking  man,  who 
tries  to  let  attractive  details  serve  instead  of  real  emotion.  He  is 
overburdened  by  his  responsibilities  to  the  past.  Yet  later  times  by 
no  means  neglected  him  ;  Virgil  read  him  and  took  hints  for  his 
.^neid  from  the  Argonautica  as  well  as  from  the  Iliad  and  the  Odys- 


THE  ARGONA  UTICA   OF  APOLLONIUS  RHODIUS. 


771 


sey.  Callimachus  detest- 
ed this  work  of  his  rival, 
whom  he  attacked  with 
violence,  and,  to  show  how 
much  better  was  a  short 
epic,  composed  a  Hecate, 
of  which  fragments  re- 
main. Yet  although  Apol- 
lonius  has  suffered  for  liv- 
ing on  a  dim  border- 
ground  between  two  an- 
tiquities, his  work  is  better 
than  his  reputation  ;  and 
although  there  is  a  tinge 
of  weariness  in  the  fidelity 
of  some  of  the  poem,  it 
also  contains  passages  full 
of  real  poetry.  Undoubt- 
edly the  importance  of 
the  epic  was  very  clear  to 
Virgil,  and  this  author's 
Medea  was  full  of  influence 
upon  the  later  poet's  Dido. 
The  modernness  which  we 
find  in  the  Carthaginian 
queen  is  a  quality  that 
Virgil  found  already  ex- 
isting in  the  Medea  of 
Apollonius,  especially  in 
the  passages  that  recount 
her  love  for  Jason  ;  and 
numerous  correspondences 
attest  the  use  he  made  of 
this  original.  .  Unfortun- 
ately the  English  version 
of  this  poem  encases  the 
tender  story  in  a  suit  of 
formal  cut,  so  that  the 
little  touches  are  as  stiff' 
and  solemn  as  possible, 
and  the  intimate  quality 
of  this  charming  part  of 
the   story  is   wholly    lost. 


772  THE   POETRY.— {CONTINUED). 

It  is  barely  to  be  distinguished  from  the  severity  of  Oppian  or 
Nicander,  mentioned  below.  Thus  this  passage,  which  is  full  of 
grace  and  marked  by  a  light  touch  in  the  original,  is  lamentably 
petrified  in  the  following  version  : 

"  Through  the  clear  air  unseen,  relentless  Love 
Came  like  the  fly,  that  mads  the  youthful  drove. 
Through  valley,  and  through  flood,  it  drives  them  wild, 
Scourge  of  the  herd,  the  Breeze  by  rustics  styl'd. 
Behind  a  column  at  the  porch  he  stands. 
And  bends  th'  unerring  bow  with  cruel  hands. 
A  shaft  untried  he  from  the  quiver  drew. 
Parent  of  pangs  that  bosom  never  knew. 
With  footsteps  light  the  threshold  then  he  passed. 
And  round  and  round  his  wily  glances  cast. 
By  Jason  screen'd,  he  now  contracts  his  size. 
And  to  the  nerve  th'  indented  shaft  applies. 
He  draws  the  feathered  mischief  to  the  head ; 
Home  to  Medea's  heart  the  shaft  is  sped. 
Delirious  trances  all  her  powers  subdue. 
Back  from  the  lofty  dome  that  urchin  flew, 
A  laugh  malign  his  cruel  mischief  showed. 
Deep  in  the  virgin's  breast  his  arrow  glowed. 
Like  pent-up  fires  it  raged ;  and  from  that  flame. 
At  Jason  darted,  ardent  flashes  came. 
While  soft  oblivion  o'er  the  spirit  flows  ; 
With  fainting  throbs  her  bosom  sunk  and  rose. 
Sensations  new  the  melting  spirit  filled  ; 
Through  all  her  veins  delightful  anguish  thrilled. 
As  when  the  toiling  matron's  frugal  hand 
Has  heaped  the  fuel  round  the  smothered  brand  ; 
From  works  of  wool  her  scanty  means  are  drawn  ; 
Her  wakeful  toil  anticipates  the  dawn, 
And  stores  the  hearth  with  lurking  seeds  of  light. 
That  industry  may  steal  an  hour  from  night. 
With  gradual  waste  the  fire  in  secret  preys ; 
The  billet  moulders  as  it  feeds  the  blaze ; 
Thus  love,  pernicious  love,  consum'd  the  maid, 
A  fire  unseen  that  on  the  bosom  prey'd 
The  various  hue  tumultuous  passion  speaks. 
And  pale  and  red  alternate  seize  the  cheeks." 

This  pompous  formality,  which  puts  solemnities  and  trivialities  in 
the  same  dress,  may  well  leave  the  reader  cold,  but  a  more  literal  ren- 
dering of  this  last  comparison  will  serve  to  show  that  the  aridity  is 
not  the  fault  of  the  poet : 

"  As  a  poor  working-woman,  who  lives  on  the  hard  toil  of  her  hands, 
spreads  dry  twigs  about  a  glowing  ember  in  order  to  make  a  light  in  her 
room  at  night,  and  the  fire  starting  up  from  the  little  spark  consumes  all  the 
twigs  at  once  ;  so  burned  the  fatal  love  in  the  young  girl's  heart  ;  her  deli- 
cate cheeks  grew  red  or  pale  in  turns,  in  harmony  with  her  thoughts." 

Elsewhere  the  arduous  conflict  in  Medea's  heart  is  told  with  a  like 
grace.      To  be  sure,  the  poem  as  a  whole  deserves  no  extravagant 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ALEXANDRINE  POETRY.  773 

praise,  but  though  the  flame  of  Greek  poetry  had  nearly  burned  itself 
out.  like  the  log  in  the  working-woman's  room,  it  occasionally  flashed 
into  new  brief  brilliancy  over  a  few  twigs  and  briars.  Alexandria  paid 
dearly  for  its  position  as  the  capital  of  the  new  civilization,  but  it  has 
left  a  lasting  mark  on  the  literature  of  later  times ;  and  what  inspired 
the  Roman  poets,  and  was,  through  them,  the  model  on  which  a  very 
large  part  of  modern  literature  was  built  up,  is  now  synonymous,  in 
elegant  objurgation,  with  every  form  of  literary  vice  and  weakness. 
To  call  the  present  time  Alexandrine  is  a  favorite  pastime  of  the 
pessimist. 

Another  worker  in  this  field  was  Rhianus,  who  chose  for  his  subject 
the  fate  of  the  Messenians,  an  actual  historical  event,  therein  imitating 
Choerilus,  who,  fifty  years  after  the  battle  of  Salamis,  composed  an 
epic  poem  on  the  Persian  Wars  that  had  no  success.  Mythology  had 
too  firm  a  hold  on  Greek  literature  to  be  expelled  by  modern  history. 
The  poem  of  Rhianus  bears  witness  to  the  incessant  experiments  of 
the  Alexandrines. 

Homer  was  not  their  only  model,  however ;  the  antiquity  of  Hesiod, 
as  well  as  his  erudition,  inspired  other  writers  who  doubtless  felt  the 
necessity  of  giving  literary  recognition  to  the  new  science  that  was 
growing  up  about  them,  and  in  one  form  or  another  demanding  half 
of  their  attention.  Thus  it  was  that  didactic  poetry  in  epic  form 
made  its  appearance,  the  most  important  examples  that  have  survived 
being  two  poems  of  Aratus,  of  Soli,  who  flourished  about  250  B.C. 
He,  like  all  his  fellow-bards,  was  a  scholar  as  well  as  poet,  and  it  was 
at  the  request  of  a  Macedonian  king  that  he  composed  his  Phenomena, 
which  was  an  abstract  of  astronomical  science,  and  his  Signs  of  the 
Weather.  The  scientific  value  of  both  would  not  do  credit  to  a 
quack's  almanac,  yet  there  are  a  few  passages  that  will  please  the 
student,  even  if  they  do  not  satisfy  the  astronomer.  Such,  for  ex- 
ample, is  that  in  which  he  warns  his  readers  not  to  sail  when  the  con- 
stellation of  the  Altar  is  visible  : 

"  For  by  day  you  will  scarcely  make  any  progress,  for  the  days  are  short  ; 
and  in  the  night,  overcome  by  terror,  you  will  wait  in  vain  for  the  dawn, 
which  will   not  hasten  to  appear  for  all  your  cries.     Then  especially  the 

assault  of  the  winds  is  terrible Then  the  frost  that  comes  from  Zeus 

is  fatal  to  the  benumbed  sailors." 

And  he  closes  the  description  of  the  sailor's  woes  by  saying  that 
only  a  thin  plank  separates  them  from  Hades,  a  sentiment  that  has 
found  expression  in  Virgil,  Juvenal,  and  Victor  Hugo.  Although 
now  he  leaves  us  cold,  Aratus  was  enormously  admired  in  antiquity. 
He  was  quoted  by  St.    Paul   in    his   speech   before  the  Areopagus 


774  THE  POETRY.— {CONTINUED). 

(Acts  xvii.  28):  "For  in  him  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our 
being;  as  certain  also  of  your  own  poets  have  said.  For  we  are  also 
his  offspring,"  a  citation  that  gave  Aratus  a  high  place  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  early  Fathers.  The  Romans  also  thought  very  highly  of 
him;  he  was  translated  by  Cicero  and  Germanicus,  while  Virgil,  Ovid, 
and  Manilius  imitated  some  of  his  best  lines;  but  now  his  fame  is  as 
dead  as  the  science  that  inspired  him. 

ARATUS. 

PROGNOSTICS  OF  WEATHER. 

Be  this  the  sign  of  wind  ;  with  rolling  sweep 

High  swells  the  sea  ;  long  roarings  echo  deep 

From  billow-breaking  rocks  ;  shores  murmur  shrill, 

Though  calm  from  storm,  and  howls  the  topmost  hill. 

The  heron  with  unsteady  motion  flies, 

And  shoreward  hastes,  with  loud  and  piercing  cries  ; 

Borne  o'er  the  deep,  his  flapping  pinions  sail, 

While  air  is  ruffled  by  the  rising  gale. 

The  coots,  that  wing  through  air  serene  their  way, 

'Gainst  coming  winds  condense  their  close  array. 

The  diving  cormorants  and  wild-ducks  stand. 

And  shake  their  dripping  pinions  on  the  sand  : 

And  oft,  a  sudden  cloud  is  seen  to  spread, 

With  length'ning  shadow,  o'er  the  mountain's  head. 

About  a  hundred  years  later,  under  Ptolemy  V.  or  VI.,  Nicander  of 
Colophon  followed  in  the  same  path,  and  left  two  metrical  efforts  con- 
cerning the  proper  remedies  against  poison  of  beasts  and  drugs. 
Evidently  we  are  near  the  end  of  the  history  of  Greek  poetry,  when 
subjects  like  these  could  be  chosen,  for  although  in  earlier  times, 
in  the  lack  of  prose,  some  of  the  matters  which  were  less  adapted  to 
metrical  forms  were  necessarily  written  in  poetry,  we  have  here  only 
an  artificial  attempt  to  revive  the  past  in  imitation  of  extinct  models. 

NICANDER. 

THE  SERPENT  CERASTES. 

Now  mays't  thou  learn  the  subtle  horned  snake. 

That  steals  upon  thee,  viperous  in  his  make. 

But,  while  the  viper's  forehead  maim'd  appears. 

Horns,  two  or  four,  the  bold  Cerastes  rears. 

Lean,  dun  of  hue,  the  snake  in  sands  is  laid. 

Or  haunts  within  the  trench  that  wheels  have  made. 

Against  thee  straight  on  onward  spires  he  rides. 

And,  with  long  path,  on  trailing  belly  glides  : 

But,  sidelong-tottering,  rolls  his  middle  track. 

And  wins  his  crooked  way,  and  twines  his  scaly  back: 

As,  with  long  stern,  some  galley  cleaves  the  tide. 

Wavering  with  gusts,  and  dips  its  diving  side ; 

While,  as  the  vessel  cuts  its  channel'd  way, 

Dash'd  on  the  wind  recoils  the  scatter'd  spray. 


THE  DECADENCE  OF  GREEK  POETRY.  77 S 

When  bites  the  serpent,  straight  the  puncture  round 
A  callous  tumour,  like  a  nail,  is  found  : 
And  livid  pustules,  large  as  drops  of  rain. 
Spread  round  the  bite ;  of  dull,  and  faintish  stain  ; 
Feeble  the  smart ;  but,  when  nine  suns  have  shone. 
The  agonizing  symptoms  hasten  on. 

The  decadence  was  not  confined  to  the  contemporaries  of  Nicander ; 
in  the  reign  of  the  early  Ptolemy,  Rhinthon  of  Tarentum  had  imported 
from  his  home  the  burlesque  tragedies  which  treated  the  old  myths  of 
the  great  tragedians  in  the  fashion  of  comedies,  and  he  found  many 
to  follow  him.  Timon  of  Phlius,  about  270  B.C.,  distinguished  himself 
by  his  Silli,  or  satiric  poems,  wherewith  he  attacked  the  philosophy 
of  Pyrrho.  He  also  wrote  epics  and  tragedies.  In  the  main  the 
chronicle  of  the  later  days  is  scarcely  more  than  a  list  of  proper  names. 
Euphorion  of  Chalcis,  about  230  B.C.,  was  a  busy  writer  who  left 
behind  him  a  reputation  for  obscurity,  which,  however,  won  for  him 
the  attention  of  the  Romans.  Later  we  hear  of  Archias  of  Antioch, 
Cicero's  teacher,  the  poet  of  the  Cimbrian  and  Macedonian  wars ; 
Scymnus  of  Chios,  who  wrote  a  geography  in  iambics;  Agathyllus, 
Butas  and  Parthenius,  a  teacher  of  Virgil.  It  was  through  these  men 
that  the  Alexandrine  literature  made  its  way  into  Rome.  Babrias, 
the  fabulist,  is  supposed  to  belong  to  this  period  just  before  the 
Christian  era.  After  that  date  we  find  Marcellus  conveying  medical 
instruction  in  a  poem  of  forty-two  books,  all  of  which  are  lost.  Fate 
has  been  kinder  to  the  two  poems  ascribed  to  Oppianus,  one  on  fish  and 
fishing  and  the  other  on  the  chase.  Whether  he  was  one  or  two  per- 
sons is  a  question  not  decided,  and  for  us  unimportant.  The  poems — 
more  than  five  thousand  hexameter  lines  in  all,  present  a  curious 
medley  of  inaccurate  science  and  fantastic  statement,  adorned  with  all 
the  rhetorical  devices  that  echo  what  had  once  been  real  poetry.  By 
another  accident  a  poetical  geography  of  Dionysius  Periegetes,  in 
nearly  twelve  hundred  hexameters,  has  come  down  to  us.  Yet  these 
last  sad  gasps  are  serious  and  dignified  by  the  side  of  the  work  of 
Nestor,  who  about  200  A.D.  wrote  an  Iliad,  omitting  A  in  the  first 
book,  B  in  the  second,  and  so  on  through  the  desecrated  alphabet. 

IV. 

Yet  the  Greek  literature,  though  near  its  death,  was  not  destined  to 
end,  like  a  children's  magazine,  with  puzzles  and  verbal  tricks.  Poetry 
was'  silent  for  a  long  time,  and  it  seemed  as  if  its  painful  gasping  was 
wholly  over,  but  in  the  fifth  century  of  our  era  it  showed  again  faint 
signs  of  life,  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  galvanize  the  long-neglected 
measures  and  subjects.     Nonnus  of  Pannopolis  wrote  a  long  epic,  the 


776  THE  POETRY.— (CONTINUED). 

Dionysiaca,  or  Deeds  of  Dionysus,  in  forty-eight  books,  which  vie 
with  one  another  in  extravagance  and  incoherence,  reminding  one  of 
the  long  epics  of  the  Renaissance.  It  is  not  Dionysus  alone  that  he 
sings  ;  the  rape  of  Europa,  the  contest  between  Typhonus  and  Zeus, 
the  story  of  Cadmus  and  the  foundation  of  Thebes,  and  many 
other  myths  occupy  the  first  six  books,  and  not  until  the  ninth  is 
Dionysus  born. 

What  is  curious  in  this  epic  is  the  extent  to  which  all  the  tendencies 
of  the  later  poetry  are  developed,  the  energy  with  which  myths  are 
accumulated  and  incidents  are  combined  together,  the  unceasing 
descriptions  of  one  scene  after  another,  all  illustrate  the  common 
quality  of  what  may  be  called  artificial  literature,  in  which  ornamenta- 
tion becomes  the  sole  end  of  the  composer.  The  whole  poem  is  a 
huge  mass  of  rococo  work ;  it  glistens  with  every  refinement  that 
ingenuity  could  suggest,  and  all  the  ammunition  of  modern  poets  who 
have  made  use  of  mythological  allusions  seems  stolen  from  this  vast 
storehouse  of  rhetoric.  The  lines  translated  below  will  illustrate  this 
artificiality,  which  simply  exaggerates  the  widespread  taste  of  the 
time.  In  its  intensity,  and  in  the  curious  bits  of  learning  that  adorn 
its  pages,  we  may  also  find  the  poetical  equivalent  of  the  rhetorical 
prose  that  adorned  the  romances  to  be  spoken  of  later. 

The  following  is  a  fair  representative  of  the  general  tone  of  the 
poem.  The  nature  of  the  incident  is  sufficiently  characteristic,  and 
the  treatment  will  at  once  be  recognized  as  that  which  has  become 
familiar  to  readers  of  modern  verse. 

A  restless  lover,  we  are  told,  was  one  day  wandering  among  the 
broad-browed  herds,  when  he  saw  approaching  a  proud,  shy  girl,  led 
thither  by  the  chase,  and  he  at  once  began  this  song  with  a  longing 
voice : 

"  Ah  !  would  I  might  her  quiver  be  ! 
Her  cord,  or  quivering  spear ! 
Her  murderous  javelin  !     If  but  she 
Me  in  her  hands  might  rear ! 
Or  might  I  rather  be  the  string 
She  stretches  for  her  bow  ! 
That,  drawing  it,  she  might  it  bring 
Against  those  breasts  of  snow, 
That  'scape  her  maiden  vest ; 

Yes,  heifer !     Yes,  bull ! 
That  'scape  her  maiden  vest. 

May  the  gods  grant  me  this  great  boon. 

That,  heated  from  the  chase. 

The  proud  young  girl  may  come  at  noon 

To  this  retiring  place, 

And  in  this  fount's  caressing  waves 

Her  beauties  all  set  free 

May  find  the  coolness  that  she  craves 


THE  DIONYSIACA    OF  NONNUS. 


777 


And  I  be  there  to  see. 

Yes,  heifer !     Yes,  bull ! 
Her  beauties  all  set  free. 

Ah  !  happier  and  more  favored  are 
Your  arrows.  Virgin,  than  your  slave. 
The  Shepherd  Hymnos  from  afar 
Envies  them  what  he  may  not  have, 
Your  touch,  which  is  the  birth  of  love. 
Your  arrows,  quiver,  and  your  spear. 
You  value  him  so  far  above 
He  would  be  they,  and  thus  be  dear 
To  you,  and  no  more  envy  prove." 

But  the  nymph  only  scoffs  at  his  impassioned  wooing,  and   taunts 
him  thus : 


PAN   AND    ECHO. 


"  Oh  !     Truly  it  beseems  you.  Pan,  to  play 
The  tunes  of  Cytherea !     Did  Pan  woo 
Echo  more  skilfully  than  me  you  do  ? 
When  Daphnis  sang,  who  hearkened  to  his  lay? 
His  songs  and  pastorals  but  put  to  flight 
The  nymph  who  hid  herself  in  caves  of  night, 
And  oft  as  Phoebus  wooed,  said  Daphne  nay  ! " 

Then  she  threatens  the  swain  with  her  lance,  and  he  says ; 

*'  Ah  well !  I  beg  thee  use  thy  cherished  lance. 
To  thy  white  hand  I'd  fall  the  sacrifice. 
And  find  therein,  O  cruel  one  !  my  joy ; 
Nor  do  I  seek  to  shun  thy  blade  or  spear. 


778  THE  POETRY.— {CONTINUED). 

Nor  the  most  instant  death,  since  thus  I  might 
Escape  th'  unceasing  pangs  of  hopeless  love, 
That  soul-devouring  flame  !     Let  then  thy  spear 
Fly  at  my  head,  and  strike  no  more  my  heart. 
And  yet  —  why  should  I  need  another  wound  ?  — 
But  stab  me  if  thou  will'st  once  more,  once  more ; 
Let  the  earth  cover  me  victim  to  thee 
And  all-consuming  love  !     Death  would  be  sweet 
If  thou  would'st  end  what  Cypris  has  begun. 
Then  spare  my  head ;  thy  arrows  shall  seek  hers 
And  find  before  them  deep  within  my  heart 
The  fatal  dart  of  love,"  etc.,  etc. 


After  more  pleading  of  this  sort,  the  cold-hearted  nymph  takes  him 
at  his  word  and  shoots  her  arrow  straight  into  his  neck,  and  thus  cuts 
short  his  never-ending  plaints.  The  poet  then  goes  on  to  tell  us  that 
this  cruel  death  fills  with  indignation  all  the  mountain  nymphs  ;  indeed 
universal  nature  did  lament ;  when  he  saw  how  hard-hearted  the  girl 
was,  Eros  cast  away  his  bow ;  Rhea,  who  never  wept,  and  Echo, 
lamented  his  untimely  end ;  even  the  oak-trees  remonstrated.  His 
bull  and  his  heifer  also  wept  in  sympathy  and  gave  utterance  to  the 
following  wail : 

"  Our  shepherd  is  slain, 
The  beautiful  youth 
We  shall  ne'er  see  again  ! 
By  a  nymph  without  ruth 
He  was  slain  !    he  was  slain  ! 

He  loved  a  young  girl. 
For  her  he  drew  breath, 
He  gave  her  his  love, 
She  gave  him  his  death. 

In  his  very  heart's  blood 
She  has  moistened  her  dart ; 
With  his  heart's  blood  extinguished 
Love's  flame  in  his  heart. 

Our  shepherd  is  slain  ! 
The  beautiful  youth 
We  shall  ne'er  see  again  ! 
By  a  nymph  without  ruth 
He  was  slain  !    he  was  slain  ! 

Rock,  willow,  and  larch 

For  his  life  did  implore  ; 

And  the  nymphs  are  all  weeping 

Since  he  is  no  more. 

O,  kill  not  our  shepherd  ! 
E'en  the  wolves  and  the  bears 
Implored  her  to  pity, 
Fierce  lions  shed  tears. 


ARTEMIS. 
(Goddess  of  the  Chase.) 


78o  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED.) 

Our  shepherd  is  slain  ! 
The  beautiful  youth 
We  shall  ne'er  see  again. 
By  a  nymph  without  ruth 
He  was  slain  !    he  was  slain  ! 

Farewell  to  the  nymphs 

Of  the  forests  and  mountains  ! 

Farewell  to  our  pastures 

And  cool,  sparkling  fountains  ! 

Pan  the  shepherd,  and  Phcebus 
Cry,  Perish  the  flute  ! 
Is  Nemesis  sleeping  ? 
Is  Cypris  still  mute? 

O,  Eros,  thy  quiver 
Lay  by,  we  implore  ! 
And  reed  pipes  be  silent ! 
His  tunes  sound  no  more." 

As  a  final  touch  we  are  told  that  Apollo  showed  the  cruel  murder  to 
Artemis,  and  even  she,  inexperienced  in  love  as  she  was,  wept  for 
Hymnos  and  his  unrequited  affection. 

What  Nonnus  did  on  a  great  scale  was  attempted  in  miniature  by 
Tryphiodorus,  of  uncertain  date,  who  wrote  a  Sacking  of  Troy  in  less* 
than  seven  hundred  lines.  Coluthus  has  left  a  Rape  of  Helen,  con- 
taining a  little  under  four  hundred  lines,  devoid  of  real  interest,  like  a 
sort  of  rhetorical  exercise.  Far  more  famous  is  the  poem  of  Musaeus 
the  grammarian,  the  Hero  and  Leander,  which  is  remarkably  free  from 
the  infection  of  the  surrounding  bombast  and  extravagance.  The 
story  of  the  love  of  Leander  and  Hero,  of  Leander's  swimming  the 
Hellespont  to  visit  his  mistress,  and  of  his  final  death  by  drowning, 
had  been  already  referred  to  by  Virgil  and  Ovid  as  well  as  by  other 
late  Greek  and  Roman  poets ;  so  that  it  is  by  no  means  impossible 
that  there  was  in  existence  an  earlier  Alexandrine  original  which 
Musaeus  made  over  into  its  present  form.  However  that  may  be,  he 
has  left  us  a  most  charming  poem,  containing  beautiful  pictures  of 
love,  recounted  with  a  grace  that  reminds  the  reader  of  good  Greek 
work,  so  simple  is  it,  so  devoid  of  the  marks  of  a  decaying  literature. 
No  work  of  the  Alexandrines  has  had  greater  direct  influence  upon 
modern  literature,  yet  it  made  its  way  into  it  by  false  pretences,  this 
later  Musaeus  being  mistaken  for  the  earlier  poet  of  the  same  name,  a 
semi-mythological  personage  of  a  very  remote  past.  Until  it  was 
clearly  known  that  this  poem  was  a  late  production,  it  was  imagined 
that  even  earlier  than  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  had  been  sung  the  love 
of  Hero  and  Leander,  and  that  all  these  graces  of  a  ripe  civilization 
belonged  to  the  very  infancy  of  poetry.     J.  C.  Scaliger,  for  instance, 


THE  HERO  AND  LEANDER   OF  MUS^US. 


781 


after  expressing  the  utmost  admiration  for  the  grace  and  elegance  of 
Musaeus,  asserted  that  if  that  poet  had  written  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey  he  would  have  done  far  better  than  Homer.  Manutius, 
when  attempting  to  reprint  the  whole  of  Greek  literature,  began  with 
the  Hero  and  Leander,  being  "  desirous  that  Musaeus,  the  most 
ancient  poet,  should  form  a  prelude  to  Aristotle  and  the  other  sages." 
The  subject  and  the  artistic  treatment  gave  the  poem  an  especial 
charm  to  men  who  were  accustomed  to  find  love  their  most  inspiring 
subject,  and  who  saw  beneath  the  abundant  conceits  and  elegances  a 
genuine  simplicity.  Hence  Clement  Marot  put  it  into  French ; 
Boscan  into  Spanish  ;  and  Chapman  into  English,  after  completing 
Marlowe's  unfinished  reproduction  of  the  poem.     Thus  we  see  the 


PAN    AND   APOLLO, 


beginning  of  modern  literature  joining  hands  with  the  end  of  that  of 
the  ancients ;  the  kinship  was  strong,  and  had  been  maintained 
through  the  work  of  the  Latin  writers,  whose  full  indebtedness  to  the 
Alexandrines  can  never  be  exactly  known. 

V. 

Another  poet  of  some  importance  was  Kointos  Smurnaios,  or  Quintus 
Smyrnaeus,  as  he  is  commonly  called,  who  wrote  an  epic  poem  in  four- 
teen books  recounting  what   occurred   between  the  death  of  Hector 


782  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED.) 

and  the  return  of  the  Achaeans.  It  thus  fills  the  gap  between  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  but  Quintus  is  rather  a  faithful  student  of 
Homer  than  a  real  Homer,  although,  on  the  other  hand,  he  eschews 
the  blemishes  that  one  might  expect  to  find  in  a  possible  contempo- 
rary of  Nonnus.  Indeed,  one  is  struck  by  his  clearness  and  correct- 
ness, and  his  happy  avoidance  of  the  exaggerations  and  absurdities  of 
the  later  school.  The  poem  is  interesting,  too,  as  a  contribution  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  old  myths,  for  there  is  but  little  doubt  that  the 
author  availed  himself  freely  of  the  rich  stores  amassed  by  the  Cyclic 
poets,  and  by  the  busy  Alexandrine  investigators. 

The  natural  tendency  would  be  either  entirely  to  overlook  this  pre- 
sumptuous epic,  that  pretends  to  fill  the  gap  between  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey,  as  if  it  were  a  mere  hyphen,  or  else  perversely  to  exag- 
gerate its  merits ;  but,  examined  fairly,  it  will  be  found  to  have  cer- 
tain admirable  qualities.  One  would  certainly  expect  to  find,  for 
example,  rather  metaphors  and  similes  taken  from  books  than  from 
observation,  yet  one  of  the  most  vivid  and  attractive  traits  of  this 
poet  is  the  fresh  and  lifelike  nature  of  these  images.  Thus,  he  com- 
pares Penthesilea's  pursuit  of  the  retreating  Greeks  to  the  wave  that 
follows  a  ship  running  before  the  wind,  as  only  a  man  who  had  seen  it 
would  do  : 

"  And  the  Greeks  fled,  overwhelmed  with  terror,  but  she  followed  them,  as 
the  wave  of  the  sounding  sea  follows  the  swift  vessels  when  the  eager  wind 
fills  their  white  sails,  and  the  shores  everywhere  echo  beneath  the  blows  of 
the  surf  dashing  the  foam  along  the  shore." 

At  times,  indeed,  his  comparisons  run  to  the  opposite  quality  in 
their  freedom  from  conventional  shackles,  as  when  Ajax,  in  his  delirium 
on  being  refused  the  weapons  of  Achilles,  is  thus  described  : 

"  His  heart  was  boiling  within  him,  as  boils  a  copper  vessel  before  the 
flame  of  Hephaistos  ;  the  water  splutters  and  hisses  over  the  fire,  while  the 
wood  that  a  slave  has  gathered  burns  around  it,  and  he  is  busy  removing 
the  bristles  from  the  long-fattened  pig." 

A  devotee  of  literature  would  scorn  ignoble  pigs  here,  and  again, 
when  the  Greeks  have  made  their  way  into  Troy,  and  the  inhabitants 
are  put  to  death — 

"  like  fat  swine  in  the  palace  of  a  rich  king  who  wishes  to  prepare  a 
sumptuous  repast  for  his  people." 

Certainly  an  excessive  devotion  to  literary  refinements  is  not  to  be 
noticed  here.  An  equal  simplicity  may  be  observed  in  a  comparison 
that  brings  into  relief  the  energy  of  Penthesilea  : 


FIGHT    WITH    THE    AMAZONS. 
{Mauso/eum  Relte/'.) 


784  THE  FOETJiY— {CONTINUED.) 

'*  She  slew  now  one  ;  now,  another.  As  when  a  young  heifer  rushing  into 
a  garden  dripping  with  dew,  desirous  of  the  new  spring  herbage,  escaped 
from  her  master,  plunges  here  and  there,  destroying  all  the  plants  that  have 
begun  to  sprout  ;  she  eats  some  and  tramples  the  others  beneath  her  hoofs, 
so,  rushing  among  the  Greeks,  the  warlike  maiden  put  some  to  death  and 
turned  the  others  to  flight." 

Nor  are  these  the  only  instances  of  the  movement  and  energy  of 
Quintus,  that  are  certainly  manifest  even  if  the  traditions  of  liter- 
ature, or  rather  its  etiquette,  be  at  times  offended.  The  speeches  of 
the  various  characters  are  often  eloquent ;  the  personages  are  clearly 
distinguished,  and  often  a  scene  is  brought  distinctly  before  the  imag- 
ination of  the  reader.  Moreover,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
test  which  is  applied  to  the  work  of  this  little  known  poet  is  the  hard- 
est in  the  world,  for  we  are  compelled  to  compare  him  with  Homer 
and  Virgil,  and  even  this  rigorous  test  he  endures  fairly  well. 
This  extract  from  the  tenth  book  is  perhaps  as  good  an  example  as 
any  of  his  excellence.  It  describes  the  grief  of  CEnone  at  the  death 
of  her  husband,  Paris,  who  had  deserted  her  for  Helen.  When 
wounded,  he  had  made  his  way  to  his  early  love,  but  she  had 
driven  him  away  violently ;  but  now  she  has  heard  of  his  death, 
and — 

"  Alone,  remote,  CEnone,  broken-hearted,  shunning  the  company  of  other 
women,  was  extended  on  the  earth,  weeping  and  bemoaning  the  love  of  her 
husband.  Often  the  snow  scattered  by  the  north  winds  covers  the  side  of  the 
mountains  and  the  depths  of  the  valleys  ;  then  the  huge  mass  gradually 
melts,  in  a  pure  stream,  and  while  a  thick  layer  covers  the  trees  of  the 
forest,  an  icy  brook  is  yet  visible,  so  CEnone  was  melting  beneath  the  weight 
of  her  grief,  thinking  of  the  man  she  had  loved  ;  and  groaning  deeply,  she 
reproached  herself  thus :  '  O  foolish  woman  !  O,  life  of  agony  !  O,  the 
futile  love  which  I  devoted  to  my  husband  !  Alas  !  I  had  hoped  to  reach 
old  age  with  him,  and  with  him  to  die,  after  a  happy  union.  The  gods  have 
decided  differently  !  Would  to  heaven  that  the  cruel  Fates  had  ended  my 
life  when  Paris  deserted  me.  But  though  he  scorned  me,  I  will  die  near 
him,  for  the  light  of  day  has  no  more  sweetness  for  me." 

"  And  while  she  uttered  these  words,  great  tears  flowed  from  her  eyes,  in 
memory  of  her  husband  who  had  died  ;  she  was  wasting  away,  like  wax  be- 
fore the  fire  ;  yet  out  of  consideration  for  her  father  and  attendant  hand- 
maidens, she  uttered  no  word  until  night  had  spread  from  the  shores  of  the 
ocean  over  the  whole  world,  bringing  to  mortals  forgetfulness  of  their  woes. 
Then,  when  her  father  and  her  attendants  were  sleeping,  she  opened  the 
house-door  and  came  forth,  like  a  tempest,  and  her  light  feet  supported  her. 
....  Her  legs  did  not  weary  under  her,  her  feet  with  ever-fresh  agility  car- 
ried her  along  ;  she  ran,  supported  by  Death  and  Love.  She  ran  without  a 
thought  of  the  wild  beasts  that  haunt  the  night,  that  formerly  filled  her  with 
terror  ;  without  a  pang  she  climbed  the  rocks  on  the  mountains,  she  crossed 
precipices,  and  threaded  her  way  through  ravines.  The  Moon,  who  saw  her 
from  the  sky,  remembering  her  love  for  fair  Endymion,  took  pity  on  her  sor- 


THE    TROJAN    WAR  BY  QUINT  US  SMYRNyEUS. 


785 


row  and  lit  the  long  path  she  had  to  follow.  At  last  she  made  her  way 
across  the  mountain  to  the  spot  where  the  nymphs  were  weeping  around  the 
body  of  Alexander  [Paris].  Already  the  impetuous  flames  of  the  funeral 
fire  surrounded  it  ;  the  shepherds  from  all  quarters  had  gathered  a  vast 
quantity  of  trees  to  pay  the  last  honours  to  their  comrade  and  their  prince  ; 
and  they  were  bitterly  weeping.  When  she  saw  the  body,  she  did  not  weep, 
although  her  grief  was  great,  but  hiding  her  fair  face  beneath  her  veil,  she 
flung  herself  upon  the  pile,  and  amid  the  cries  of  the  shepherds  was  con- 
sumed in  company  with  her  husband.  The  nymphs  were  seized  with  amaze- 
ment at  seeing  her  seek  her  death  near  him,  and  said  :  "  Certainly  Paris  was 
foolish  to  abandon  his  wife  and  to  love  a  miserable  woman  who  brought  ruin 
to  him  and  to  the  Trojans  !      Unhappy  one  !    he  took  no  thought  of  his 


PARIS    AND   CENONE. 


noble  wife  who  loved  him  more  than  the  light  of  day,  despite  the  contempt 
and  hatred  he  felt  for  her  ! '  So  spake  the  nymphs  ;  and  the  pair  were  con- 
sumed on  the  pile,  forgetful  of  the  approaching  dawn." 

Certainly  even  in  this  ill-fitting  garb  the  energy  and  simplicity  of 
the  original  still  survive  ;  and  it  is  possible  to  see  how  the  subject 
found  even  at  a  late  date  a  man  not  vv^holly  incapable  of  representing 
its  beauty.  Quintus  had  some  qualities  that  distinguished  him  from 
the  rest  of  what  Shelley  called  the  poets  of  his  time — "  a  flock  of 
mockbirds."  His  song  was  not  very  sweet,  but  it  was  also  not  purely 
mechanical. 


786  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED.) 

We  need  scarcely  mourn  the  loss  of  the  epics  by  those  late  bards 
who  sang  of  recent  historical  events  after  the  manner  of  Homer,  such  as 
Eusebius,  who  commemorated  the  war  of  the  Romans  with  the  Goths, 
and  we  may  be  resigned  to  the  disappearance  of  the  didactic  poem  in 
which  Timotheus  of  Gaza  gave  instruction  in  natural  history.  These 
faint  echoes,  however,  are  not  the  only  ones.  Writers  of  occasional 
verse  and  of  epigrams  still  survived,  whose  names  even  scarcely  de- 
mand copying.  About  this  time  belong  the  poems  inaccurately 
ascribed  to  Orpheus  ;  possibly  some  traces  of  the  traditional  relics  of 
the  past  are  to  be  found  here,  but  these  are  but  meager.  The  Expe- 
dition of  the  Argonauts  is  certainly  of  late  origin  ;  the  hymns  are  of 
a  mystical  and  religious  nature,  and  the  poems  on  the  qualities  of 
stones  read  like  early  studies  for  the  poetry  of  the  middle  ages.  The 
hymns  of  Proclus  are  very  similar  to  those  ascribed  to  Orpheus. 

Later,  in  the  Byzantine  period,  between  Justinian  and  the  capture 
of  Constantinople  in  1453  A.D.,  poetry  languished  with  the  extreme 
depression  of  public  spirit.  Christianity  silenced  even  the  memory  of 
the  old  sources  of  inspiration  ;  the  old  metres  were  forgotten  and  even 
succeeded  by  rhyme.  In  the  fourth  century  Gregory  of  Nazianzus 
wrote  original  verse,  and  to  him  is  often  ascribed  the  credit  of  putting 
together  a  tragedy  on  the  sufferings  of  Christ  out  of  lines  culled 
mainly  from  Euripides.  It  seems  much  more  likely,  however,  that 
this  was  done  by  some  one  else.  The  epigram  remained  popular  even 
when  everything  else  had  vanished ;  the  most  eminent  names  in  the 
sixth  century  being  those  of  Paulus  Siluntiarius,  who  also  wrote  a 
metrical  description  of  the  church  of  St.  Sophia  and  Agathias.  Last 
of  all  we  find  the  name  of  Joannes  Tzetzes  in  the  twelfth  century, 
whose  Iliaca  repeats  the  myths  about  the  Trojan  war  in  three  poems 
of  nearly  seventeen  hundred  lines  in  all.  Another  poem  of  between 
twelve  and  thirteen  thousand  lines  is  a  mere  congeries  of  myths  and 
historical  facts,  strung  together  without  judgment  and  written  in  the 
political  verse,  as  it  was  called,  wherein  accent  took  the  place  of  the 
former  prosody. 

VI. 

Such  is  the  dreary  record  of  the  decay  of  Greek  poetry,  from  which 
it  is  pleasant  to  turn  to  the  consideration  of  the  most  important 
monument  of  that  literature  that  has  come  down  to  us,  namely,  the 
Anthology.  We  have  already  seen  how  short-breathed  most  of  the 
later  writers  became,  how  in  their  hands  the  epic  shrank  into  some- 
thing that  was  often  of  no  greater  magnitude  than  a  long  letter,  and 
the  last  to  perish  of  all  the  poetical  forms  was  that  of  the  brief 
epigram.     That  survived  when  longer  effort  was  impossible,  just  as  a 


THE  GREEK  ANTHOLOGY :   THE   VARIOUS  COLLECTIONS.         787 

man  may  utter  a  witticism  on  his  death-bed  when  he  has  strength  for 
nothing  else.  As  has  been  said  above,  the  change  in  the  fine  arts 
corresponded  to  that  in  the  arts,  and  the  change  from  the  production 
of  works  of  sculpture  to  that  of  painting,  and  through  that  to  work  on 
gems,  corresponded  to  the  disintegrating  evolution  of  literature  to 
works  of  the  smallest  and  most  graceful  kind.  When  the  period  of 
active  production  had  disappeared,  men  began  to  collect  memorials  of 
the  past,  and  in  the  second  century  before  Christ  this  general  interest 
in  antiquity  asserted  itself  in  various  ways.  Inscriptions  began  to  be 
copied  and  recorded,  partly  from  antiquarian  and  partly  from  literary 
curiosity.  The  first  to  arrange  these  in  order  seems  to  have  been 
Meleager,  about  60  B.C.,  who,  besides  writing  many  charming  epigrams, 
conceived  the  happy  notion  of  collecting  those  of  others  in  what  he 
called  a  wreath,  made  of  the  flowers  of  Greek  poetry.  About  one 
hundred  years  after  Christ,  Philip  of  Thessalonica  prepared  another 
collection  to  include  what  had  been  written  since  the  days  of  Meleager, 
including  much  of  his  own  work.  Both  of  these  anthologies,  however, 
have  been  lost.  The  third  editor  was  Agathias,  in  the  second  half  of 
the  sixth  century,  a  man  also  well  known  as  a  jurist  and  a  historian. 
Four  centuries  later  Constantine  Cephalas  made  another  selection 
from  what  was  left  of  the  material  amassed  by  his  predecessors, 
probably  omitting  much  that  would  be  welcome  now,  to  make  place 
for  later  work,  and  this  collection  now  forms  our  present  anthology, 
or  collection  of  flowers.  Its  vicissitudes  did  not  end  with  the  begin- 
ning of  modern  times.  In  the  fourteenth  century  the  monk  Maximus 
Planudes  felt  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  revise  the  work  of  Cephalas, 
to  expurgate  it  by  omission  and  correction,  and  this  version  was  for  a 
long  time  the  only  one  known  to  modern  readers.  Fortunately  one 
manuscript  of  the  anthology  of  Cephalas  had  been  preserved  in  the 
Palatine  library  at  Heidelberg,  where  it  was  discovered  by  Saumaise — 
better  known  as  Milton's  antagonist,  Salmasius — in  1606  A.D.  It  was 
long,  however,  before  this  collection  saw  the  day.  Saumaise  could 
not  get  it  published  without  a  Latin  translation,  for  the  early  interest 
in  Greek  had  begun  to  wane,  and  he  died  before  he  could  complete 
this  task.  Meanwhile  the  manuscript  had  been  carried  to  the  Vatican 
after  the  sack  of  Heidelberg  in  1623  A.D.  Thither  Isaac  Voss  had 
sent  a  man  to  make  a  copy  of  the  manuscript  in  order  to  anticipate 
his  rival,  but  the  death  of  Saumaise  removed  the  necessity  for  this 
ingenious  annoyance,  and  for  a  longtime  nothing  was  done  about  it. 
In  1797  A.D.,  after  being  once  copied  twenty  years  earlier  by  the 
Abbe  Spalletti,  the  manuscript  was  carried  to  Paris,  whence  it  was 
restored  to  Heidelberg  in  1815  A.D.  It  was,  however,  between  1772 
and  18 17  A.D.,  that  the  full  text  was  published. 

I1N1VERSIT1 


788  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED.) 

The  collection  is  most  rich  and  valuable,  and  we  may  trace  the 
growth  of  the  epigram  from  the  beginning  of  the  Persian  war  until  it 
expired  in  riddles  and  conceits  with  the  decay  of  the  Greek  influence 
six  centuries  after  Christ.  We  find  in  it — to  mention  them  in  their 
order — Christian  epigrams  from  the  monuments  and  statues  dedicated 
to  religion  in  Byzantium  ;  an  account,  written  in  hexameters,  of  the 
statues  that  stood  in  the  gymnasium  of  that  city ;  the  mural  inscrip- 
tions from  the  temple  of  Apollonis  in  Cyzicus ;  the  prefaces  of  Me- 
leager,  Philip,  and  Agathias  to  their  anthologies ;  a  number  of 
erotic  epigrams;  a  collection  of  inscriptions  composed  in  honor 
of  illustrious  deeds  or  to  explain  various  votive  offerings;  epitaphs; 
a  dull  collection  of  the  poems  of  Saint  Gregory  the  Theologian ;  a 
number  of  miscellaneous  epigrams  form  the  next  section,  which  is 
followed  by  another  series  that  sing  the  brevity  of  life  and  the  vanity 
of  all  things ;  then  come  satirical  epigrams ;  a  number  composed  by 
Straton  that  have  to  do  with  the  perversion  of  love  that  was  common 
among  the  Greeks,  with  others  that  are  ascribed  to  Straton  ;  then  a 
few  in  various  irregular  metres ;  following  these  are  riddles  and 
oracles ;  then  a  few  miscellaneous  ones ;  and  finally  some  included  by 
Planudes  that  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  collection  of  Cephalas. 

Obviously  no  one  word  can  be  found  that  shall  define  such  a  variety 
of  poems  of  such  different  dates.  Their  uniform  aim,  graceful  con- 
cision, is  but  a  vague  description  of  the  quality  that  marks  the  best 
and  is  sought  for  in  the  worst,  and  was  as  much  a  condition  of  the 
epigram  as  are  fourteen  lines  for  the  sonnet.  Indeed,  the  modern 
sonnet  is  perhaps  the  best  equivalent  of  the  ancient  epigram,  so  far 
as  it  is  a  common  conventional  form,  current  everywhere,  as  the  recog- 
nized desire  for  the  expression  of  almost  every  emotion.  Yet  brief  as 
the  sonnet  is,  it  has  been  known  to  be  at  times  too  long  for  the  mes- 
sage it  had  to  convey ;  and  in  its  inflexibility  there  survives  the  trace 
of  the  Middle  Ages  which  stand  like  a  gulf  between  Greece  and  us. 
The  Hellenic  poets  not  only  knew  the  privilege  and  necessity  of 
brevity,  they  possessed  the  rarer  power  of  stopping  when  they  had 
said  what  they  had  to  say. 

While  the  first  place  among  the  writers  of  the  Anthology  belongs 
to  Meleager,  for  both  the  abundance  and  the  rare  charm  of  his  epi- 
grams, there  are  many  others,  known  to  us  only  by  a  few  poems  here 
preserved,  who  well  deserve  their  modest  share  of  immortality.  Yet 
the  main  impression  that  is  left  on  the  reader  is  by  no  means  a  per- 
sonal one.  The  reader  may  learn  to  recognize  the  exquisite  grace  of 
Meleager,  or  the  touch  of  some  of  his  rivals ;  but  the  most  important 
thing  about  the  collection  is  the  vast  amount  of  light  that  it  throws 
on  the  Greek  view  of  life,  with   all  its  directness,  frankness,  and  gra- 


THE  EPIGRAMMA  TIC  POEMS.— MODERN  REPRESENTA  TIVES.      7^9 

ciousness.  Its  charm  is  in  great  measure  artistic  simplicity  of  expres- 
sion, such  as  may  be  noticed  elsewhere  in  the  more  ambitious  work  of 
Grecian  literature.  While  there  is  possibly  a  certain  monotony  in  the 
form  of  utterance,  with  its  chastened  directness  that  is  yet  compact 
of  suggestiveness,  the  subjects  cover  every  matter  of  interest  for  the 
cultivated  people  by  and  for  whom  these  epigrams  were  written.  Of 
vast  questions  there  is  no  trace,  partly  because  of  the  unsuitability  of 
the  epigram  for  the  discussion  of  such  matters,  and  partly,  doubt- 
less, because  of  the  general  indifference  of  the  later  Hellenistic  time 
for  anything  but  the  commonplaces  of  life  and  society.  These  are 
treated  with  unwearying  assiduity,  and  naturally  with  varying  success, 
yet  the  general  standard  is  high,  and  the  quality  of  literary  execu- 
tion noticeably  uniform.  Even  though  there  are  many  that  fall  short 
of  the  desired  success,  the  aim  is  always  manifest  in  the  effort  to 
attain  a  compact  statement  that  shall  yet  be  full  of  forcible  sugges- 
tion, that  shall,  as  painters  say,  "  carry  "  well,  with  all  the  vivid  bril- 
liancy of  the  gems  which  they  resemble  in  their  capacity  for  enduring 
workmanship  without  betraying  it. 

What  in  modern  poetry  is  most  like  them  is  the  sonnet,  as  has 
been  said  above,  and,  like  the  sonnet,  they  refuse  admittance  to  more 
than  a  single  thought,  which  must  be  stated  with  absolute  limpidity 
and  graceful  art.  What  the  thought  should  be  that  was  to  be  ex- 
pressed was  almost  a  matter  of  indifference.  Some  of  them  are  full 
of  dignity,  others  again  are  not ;  they  are  frank  statements  that  would 
not  find  their  way  into  modern  literature,  which  inclines  to  hold  it- 
self just  outside  of  life  in  very  much  the  same  way  that  literary  style 
differs  from  that  of  talk.  And  it  is  not  meant  merely  that  many  of 
the  erotic  poems  are  unquotable, — even  the  grossest  of  these  lack  the 
earthy  quality  of  many  of  the  Latin  ones  that  were  carefully  done 
by  the  Neo-Latin  poets  and  so  made  their  way  into  modern  liter- 
ature,— but  there  is  to  be  noticed  the  absence  of  any  question  whether 
such  or  such  a  thing  needs  to  be  written  about.  The  author  wrote  it, 
and  if  he  wrote  it  well  he  was  satisfied.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  of 
course,  that  he  did  not  have  in  mind  any  intention  of  composing 
pieces  for  an  anthology  ;  he  simply  turned  off  a  little  poem  for  an 
inscription,  to  accompany  a  gift,  or  merely  to  be  shown  to  one  person 
and  another.  This  unconsciousness  of  a  great  aim  was  then  in  part 
the  result  of  circumstances,  and  it  has  secured  for  us  an  admirable 
vision  of  the  current  life  and  interests  of  a  long  period.  We  every- 
wherie  notice  the  brevity  which  is  not  curtness,  but  chastened  speech 
that  is  most  gracious  or  most  eloquent.  And  this  quality,  which 
is  attained  without  perceptible  effort,  is  one  most  characteristic 
of  the  Greeks,  as  sonority  is  of  the  Romans,  or  as  joy  in  imitation 


79°  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED.) 

of  the  classics  in  much  of  modern  literature  of  not  so  many  years 
ago. 

Certainly  this  reticence  must  have  brought  with  it  a  delight  that 
outweighs  even  that  of  the  sound  of  one's  own  voice.  What  words, 
for  instance,  could  add  anything  to  this  inscription  ? 

"  No,  I  am  not  the  tomb  of  Themistocles  ;  I  am  a  Magnesian  monument 
that  bears  witness  to  the  jealousy  and  iniquity  of  the  Greeks." 

It  tells  the  fate  of  that  great  man,  dying  in  exile,  as  no  full  de- 
scription could  do.     Here  is  another  bit  of  silence  : 

"  The  aged  Nico  lays  wreaths  on  the  tomb  of  the  young  Melita.  Pluto,  is 
that  justice  ? " 

When  one  recalls  the  definition  of  an  epigram,  thus  translated  by 
Mr,  Symonds  : 

"  Two  lines  complete  the  epigram — or  three . 
Write  more  ;  you  aim  at  epic  poetry," 

it  is  easy  to  see  how  superior  it  is  in  its  simplicity  to  the  modern  epi- 
gram with  the  pertness  of  its  sting,  which  is  often  only  to  be  deter- 
mined by  italics  and  such  typographical  aid.  These  Greek  poems 
bear  a  much  stronger  likeness  to  short  Japanese  poems  and  those  of 
the  Persian  writers,  of  whom  the  best  known  is  Omar  Khayyam. 
Thus,  of  these  two  poems  it  would  not  be  easy  to  say  which  was 
written  in  Persian  and  which  in  Greek.     One  is  : 

"  I  have  often  sung  it,  and  from  the  bottom  of  the  tomb  I  shall  call  forth, 
'  Drink,  before  you  turn  to  dust  like  me.'  " 

The  other : 

"  The  day  when  I  shall  be  a  stranger  to  myself,  and  when  my  name  shall 
be  as  a  tale  that  is  told,  then  make  of  my  clay  a  wine-jar  for  use  in  the 
tavern." 

And  it  is  not  merely  in  these  convivial  appeals  that  the  resem- 
blance is  to  be  noticed.     These  from  the  Japanese  : 

"  I  did  not  wish  to  hear  about  the  troubles  of  life,  and  so  I  fled  far  away 
to  the  distant  hills,  but  even  there  I  heard  the  painful  cry  of  the  wounded 
deer," 

and, 

"  When  I  am  sad,  my  feelings  are  like  the  closing  year,  and  looking  at  the 
autumnal  moon  only  increases  my  sorrow," 


THE  HISTORICAL    VALUE   OF   THE  POEMS.  79 1 

have  the  same  delicate  reticence,  the  single  touch,  that  characterizes 
not  merely  the  best  Greek  work,  but  even  that  of  the  latest. 

The  fullness  of  the  collection  throws  much  light  on  historical 
events,  yet  more  interesting,  one  may  say,  are  the  many  glimpses  we 
get  of  the  private  life  of  the  Greeks.  These  are  to  be  found  espe- 
cially in  the  votive  inscriptions,  although  not  in  these  alone,  for 
continually  we  find  traces  of  their  thoughts  and  feelings  as  the 
stamp  of  what  might  be  called  their  poetical  wit.  Of  many  again 
it  is  true  that  short  as  they  are,  they  too  often  justify  Rivarol's 
criticism  of  a  couplet  that  was  offered  to  his  examination  :  "  It's  very 
good,  but  it's  long-winded  in  places." 

VII. 
EXTRACTS  FROM  THE  ANTHOLOGY. 

MELEAGER. 

Gentle  Asclepias,  with  her  eyes  of  blue, 
Reflects  the  azure  calm  of  heaven  above  ; 
With  her  soft  glances  she  is  tempting  you 
All  to  embark  on  the  deep  sea  of  love. 

(Anth.  Pal.  V.  156.) 

MELEAGER. 

On  Heliodora's  head  the  loveliest  wreath 
Pales  by  the  beauties  that  are  seen  beneath. 

(V.  143.) 

CRINAGORAS. 

What  shall  I  call  you  first  ?     Unhappy  one  ! 
What  next  should  you  be  called  .''     Unhappy  one  ! 
For  you  have  suffered  but  no  wrong  have  done. 
O  charming  woman,  who  are  now  no  more  ! 
Your  face  showed  forth  a  perfect  loveliness 
And  all  with  perfect  love  your  heart  did  bless. 
And  Prote  *  rightly  was  the  name  you  bore  ; 
For  sure  such  grace  was  never  known  before. 

(V.  108.) 

MELEAGER. 

The  cup  laughs  with  joy  to  be  touched  while  she  sips 

By  the  eloquent  mouth  of  the  fair  Zenophil. 
Ah,  happy  the  cup  !     How  I  long  for  those  lips 
That  my  whole  heart  and  soul  in  a  breath  they  may  steal. 

(V.  171.) 
*  The  first. 


792  THE  POETRY— (CONTINUED). 

PAUL  THE  SILENTIARY. 

No  crown  the  rosebud  needs,  and  thou, 
Thou  need'st  no  'broidered  veils  or  gems  to  wear ; 
Gold  adds  no  brightness  to  thy  flowing  hair, 
Pearls  are  less  white  than  are  thy  neck  and  brow. 
From  purple  depths  of  th'  Indian  hyacinth  gleams 
A  sparkling  fire,  but  thine  eyes  shine  more  bright 
Of  thy  soft  eyes  are  stars  that  shine  more  bright. 
Thy  fresh  lips  and  thy  graceful  form  that  seems 
A  goddess's,  could  not  have  greater  might 
If  Cytherea's  girdle  thou  shouldst  wear. 
To  approach  such  loveliness  I  should  not  dare. 
Did  not  thy  gentle  eyes  my  heart  invite 
The  sweet  hope  that  I  read  in  thee  to  share  ! 

(V.  270.) 

PAUL  THE  SILENTIARY. 

My  lips  delay  to  say  to  thee.  Farewell ! 
And  by  thy  side  I  linger  silently. 
Must  I  then  go  >     Such  parting  were  to  me 
More  dreadful  than  the  darkest  gloom  of  hell, 
For  thou  art  as  my  very  light  of  day ; 
But  day  is  silent,  and  thy  gentle  voice 
More  than  a  syren's  song  makes  me  rejoice. 
And  round  thy  lips  my  dearest  wishes  play. 

(V.  241.) 

ANONYMOUS. 


Does  the  rose  crown  Dionysius, 
Or  Dionysius  crown  the  rose  ? 

Ah  yes  !     The  wearer  crowns  the  crown, 
For  that  less  beauty  shows. 
(V.  142.) 


MELEAGER. 

Heliodora  !     Love  hath  fashioned  thee 

From  out  my  very  heart. 
Heliodora  !  sweet-voiced  !  unto  me 

As  my  soul's  soul  thou  art ! 
(V.  1 55-) 


MELEAGER. 


By  the  god  Pan  of  Arcady  I  vow. 
Sweet  is  thy  singing,  Zenophil,  and  thou 


EXTRACTS  FROM    THE  ANTHOLOGY.  793 

Sweetly  canst  play  the  lyre.     Where  can  I  flee 
To  escape  thy  loving  charms  besieging  me  ? 
Not  for  a  moment  will  they  let  me  rest. 
Now  'tis  thy  slender  form  in  beauty  drest, 
There  'tis  thy  voice,  thy  grace,  what  do  I  say 
It  is  thyself  for  whom  I  burn  away. 

(V.  1 39-) 


PAN  OF   ARCADY. 


PAUL  THE  SILENTIARY. 


How  sweet  the  smiles  of  Lais !  and  how  sweet 

Tears  from  her  charming  eyes  ! 
But  yesterday  she  leaned  on  me  and  wept 

Without  a  cause,  and  moaned. 
I  kissed  her,  but  her  tears  still  fell  like  rain. 

"  Why  weepest  thou  .''  "  I  prayed. 
"  I  feared  lest  thou  shouldst  leave  me,"  murmured  she, 
"  For  men  are  never  true." 
(V.  250.) 


BY  LEONIDAS  OR  ANTIPATES. 

Epitaph  on  Timon  the  Misanthrope. 

Utter  no  words,  but  pass  me  by 
In  silence ;  nor  ask  who  I  be  ; 
Nor  seek  to  know  whose  son  was  I. 
E'en  silently  approach  not  me. 
Go  far  around  and  come  not  nigh  ! 
(VII.  316.) 

PHILODEMUS. 

Heliodora  must  thou  shun 

Ere  love  for  her  is  in  thee  begun  ! 

Thus  warned  my  soul  for  she  knows  well 

Love's  pangs  and  tortures  to  foretell. 

Such  were  her  words,  but  how  can  I, 
If  love  pursue,  have  strength  to  fly .'' 
For  she  who  boldly  love  reproves. 
Already  Heliodora  loves. 
(V.  24.) 


794  •  THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED). 

PLATO. 

I,  the  proud  Lais,  to  whose  door  once  came 
Troops  of  young  lovers,  and  whose  toy  was  Greece, 
I  consecrate  to  Cytherea  now 
My  mirror,  since  I  can  no  longer  see 
Myself  reflected  there  as  once  I  was, 
And  would  not  see,  alas  !  as  now  I  am. 

(VL  I.) 

MOCRUS  OF  BYZANTIUM. 

Nymphs,  hamadryads,  daughters  of  the  river, 
Who  ceaseless  tread,  with  rosy  feet,  the  valleys. 
Cherish  Cleonymus  who  consecrated 
To  you,  beneath  the  pines,  these  beauteous  statues  ! 

(VL  189.) 


CRINAGORAS. 

Roses  of  old  oped  with  the  opening  year. 
But  we  our  crimson  chalices  throw  wide 
In  winter,  greeting  thus  thy  birthday,  near 
To  that  blest  day  when  thou  shalt  be  a  bride. 
If  us  upon  thy  head  thou  deign  to  wear, 
O  loveliest  woman,  then  to  be  espied 
Were  than  the  sun  of  spring  to  us  more  dear. 

(VL  345.) 


ASCLEPIADES. 

O  wreaths  !  remain  here  hanging  on  this  door. 

Nor  hasty  shake  your  leaves. 
Your  leaves  that  I  have  drenchM  with  my  tears, 

Such  tears  as  lovers  shed. 
But  when  you  see  the  door  softly  unclose. 

Let  fall  your  bitter  dew 
Upon  her  head,  that  her  light  golden  hair 

May  thus  drink  in  my  tears  ! 
fV.  145.) 


LEONIDAS. 

One,  crystal,  and  one  silver  brings. 

One,  topazes  of  cost. 
For  thy  birthday  fit  offerings 

Their  jewels  rich  they  boast. 

But,  Agrippina,  take  from  me 
Two  verses  that  I  write. 

A  humble  gift  I  give  to  thee 
That  envy  cannot  spite. 
(VL  329.) 


EXTRACTS  FROM    THE  ANTHOLOGY.  795 

ANTIPATES.* 

Not  of  Themistocles  am  I  the  tomb. 
No !     A  Magnesian  monument  I  am 
To  the  ungrateful  rancour  of  the  Greeks. 
(VII.  236.) 

MELEAGER.t 

That  butterfly,  my  soul,  if  thou.  Love,  bum 
Too  often  with  thy  flame,  O  cruel  one. 
Itself  has  wings  to  fly  and  ne'er  return. 

(V.  57.) 

ERYEIUS. 

No  more  upon  thy  flute,  Therimachus, 
Beside  the  lofty  plane,  thy  shepherd's  song 
Thou'lt  tune  !     Thy  horned  herds  will  hear  no  more 
Sweet  reedy  melodies,  while  'neath  the  shade 
Of  the  broad  oak  thou  liest.     For  thou  art  gone  ! 
Slain  by  the  deadly  whirlwind's  thunderblast. 
And  homeward  late  the  hurrying  cows  return. 
Harassed  upon  their  path  by  driving  sleet. 

(VII.  134.) 

SIMMIAS  OF  THEBES. 

Quietly  o'er  the  tomb  of  Sophocles, 
Quietly,  ivy,  creep  with  tendrils  green  ; 
And,  roses,  ope  your  petals  everywhere. 
While  dewy  shoots  of  grapevine  peep  between, 
Upon  the  wise  and  honeyed  poet's  grave. 
Whom  muse  and  grace  their  richest  treasures  gave. 

(VII.  22.) 

THUCYDIDES. 

On  Euripides. 

The  great  Euripides  has  for  his  tomb 
All  Hellas,  though  the  Macedonian  earth 
Contains  his  ashes,  since  death  found  him  there. 
Hellas  of  Hellas,  Athens,  was  his  home  ; 
Hence  came  the  verses  which  have  charmed  all  hearts. 
And  have  won  everv  mouth  to  sing  his  praise. 

(VII.  45) 

LEONIDAS  OR  MELEAGER. 

On  Erinna.J 

The  maiden  !     The  young  singer  !     Like  a  bee 
Stealing  thy  sweets  the  muses'  flowers  among. 
Erinna  !     AH  too  truly  hast  thou  sung 
"  Thou  art  a  jealous  god,  O  Death  !  "     Didst  thou  foresee 
How  soon  thou  wert  the  bride  of  Death  to  be .'' 

(VII.  13.) 

*  Themistocles  died  at  Magnesia  in  exile, 
f  There  is  here  a  play  on  the  word  ^vxv. 
X  One  of  Erinna's  poems  began  with  the  words  :   "  I  am  in  love  with  Death." 


796 


THE  POETRY  {CONTINUED). 


MELEAGER. 

At  the  bride's  gate  the  lotus  flutes  were  sounding 
All  yesterday,  doors  swinging  to  and  fro  ; 
This  morn  for  Clearista  all  are  weeping, 
Their  song  of  Hymen  changed  to  dirge  of  woe. 
Her  bridegroom,  Death  ;  she'll  have  no  other  wedding, 
For  him  she  hath  unclasped  her  virgin  zone. 
The  very  torches  for  her  bridal  burning 
Shall  light  her  trembling  feet  to  Acheron. 

(VII.   182.) 

MELEAGER. 

Ah,  bee  !  why  iouchest  thou  Heliodora's  cheek  } 
Feaster  on  flowers,  why  leav'st  the  cups  of  spring  } 
Wouldst  have  me  know  that  she  too  feels  of  love 
The  sweet,  the  unendurable,  the  bitter  sting  ? 
Thus  say'st  thou,  loved  of  lovers  }     Then  begone  ! 
Depart !  for  long  thy  message  have  we  known. 

(V.  163.) 

DIOSCORIDES. 

Eight  sons  sent  Demenete  forth  to  fight 
Against  her  country's  foes  ;  and  on  one  bier 
And  in  one  grave  the  mother  laid  all  eight. 
Then  of  her  loss  she  said  without  a  tear, 
"  I  bore  them,  Sparta,  but  thy  sons  they  were  ! " 

(VII.  4. 34.) 


CH^REMON 

Eubulos,  son  of  Athenagoras, 
Thou  wert  outstript  by  all  in  length  of  days. 
But  in  thy  measure  of  deserved  praise. 
Indeed  there  is  none  who  can  thee  surpass. 

(VII.  469.) 


MELEAGER. 

Heliodora,  tears  that  pierce  the  earth. 

The  last  gift  of  my  love,  receive  from  me 

Beyond  the  grave  ;  tears  shed  most  bitterly  ! 

Alas  !  upon  thy  tomb  there  is  no  dearth 

Of  tears,  that  in  past  joy  have  had  their  birth. 

Poured  in  libation  to  the  memory 

Of  faithful  love,  thus  consecrate  to  thee. 

To  thee,  though  dead,  my  only  thing  of  worth. 


Where  is  my  flower  that  Hades  plucked  ?  oh  !  where  ? 

An  idle  sacrifice  to  Acheron ! 

Dust  now  defiles  its  petals  blooming  fair. 

Hades  hath  stolen  her,  hath  stolen  her ! 

All  mother  Earth,  I  pray  thee,  gently  bear 

Upon  thy  breast,  her  whom  all  must  weep,  now  gone. 

(VII.  476.) 


EXTRACTS  FROM    THE  ANTHOLOGY.  797 


PHILIP  OF  THESSALONICA. 


This  tomb  Archilochus,  the  sculptor,  rears 
With  piteous  hands  to  Agathanor  dead  ; 
And  not  by  steel  was  this  stone  chiseled, 
But  worn  by  dropping  of  a  father's  tears. 
O  stone  !  rest  lightly,  that  the  dead  may  say. 
Truly  my  father's  hand  this  stone  did  lay. 

(VII.  554.) 


ANTIPATER. 

Aretemias,  when  from  the  infernal  bark 
Thou  laid'st  thy  footprint  on  Cocytus'  shore, 
Bearing  in  thy  young  arms  thy  newborn  babe, 
The  lovely  Dorian  girls,  all  pitiful 
At  hearing  of  thy  fate,  would  question  thee, 
And  thou  through  tears  did  utter  these  sad  words 
Twin  children  have  I  brought  into  the  world  ; 
One  with  my  husband  Euphron  did  I  leave. 
This  other  I  bring  with  me  to  the  dead. 
(VII.  464.) 


LEONIDAS  OF  ALEXANDRIA. 

Daemon  of  Argos  in  this  tomb  now  lying 
Was  he  the  brother  of  Deceoteles  ? 
Of  Deceoteles.     Did  echo-  sighing 
Repeat  these  words,  or  words  of  truth  are  these  } 
Swift  comes  the  answer.  Words  of  truth  are  these. 

(VII.  548.) 

MELEAGER. 

Lightly,  allmother  Earth,  on  ^sigenes  rest, 
Lightly  his  foot  on  thee  was  ever  pressed. 

(VII.  461.) 


ANYTUS. 

Antibia  I  mourn,  the  tender  virgin  ; 
Troops  of  young  lovers  to  her  father  came 
To  ask  him  to  bestow  her  hand  in  marriage, 
Since  of  her  wit  and  beauty  great  the  fame. 
But  cruel  Pluto  snatched  beyond  recall 
Her  who  united  thus  the  hopes  of  all. 
(VII.  490.) 


ANONYMOUS. 

Hades  the  blossom  of  my  youth  hath  gathered 
And  hidden  it  'neath  this  ancestral  stone. 
In  vain  my  birth,  although  of  a  good  mother 
And  of  Etherius  was  I  the  son. 


798 


THE  POETRY— {CONTINUED). 


For  thus  forbid  to  reap  the  fruits  of  learning 
I  languish  on  the  shores  of  Acheron. 
O  passer-by  !  since  yet  among  the  living, 
Parent  or  child,  thou  must  be  either  one. 
Therefore  lament,  this  record  when  thou  readest, 
For  all  my  youth  and  learning  so  soon  gone. 

(VII.  558.) 


ANONYMOUS. 

Inexorable  Hades,  pitiless ! 
The  child  Callaeschrus  why  didst  tear  from  life  } 
A  plaything  in  the  household  of  thy  wife. 
His  place  at  home  is  filled  with  wretchedness. 

(VII.  483-) 


V 


■-^<^^_ 


■*'^*^^  w^tf-'-^.X  v>/ 


CHAPTER  III.— THE  PROSE. 

I. — The  Wide  Circle  of  Hellenistic  Culture.  The  Abundance  of  Intellectual  Interests 
in  Alexandria  and  elsewhere.  The  Growth  of  Scholarship.  The  Spread  of 
Scientific  Study.  Euclid.  Archimedes.  Astronomy.  Ptolemy.  II. — The  Im- 
portance of  this  Greek  Scientific  Work.  The  Study  of  Medicine.  Galen.  His 
Vast  Influence,  like  that  of  Ptolemy  and  Aristotle.  Its  Long  Life  and  Final 
Overtlirow,  Possibly  Portending  an  Altered  View  of  All  Things  Greek.  III. — 
The  Grecian  Influence  in  Rome.  The  Difference  between  the  Greek  and  Roman 
Ideals.  IV. — Polybius  ;  his  History  and  its  Importance.  Extracts.  V. — Other 
Historians :  Diodorus  Siculus,  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  Strabo,  Fiavius 
Josephus. 

I. 

WE  have  found  abundant  traces  of  the  influence  of  the  new  learning 
upon  the  poetry  of  Alexandria,  and  enough  has  been  said  to  make 
it  clear  that  this  city  was  the  headquarters  of  every  form  of  intellec- 
tual interest.  Greece  itself  had  sunk  into  a  dependent  colony  from 
which  every  form  of  leadership  had  departed.  It  was,  moreover,  an 
outlying  region,  remote  from  the  meeting-place  of  Oriental  and  Greek 
thought,  and  the  poverty  of  the  country,  due  also  to  its  distance  from 
the  great  trading-places,  prevented  the  accumulation  of  books,  which 
henceforth  were  destined  to  exercise  great  influence  on  science  and 
literature.  The  wealth  of  Macedonia  nourished  intellectual  interests 
there.     In  Syria  schools  were  founded,  where  rhetoric  and  philosophy 


VIEW   OF    PERGAMOS,    FROM    THE   WEST,    AFTER   THE    EXCAVATIONS   OF    I? 


found   a  new   home,  such   as   those  of  Antioch,  Sidon,  Ephesus,  and 
Tarsus.       More  important  was   Pergamos,  where   there  was   a   library 


8oo  THE  PROSE. 

second  only  to  that  of  Alexandria,  to  which  it  was  afterwards  added. 
The  kings  of  this  city,  Attalus  L,  Ermenes  II.,  and  Attalus  II.,  indeed 
were  for  about  a  century  formidable  rivals  of  the  Egyptian  city,  but 
after  them  Pergamos  sank  into  insignificance.  The  Isle  of  Rhodes, 
however,  preserved  its  superiority  down  to  a  late  period,  till  at  least 
the  second  century  after  Christ.  Yet  Alexandria  was  the  real  home 
of  learning,  and  the  means  of  transmitting  the  treasures  of  Greece  to 
posterity. 

It  was  not  for  poetasters  alone  that,  the  library  and  museum  of  this 
city  was  of  service.  We  have  seen  that  most  of  these  had  other 
claims  to  distinction,  and  study  of  every  sort  was  actively  pursued  by 
a  busy  band  of  investigators.  They  separated  learning  into  seven 
branches,  which,  as  the  quadrivium  and  trivium,  survived  throughout 
the  Dark  Ages,  and  only  in  this  century,  one  might  say,  such  is  the 
conservatism  of  educators,  have  they  undergone  serious  modification. 
This  long-lived  division  was  thus  composed  :  Grammar,  Rhetoric,  Dia- 
lectic or  Logic,  Arithmetic,  Geometry,  Astronomy,  and  Music.  Gram- 
mar, the  first  of  these,  was  what  we  should  be  inclined  to  call  philol- 
ogy, and  consisted  of  the  preparation  and  explanation  of  texts.  Cal- 
limachus,  the  poet,  as  has  been  mentioned,  was  an  authority  in  this 
branch  of  learning.  Zenodotus  of  Ephesus,  his  predecessor  as  libra- 
rian, was  intrusted  with  the  care  of  collecting  and  revising  the  whole 
body  of  Greek  poetry.  Two  other  men — Alexander  the  ^tolian  and 
Lycophron  the  Chalcidian — shared  in  the  labor,  and  took  the  tragedies 
and  comedies  respectively,  while  Zenodotus  had  charge  of  the  Homeric 
and  other  epic  poems.  A  full  list  of  all  the  grammarians  of  Alexan- 
dria whose  names  and  performances  have  come  down  to  us  would  read 
like  a  directory  of  that  populous  city,  but  among  the  most  eminent 
may  be  mentioned  Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  about  264  B.C.,  and 
Aristarchus  of  Samothrace,  a  century  later.  It  would  be  hard  to  ex- 
aggerate our  indebtedness  to  these  men  for  their  services  in  preparing 
the  literature  of  Greece  for  future  times.  Living  as  they  did  while 
the  means  of  information  were  still  easy  of  access,  they  accumulated 
vast  stores  of  material  and  abundant  explanations.  What  Aristarchus 
did  in  fixing  the  Homeric  text  and  by  way  of  illustration  and  inter- 
pretation has  been  of  especial  importance  to  modern  students.  The 
proper  methods  of  work  being  established  by  these  eminent  men, 
lexicons,  commentaries,  biographies,  all  the  paraphernalia  of  thorough 
literary  history,  were  prepared  by  their  many  followers. 

Nor  was  it  literature  alone  that  attracted  their  attention.  The 
mythological  learning  we  have  seen  reflected  in  the  poetry  of  the 
Alexandrines,  as,  for  example,  in  the  lost  poems  of  Callimachus. 
Apollodorus  of  Athens,  part  of  whose  work  has  escaped  destruction. 


8o2  •  THE  PROSE. 

collected  a  vast  number  of  myths.  Heraclitus,  of  uncertain  date, 
wrote  a  book,  On  Incredible  Things,  which  contains  brief  accounts  of 
some  of  the  most  famous  legends,  which  he  seeks  to  explain  on  some 
unmiraculous  hypothesis.  Others  were  Parthenius  of  Nicaea,  80  B.C., 
who  collected  a  number  of  legendary  love-stories,  and  Heracleides  of 
Pontus. 

While  pure  literature  was  thus  losing  its  original  characteristics, 
philosophy  was  fading  into  complete  skepticism,  but  science,  which 
had  long  been  the  mainspring  of  such  life  as  survived  in  letters,  was 
thriving  in  what  was  more  immediately  its  own  territory.  So  far  as  it 
depended  on  observation,  it  failed  to  accomplish  any  great  work :  for 
not  only  was  this  important  method  unknown,  or  nearly  unknown,  as 
Aristotle's  practice,  in  spite  of  his  excellent  theory,  clearly  shows  ;  but 
the  general  preference  of  the  Greeks — of  which  we  have  had  abundant 
instances — for  a  priori  reasoning  to  painful  study  and  experiment  was 
further  encouraged  by  the  philosophical  opinion  that  the  senses  were 
untrustworthy  guides.  In  the  exact  sciences  it  was  different ;  here 
neither  observation  nor  the  testimony  of  the  senses  was  invoked, 
and  the  abstract  truth  could  not  be  denied.  Hence  it  was  that  we 
notice  a  marvelous  growth  in  this  branch  of  study.  The  early  phil- 
osophers, it  will  be  remembered,  had  framed  many  bold  hypotheses 
about  the  universe  which  ascribed  to  number  and  form  curious  mysti- 
cal properties,  but  a  more  precise  notion  of  some  of  the  principles  of 
scientific  study  had  developed  itself  out  of  these  crude  beginnings. 
Geometry,  for  instance,  which,  it  is  said,  had  taken  its  rise  among  the 
Egyptians  from  the  necessity  of  continual  measurement  of  the  lands 
overflowed  and  altered  by  the  annual  inundations  of  the  Nile,  after 
bejng  carried  to  Greece  by  Thales,  found  many  ardent  students 
there ;  indeed,  it  became  an  important  groundwork  of  education. 
But  it  was  in  its  old  home,  Egypt,  that  it  secured  a  place  as  a  science 
in  the  hands  of  Euclid,  about  300  B.C.  It  is  not  to  be  thought  that 
Euclid  was  the  author  of  all  the  propositions  that  he  collected  in  his 
famous  Elements ;  some  were  doubtless  his,  but  his  main  merit  lay  in 
his  selection  and  the  arrangement  of  his  compilation.  For  some  time 
this  now  undoubted  fact  was  denied,  for  it  was  imagined  that  Greek 
science,  like  Greek  literature,  sprang  into  existence  fully  formed,  with- 
out previous  growth,  by  sheer  force  of  genius ;  but  this  unwarrant- 
able assumption  is  now  extinct,  and  without  any  diminution  of 
Euclid's  fame. 

While  he  also  wrote  treatises  on  Harmony,  Optics,  and  Catoptrics, 
which  have  come  down  to  us,  other  works  of  his  have  failed  to  reach 
us.  The  most  valuable  of  what  we  have,  is  the  Elements,  and 
when  it  is  borne  in  mind  that,  as  De  Morgan  said  of  him,  "  the  sacred 


PROGRESS  OF  SCIENTIFIC  STUDIES.  803 

writers  excepted,  no  Greek  has  been  so  much  read  or  so  variously- 
translated  as  Euclid,"  the  importance  of  the  scientific  work  done  at 
Alexandria  is  not  to  be  easily  over-estimated. 

The  Elements  at  once  took  the  position  that  it  now  holds,  becoming 
the  text-book  for  Greek  schools  in  Alexandria  and  in  other  centers  of 
learning,  such  as  Antioch,  Damascus,  and  Edessa,  the  school  of  Nes- 
torian  Christians.  It  reached  Europe  in  an  interesting  way.  The 
book  soon  attracted  the  attention  of  the  conquering  Arabs,  who  trans- 
lated it  in  the  reign  of  Haroun  al  Raschid,  786-809  A.D.,  and  carried 
it  to  Cordova,  whence  a  copy  was  obtained  by  an  Englishman  in  1 120. 
Other  translations  followed,  but  the  study  of  geometry  languished, 
owing  to  the  slavish  devotion  to  Aristotle's  logic  until  the  revival  of 
learning.  Not  until  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  however,  did  it 
come  into  common  use  as  a  school-book. 

In  mechanics,  Archimedes  of  Syracuse,  about  287-212  B.C.,  easily 
held  the  highest  position.  Diophantus,  of  uncertain  date,  though 
possibly  in  the  first  half  of  the  fourth  century  of  our  era,  was  the  first 
Greek  writer  on  algebra,  a  subject  which  was  carried  further  by  the 
Arabs.  Apollonius,  Eratosthenes,  contemporaries  of  Archimedes, 
were  famous  geometricians.  Among  other  famous  mathematicians 
was  Hypatia,  who  died  A.D.  415,  at  the  mature  age  of  sixty-one,  and 
not  as  a  young  girl,  as  she  is  represented  in  Kingsley's  novel.  Her 
father,  Theon,  also  deserves  mention. 

Astronomy  grew  meanwhile  in  the  hands  of  Eudoxus,  Aristarchus, 
Eratosthenes,  and  others.  To  Aristarchus  of  Samos,  born  between  281 
and  264  B.C.,  belongs  the  credit  of  framing  the  heliocentric  theory, 
which  then,  as  well  as  later,  we  are  told,  was  regarded  as  an  irreligious 
notion.  The  general  movement  of  astronomical  theory  was  away 
from  this  guess,  which,  in  the  absence  of  instruments  and  exact  obser- 
vation, could  not  be  proved  ;  and  not  until  two  hundred  years  later 
did  Hipparchus  actually  establish  astronomy  as  a  science  by  inventing 
methods  of  calculation  which  enabled  men  to  make  sure  predictions. 
He  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  first  to  make  a  catalogue  of  all  the 
stars,  and  apparently  he  invented  trigonometry,  which  useful  method 
he  applied,  however,  to  the  geocentric  theory.  This  theory  was 
adopted  and  developed  by  Ptolemy,  who  lived  in  the  second  century 
of  our  era,  and  it  became  the  universal  explanation  of  astronomical 
questions  until  it  was  disproved  by  Copernicus  about  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago.  Ptolemy's  great  work  on  astronomy,  in  which  he 
expounded  this  theory,  was  translated  into  Arabic  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury, and  reached  Europe  as  one  of  the  spoils  of  the  Crusaders,  being 
put  into  Latin  about  1200  A.D.  The  original  Greek  did  not  follow 
until  the  fifteenth  century,  and  was  early  printed. 


8o4 


THE  PROSE. 


All  these  instances,  and  the  list  is  by  no  means  complete,  bring 
abundant  testimony  of  the  significance  of  the  scientific  movement  at 
this  time.  Not  all  the  good  seed  that  was  sown  took  root.  We  have 
seen  that  the  heliocentric  system  of  Aristarchus  of  Samos,  although 
it  was  accepted  and  developed  by  Seleucus  of  Seleucia  in  Babylonia, 
miscarried  and  failed  to  attain  currency  against  the  views  of  Ptolemy. 
The  geography  of  Ptolemy,  moreover,  was  a  text-book  in  European 
schools  for  fourteen  centuries.  Nor  was  it  to  the  mistaken  or  incom- 
plete contributions  alone  that  credit  is  due  ;  from  that  time  forth  it 
was  known  to  students  .that  the  world  was  a  sphere,  and  they  under- 
stood what  was  meant  by  the  poles,  the  axis  of  the  earth,  the  equator, 
the  arctic  and  antarctic  circles,  the  solstice,  etc.,  etc.  Indeed  it  may 
be  noticed  that  the  constant  use  of  the  Greek  language  in  modern 
times  as  the  source  of  scientific  terminology  is  in  a  way  a  recognition 
of  the  deserts  of  the  Alexandrines  and  their  contemporaries,  who  gave 
the  names  to  their  discoveries  to  which  later  investigators  have  been 
compelled  to  adapt  the  new  nomenclature.  Hence  the  traditions  of 
the  beginnings  of  exact  science  are  preserved  in  its  terminology,  just 
as  the  growth  of  the  sciences  starting  from  observation,  that  was  at 
this  time  somewhat  neglected,  bear  proof  of  their  separate  history 
in  the  common  names  of  objects.  This  is  testified  by  the  presence  of 
Greek  names  in,  for  example,  anatomical  terms,  although  anatomy  is 
a  subject  which  made  less  advance  among  the  Alexandrine  Greeks 
than  one  might  have  expected  in  view  of  their  untiring  zeal  in  acquir- 
ing learning.  It  was,  to  be  sure,  studied  at  this  time,  but  its  free 
growth  was  impeded  by  the  necessity  of  dissect- 
ing apes  and  other  animals  rather  than  human 
subjects — a  fact  due  probably  to  the  long  sur- 
vival of  the  Greek  reverence  for  the  human  body  ; 
but  such  success  as  they  attained — and  it  is  very 
considerable — is  indicated  by  the  terminology,  and 
later  discoveries  tell  their  history  in  the  same  way. 
The  science  of  medicine  was  in  fact  established 
by  Hippocrates,  the  contemporary  of  Pericles  ;  it 
was  in  no  wise  discovered  or  created  by  him,  for 
the  history  of  Greek  medicine,  or  rather  of  sur- 
gery, finds  it  already  established — to  be  sure  in  great  simplicity — in  the 
Homeric  poems.  What  Hippocrates  did  was  to  co-ordinate  the 
results  of  long  experience  and  study,  to  build  up  a  tolerably  complete 
edifice  out  of  the  material  already  provided  by  remoter  generations. 
He  brought  new  contributions  to  the  common  stock,  it  is  true,  but  he 
created  nothing,  and  medical  science  not  at  all. 

During  many  centuries  a  crude  system   of  therapeutics  had  been 


HIPPOCRATES. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  MEDICAL    SCIENCE.  805 

growing  up,  the  origin  of  which  was  ascribed  in  popular  tradition  to 
Asclepius,  who  was  said  to  have  introduced  the  healing  art  into  Greece 
from  Egypt.  Temples  were  dedicated  to 
this  son  of  Apollo,  whither  the  sick  would 
resort  to  receive  advice  through  dreams  and 
from  the  priests,  who  took  care  to  preserve 
records  of  approved  remedies.  These  were 
also  inscribed  upon  separate  tablets  in  the 
temples,  and  were  further  disseminated 
among  the  populace  by  the  Asclepiads,  who 
established  schools,  notably  at  Cnidos  and 
Cos,  which  last  was  in  existence  600  B.C. 
There,  too,  Hippocrates  received  his  early  asclepius 

medical    education.      It    was,   moreover,    in 

these  schools  that  the  Hippocratic  oath  was  first  formulated.  Other 
contributions  to  early  information  on  the  subject  came  from  the  men 
in  charge  of  gymnasiums,  who  naturally  had  acquired  skill  in  treating 
the  sprains,  bruises,  and  fractures,  as  well  as  more  complicated  results 
of  accidents  and  overwork.  Hippocrates  himself  is  alleged  to  have 
been  a  lineal  descendant  of  Asclepius  on  his  father's  side,  and  on 
his  mother's  of  Heracles,  the  inventor  of  baths,  among  other  claims  to 
respect ;  possibly  the  fact  that  she  was  by  profession  a  midwife  may 
have  had  as  much  influence  in  determining  his  tastes  as  his  divine 
descent.  For  many  centuries  he  remained  the  greatest  of  physicians, 
and  the  work  that  he  accomplished  is  the  foundation  of  the  present 
science.  After  his  death,  medicine  knew  the  same  fate  as  the 
rest  of  the  intellectual  work  of  the  Greeks,  and  it  was  in  Alex- 
andria, the  new  home  of  intelligence,  that  it  woke  up  again  to 
life.  The  study  of  anatomy  began  there  under  the  direction  of 
Herophilus,  about  3CX)  B.C.,  and  of  Erasistratus,  280  B.C.,  while 
the  whole  medical  work  of  the  Greeks  culminated  in  Galen,  who 
was  born  at  Pergamos,  131  A.D.  He  was  a  most  fertile  writer, 
for  he  composed  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  works  on  philosoph- 
ical, mathematical,  grammatical,  and  legal  subjects,  and  on  medicine 
one  hundred  and  thirty-one,  of  which  last  eighty-three  have  come 
down  to  us.  He,  too,  profited  by  the  anatomical  studies  of  Alexan- 
dria, but  the  full  value  of  this  aid  was  much  impaired  by  the  decay  of 
the  zealous  investigations  established  by  the  anatomists  just  men- 
tioned. After  their  death  medical  science  became  tainted  with  phil- 
osophy, and  two  schools,  the  Empirical  and  the  Dogmatic,  who  really 
prolonged  the  controversy  between  the  followers  of  Herophilus  and 
Erasistratus  concerning  the  merits  of  Hippocrates,  devoted  their  time 
to  discussion  rather  than  to  study.      The  Empirics  maintained  that 


8o6  THE  PROSE. 

practice  was  sufficient  for  any  physician,  that  groping  among  muscles 
and  bones  was  pedantic  waste  of  time,  and  their  rivals  held  exactly 
opposite  views,  thus  maintaining  a  quarrel  which  is  eternal  between 
men  with  regard  to  the  proper  use  of  scientific  methods.  As  one 
result,  direct  anatomical  investigation  gradually  disappeared ;  the 
study  was  regarded  as  degrading,  subjects  became  rare,  Galen  himself 
dissected  apes  rather  than  human  bodies,  vivisection  was  denounced 
as  cruel  by  men  who  saw  nothing  wrong  in  gladiatorial  combats,  as  it 
is  now  attacked  by  sportsmen  when  they  are  resting  from  the  chase. 
But  what  was  a  more  perturbing  influence  upon  the  merit  of  Galen's 
work  was  his  devoted  allegiance  to  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle,  but  on 
the  other  hand  this  adherence  to  the  Stagirite  gave  him  for  centu- 
ries an  indisputable  place  alongside  of  that  intellectual  tyrant.  Only 
since  medicine  has  freed  itself  of  alliance  with  philosophical  theories 
has  it  really  grown  to  maturity,  yet,  in  spite  of  its  theoretical  defects, 
the  practical  merits  of  the  Greek  system  accomplished  a  vast  amount 
of  good  ;  indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  the  results  of  the  work  of  the 
Alexandrines  in  medicine  are  second  only  to  what  they  accomplished 
in  grammatical  study,  and  the  terminology  of  anatomical  science  attests 
their  conquests  just  as  the  names  of  towns  in  America  indicate  the 
race  of  those  who  founded  them.  Nor  was  it  in  these  studies  alone 
that  their  mark  was  left  ;  dietetics,  pharmacy,  and  surgery  made  great 
advance,  and  Greek  physicians  made  their  way  into  remote  regions. 
To  have  studied  in  Alexandria  was  in  itself  a  warrant  of  knowledge 
and  skill.  Yet,  of  course,  not  all  they  taught  still  finds  approval ;  in 
pharmacy,  for  example,  they  recommended  most  detestable  witches' 
broth,  and  compounded  vile  messes  that  flourished  throughout  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  still  survive  to  the  delight  of  rustics  ;  but  they  at 
least  made  a  beginning. 

Galen  appears  to  have  enjoyed  far  less  fame  while  living  than  that 
which  afterward  gathered  about  his  name  ;  for  that  matter,  no  one 
lifetime  could  have  known  such  great  celebrity,  but  his  reputation  for 
enormous  learning  was  very  great.  He  was  regarded  as  a  receptacle 
of  the  wisdom  of  that  time  in  other  matters,  too,  than  medicine.  Only 
after  his  death,  however,  did  he  acquire  the  position  he  so  long  held 
as  the  one  great  leader  of  medicine.  The  overthrow  of  his  authority, 
as  well  as  that  of  the  Ptolemaic  system — which  were  curiously  near 
in  time — and  the  diminution  of  Aristotle's  once  omnipotent  sway,  are 
interesting  and  suggestive  facts  in  the  history  of  thought,  for  it  may 
be  that  they  possibly  forebode  a  similar  reconstruction  of  men's  opin- 
ions in  other  matters,  when  it  shall  be  seen  that  the  whole  literary 
fabric  of  Greece,  built  up  as  it  was  on  a  form  of  rhetorical  expression 
that  owed  its  sonority  to  religious  enthusiasm,  must  give  way  before 


MODERN  REVERENCE  FOR    GREEK  MODELS.  807 

simpler  methods  of  statement.  As  it  is  at  present,  modern  literature 
obviously  rests  on  that  of  Greece,  and  the  most  admired  models  of 
that  country  were  the  natural  development  of  emotional  utterances 
that  have  now  become  mere  literary  traditions.  Its  poetry  grew  out 
of  a  form  of  religious  feeling  that  is  a  thing  wholly  of  the  past,  and  the 
prose  developed  out  of  the  artificial,  complicated  construction  of  the 
dithyramb ;  its  antitheses  and  balanced  phrases  pervaded  the  work  of 
all  the  orators  and  prose-writers,  carrying  with  it  a  general  impression 
of  the  great  value  of  mere  rhetoric.  In  modern  times  the  conditions 
are  altered,  and  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  the  old  inspiration  may  per- 
haps be  seen  in  the  dependence  of  literature  on  conventional  models 
that  are  now  authorities,  but  not  truly  inspiring  sources,  as  they  were 
in  their  own  time. 

The  solvent  that  has  wrought  the  momentous  change  in  the  way 
of  regarding  the  universe  is  science.  It  has  altered  the  old  way  of 
regarding  the  world  ;  it  destroyed  the  authority  of  Galen  and  Ptolemy 
and  inflicted  grievous  blows  on  Aristotle  ;  since  it  has  thus  affected 
our  knowledge  of  facts,  it  brings  forth  new  lessons  from  the  facts, 
and  evokes  different  emotions,  which  demand  other  forms  of  expres- 
sion. In  other  words,  the  emotional,  wondering  way  of  regarding  life 
is  being  superseded  by  the  enormous  collection  of  facts  that  science  is 
amassing,  and  the  phraseology  that  was  used  to  express  obsolescent 
emotion  sits  ill  on  modern  ways  of  thought  and  feeling.  When 
men's  minds  were  filled  with  awe  they  spoke  differently  from  men  who 
are  forever  dispassionately  seeking  and  finding  explanations  of  all 
observed  phenomena, — indeed,  the  mere  habit  of  scientific  statement 
cannot  be  without  influence ;  while  the  change  of  mental  attitude 
must  in  time  be  as  apparent  in  men's  words  as  in  their  thoughts,  and 
then  Greek  literature  will  doubtless  retain  its  place  as  a  perfectly  nat- 
ural expression  of  great  and  important  thoughts,  but  it  will  perhaps 
be  no  longer  considered  necessary  to  say  a  thing  in  a  certain  way  be- 
cause the  Greeks  so  said  it. 

At  present  the  worst  thing  about  literature  is  that  it  is  made  up 
to  too  great  an  extent  of  literary  methods.  This  vice  began  to 
make  its  appearance  with  the  downfall  of  Hellenic  independence, 
and,  as  Horace  said,  conquered  Greece  soon  made  captive  conquering 
Rome.  From  Rome  it  has  been  bequeathed  to  Europe,  and  thence 
it  has  naturally  found  its  way  over  the  rest  of  the  civilized  world. 

III. 

That  new  capital  of  the  world,  Rome,  attracted  countless  Greeks 
of  various  kinds,  and  the  Greek  language  became  a  necessary  part  of 


8o8  THE  PROSE. 

the  education  of  every  cultivated  Roman.  As  we  shall  see  later,  that 
city  became  the  home  of  educated  Greeks  who  gave  instruction  in 
their  own  language,  in  rhetoric,  and  in  philosophy.  They  swarmed 
thither  in  such  numbers  that  the  senate  twice  passed  laws  expelling 
them  from  the  city  as  corrupters  of  the  sterner  Roman  virtue.  Indeed, 
the  rigid  Cato  objected  to  Greek  physicians,  and  sought  to  have  his 
fellow-countrymen  allowed  to  die  in  the  old-fashioned  way.  In  spite 
of  this  morbid  patriotism,  however,  the  superiority  of  the  Greek 
literature  and  philosophy  asserted  itself  and  found  admirers  and  fol- 
lowers in  their  new  home.  The  language  became  a  common  medium 
for  the  cultivated  classes,  not  only  in  Rome,  but  throughout  the 
civilized  world.  The  Greeks,  who  possessed  all  the  flower  of  culture, 
did  not  need  to  study  foreign  tongues,  and  they  appear  not  to  have 
devoted  themselves  to  acquiring  them,  any  more  than  did  the  French 
in  the  last  century  when  all  people  of  education  had  to  learn  that 
language.  Thus,  not  long  after  the  Macedonian  conquest,  Berosus  in 
Babylon,  Menander  in  Tyre,  and  Manetho  in  Egypt,  compiled  the 
annals  of  their  country  from  original  sources,  writing  them  in  Greek 
for  the  use  of  Greeks.  When  medicine,  philosophy,  astronomy,  and 
doubtless  literature,  made  their  way  eastward,  it  was  by  means  of 
translations  into  the  various  tongues  ;  and  these  translations,  obviously 
enough,  were  not  made  by  the  Greeks  themselves.  In  Rome,  as  was 
said  above,  Greek  was  universally  known  by  all  educated  men.  Nor 
was  it  merely  the  excellence  of  Greek  learning  and  letters  that  gave 
this  language  so  great  importance.  Ever  since  the  Greek  colonists 
had  moved  westward  to  Sicily  and  southern  Italy  their  influence  had 
been  felt,  and  traces  of  it  abound  in  early  Italian  history.  The  Greeks 
had  given  the  Italians  their  alphabet,  had  taught  them  to  read  and  to 
write,  and  the  number  of  Greek  words  incorporated  at  an  early  date 
into  the  Latin  shows  how  much  the  Italians  were  indebted  to  them 
for  the  beginnings  of  civilization.  The  Italian  mythology  was  made 
over  into  a  close  imitation  of  that  of  Greece. 

The  full  extent  of  the  dependence  of  the  Romans  will  be  made 
clear  when  we  come  to  the  study  of  their  literature,  where  it  will  be 
seen  how  thoroughly  their  civilization  drew  its  life  from  the  smaller 
country.  Here  it  is  well,  however,  to  show  its  effect  upon  the  Greeks, 
who  were  only  maintained  in  their  very  natural  pride  by  their 
acknowledged  superiority.  No  one  of  them  looked  upon  the  Romans 
as  their  intellectual  equals ;  they  never  studied  the  Latin  language 
except  so  far  as  their  business  required,  and  the  Latin  literature  they 
almost  wholly  ignored.  This  superiority  to  their  conquerors  in 
matters  of  art  and  literature  fully  made  up  to  them  for  the  lack  of 
material  power ;  they  were  able  to  despise  the  gross  success  of  their 


THE  LITERARY  INTERESTS  OF  GREECE  AND  ROME.  809 

conquerors,  and  by  their  continual  assertion  of  their  own  excellence 
they  undoubtedly  helped  to  preserve  their  authority,  for  the  continual 
assertion  of  one's  merits  is  the  surest  method  of  obtaining  recognition. 
While  the  Greeks  have  not  failed  to  receive  the  praise  which  is  due 
to  their  marvelous  performance,  there  is  yet  one  thing  of  which  at 
times  sight  has  been  lost,  and  that  is  how  very  nearly  literature  and 
art  were  the  sole  outlet  for  the  energies  of  an  active-minded  people. 
With  the  Romans  they  were  but  a  part  of  a  large  number  of  interests, 
some  of  which  were  directly  hostile  to  an  intellectual  or  artistic  life. 
The  meagre  size  of  Greece,  its  lack  of  vast  political  ideals,  its  pro- 
vincialism in  matters  of  statecraft,  all  tended  to  diminish  the  number 
of  distracting  interests,  and  enabled  the  attention  of  intelligent  men 
to  concentrate  itself  upon  literature  and  art.  It  was  in  very  much 
the  same  way  that  the  sufferings  of  the  Jews  intensified  their  religious 
fervor;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  large  ambitions  and  wide 
interests  of  the  Romans  left  art  and  letters  subordinate  to  the  many 
conflicting  claims  of  practical  life.  In  both  Greece  and  Rome,  as 
elsewhere,  enthusiasm  expressed  itself  in  literature  and  art,  but  in 
Greece  these  were  more  exclusively  the  outlets  than  in  other  countries. 
Hence  we  may  be  justified  in  reminding  those  who  find  their  ideals  of 
life  in  that  land  alone,  that  its  undeniable  merit  was  purchased  at  the 
cost  of  many  things  which  also  have  their  preciousness  and  importance, 
and  that  it  is  possible  to  pay  too  high  a  price  for  literary  and  artistic 
excellence,  if  these  can  be  attained  only  with  any  sensible  diminution 
of  other  interests,  political,  social,  or  scientific.  The  wider  range  of 
objects  pursued  may  necessarily  involve  a  change,  which  will  seem 
ruinous  to  those  who  demand  that  the  future,  to  be  admirable,  must 
repeat  the  past.  All  this,  it  should  be  said,  is  far  from  a  denial  of  the 
deserts  of  the  Greeks. 

IV. 

All  these  facts  show  how  closely  bound  was  Rome  with  Greece, 
and  in  the  history  of  Polybius,  a  Greek,  which  he  wrote  in  his  own 
language,  we  may  see  the  maturer  Hellenic  mind  applied  to  the 
study  of  events  after  a  fashion  that  the  Romans  could  not  then 
imitate.  Polybius  was  born  at  Megalopolis,  a  city  in  Arcadia,  about 
204  B.C.  His  father  was  one  of  the  leading  men  in  the  Achaean 
League,  that  attempt  at  federation  of  Greek  states  which  followed 
upon  the  feeble  alliances  that  crumbled  before  the  single-hearted 
power  of  Macedon.  Unsatisfactory  as  the  League  was,  it  held  out 
against  that  country  and  only  succumbed  to  Rome.  In  167  B.C. 
Polybius  was  carried  to  that  city  as  a  hostage,  among  a  thousand 
of  his  countrymen,  and  remained  in  exile  for  seventeen  years.    Dur- 


8lo  THE  PROSE. 

ing  this  long  absence  from  home  Polybius  was  able  to  observe  the 
Roman  civilization,  and  his  intimacy  with  the  sons  of  -^milius 
Paulus,  and  particularly  with  the  one  who  was  afterwards  Scipio 
Africanus  the  younger,  was  of  especial  service  :  he  accompanied  him 
on  his  various  campaigns,  and  later  he  was  present  with  him  at  the 
conquest  of  Carthage.  This  experience  taught  Polybius  how  hopeless 
would  be  any  resistance  of  the  Achaeans  to  the  invincible  might  of 
Rome,  and  he  urged  his  fellow-countrymen  to  accept  the  inevitable 
and  make  the  best  terms  they  could.  Like  most  good  advice,  how- 
ever, that  which  he  gave  was  found  to  be  sound  only  when  the  oppo- 
site had  been  followed.  After  the  Achaeans  had  been  defeated  they 
acknowledged  their  error,  and  put  up  a  statue  to  Polybius  that  bore 
an  inscription  saying  that,  if  his  words  had  been  followed,  Hellas  would 
have  been  saved.  Polybius  was  able  to  mitigate  some  of  the  severi- 
ties that  the  Romans  had  imposed  upon  their  prostrate  foes,  and  for 
this  intervention  he  received  new  honors.  This  was  about  145  B.C., 
and  the  rest  of  his  life,  that  is  to  say,  until  about  122  B.C.,  he  appears 
to  have  devoted  to  the  preparation  and  composition  of  his  history. 
This  history  consisted  of  forty  books  and  covered  the  period  between 
220  and  146  B.C.  The  first  date  was  that  at  which  the  history  of 
Timaeus,  since  lost,  came  to  an  end.  The  other  date  was  chosen  as 
that  when  Corinth  fell  and  the  independence  of  Greece  vanished.  At 
first  the  history  consisted  of  two  distinct  parts,  afterwards  combined 
into  a  single  work.  In  the  first  of  these  he  began  with  the  Second 
Punic  War,  the  Social  War  in  Greece,  and  the  war  between  Antiochus 
and  Ptolemy  Philopater  in  Asia,  and  ended  with  the  overthrow  of  the 
Macedonian  kingdom  in  168  B.C.  The  second  part  continued  the  his- 
tory until  the  date  above  mentioned.  It  should  be  added  that  the 
whole  was  introduced  by  a  brief  sketch  of  Roman  history  between  the 
capture  of  the  city  by  the  Gauls  and  the  beginning  of  the  second 
Punic  War,  with  abundant  references  to  other  contemporary  events. 

Polybius  has  suffered  from  the  fact  that  he  was  not  one  of  the 
classic  Greek  historians ;  he  has  experienced  a  full  share  of  the  con- 
tempt that  educated  men  have  felt  and  expressed  for  everything 
Greek  that  belongs  to  the  post-Athenian  period,  and  has  been  a  vic- 
tim of  a  blight  as  mysterious  and  unreasonable  as  social  distinctions. 
Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and  Xenophon  are  in  the  blue  book  ;  Poly- 
bius lives  beyond  the  recognized  borders  ;  he  is  a  social  waif.  This 
is,  however,  scarcely  a  distinction  that  can  be  acknowledged  by  a 
student,  and  besides  the  importance  of  the  historian's  statements, 
there  is  in  his  work  a  quality  that  demands  attention  and  admiration : 
this  is  his  conception  of  history  as  a  branch  of  science.  He  certainly 
lacks  the  charm  of  Herodotus,  the  unrivaled  dignity  of  Thucydides, 


EXTRACTS  FROM  POLYBIUS.  8ll 

and  the  graceful  art  of  Xenophon,  but  the  aim  of  his  history,  to 
point  out, 

"  in  what  manner,  and  through  what  kind  of  government,  almost  the  whole 
habitable  world,  in  less  than  fifty-three  years,  was  reduced  beneath  the 
Roman  yoke," 

clearly  shows  a  wide  comprehension  of  his  task.  He  did  not  merely 
chronicle  events ;  he  saw,  what  it  is  always  difficult  for  a  contempo- 
rary to  see,  their  real  universal  significance  and  their  relation  to  the 
world's  progress. 

"  Before  this  period,"  he  says  with  regard  to  the  date  he  had  chosen  for 
beginning,  "the  great  transactions  of  the  world  were  single,  distinct,  and 
unconnected,  both  in  place  and  time ;  while  each  proceeded  from  motives 
peculiar  to  itself,  and  was  directed  to  its  proper  end.  But  from  this  time 
history  assumes  an  entire  and  perfect  body.  The  affairs  of  Italy  and  Africa 
were  now  conjoined  with  those  of  Asia  and  of  Greece  :  and  all  moved  to- 
gether towards  one  fixed  and  single  point." 

He  was  then  justified  in  boasting  that  he  was  the  first  to  write  a 
universal  history. 

"  There  are  many,  indeed,  who  have  written  an  account  of  particular  wars: 
and  among  them,  some  perhaps  have  added  a  few  coincident  events.  But 
no  man,  as  far  at  least  as  I  can  learn,  has  ever  yet  employed  his  pains,  in 
collecting  all  the  great  transactions  of  the  world  into  one  regular  and 
consistent  body  ;  remarking  also  the  time  of  their  commencement,  the  mo- 
tives to  which  they  owed  their  birth,  and  the  end  to  which  they  were  directed. 
I  therefore  judged  it  to  be  a  task  that  might  prove  highly  useful  to  the  world, 
to  rescue  from  oblivion  this  great  and  most  instructive  act  of  Fortune.  For 
in  all  the  vast  variety  of  disorders,  struggles,  changes,  which  the  power  of 
this  deity  introduces  into  human  life,  we  shall  find  none  equal  to  that  long 
and  desperate  scene  of  contention,  none  worthy  to  be  compared  for  their  im- 
portance with  those  events  which  have  happened  in  the  pre.sent  age." 

Certainly  this  is  no  exaggeration  of  the  importance  of  the  Punic 
Wars  and  of  the  overthrow  of  the  Macedonian  dominion,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  subjection  of  Greece  to  this  new  power,  and  it  is 
easy  to  see  how  deeply  Polybius  must  have  been  influenced  by  the 
sight  of  Macedonia,  recently  the  conqueror  of  the  world,  yielding  in 
its  turn  to  the  Romans,  who, 

"disdaining  to  confine  their  conquests  within  the  limits  of  a  few  countries 
only,  have  forced  almost  the  whole  habitable  world  to  pay  submission  to  their 
laws  :  and  have  raised  their  empire  to  that  vast  height  of  power,  which  is  so 
much  the  wonder  of  the  present  age,  and  which  no  future  times  can  ever 
hope  to  exceed." 


8i2  THE  PROSE. 

History  became  universal  when  events  clearly  modified  the  whole 
civilized  world. 

Such  then  was  the  grand  aim  of  Polybius,  one  that  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  those  later  historians  who  have  endeavored  to  show  the 
mutual  connections  of  events  in  history  with  one  another.  Another 
question  is  the  manner  of  the  performance.  As  a  narrator,  Polybius 
often  lacks  the  attractive  qualities  of  his  great  predecessors,  yet  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  he  has  well  observed  his  rule  of  stating  the 
connection  between  the  various  incidents  that  he  records.  This 
becomes  clear  when  we  remember  that  he  finds  the  principle  animating 
and  conducting  these  great  changes,  not  in  any  great  man,  but  in  the 
Roman  people  themselves.  There  is  no  hero  in  his  history,  but  it 
teaches  us  what  Rome  was  and  did  in  its  early  steps  to  greatness. 
Thus  in  speaking  of  the  difference  between  Carthage,  which  employed 
mercenaries,  and  Rome  with  its  army  of  citizens,  he  says: 

"  Hence  it  happens,  that  the  Romans,  though  at  first  defeated,  are  always 
able  to  renew  the  war  ;  and  that  the  Carthaginian  armies  never  are  renewed 
without  great  difficulty.  Add  to  this,  that  the  Romans,  fighting  for  their 
country  and  their  children,  never  suffer  their  ardor  to  be  slackened  ;  but 
persist  with  same  steady  spirit,  till  they  become  superior  to  their  enemies." 

This  spirit  of  analysis  carries  him  further ;  thus  a  few  pages  later 
we  find  him  saying: 

"  But  among  all  the  useful  institutions  that  demonstrate  the  superior 
excellence  of  the  Roman  government,  the  most  considerable  perhaps  is  the 
opinion  which  the  people  are  taught  to  hold  concerning  the  gods  :  and  that 
which  other  men  regard  as  an  object  of  disgrace  appears  in  my  judgment 
to  be  the  very  thing  by  which  this  republic  chiefly  is  sustained.     I  mean 

Superstition The  ancients  therefore  acted  not  absurdly,  nor  without 

good  reason,  when  they  inculcated  the  notions  concerning  the  gods,  and  the 
belief  of  infernal  punishments  ;  but  much  more  those  of  the  present  age  are 
to  be  charged  with  rashness  and  absurdity,  in  endeavouring  to  extirpate 
these  opinions." 

For  among  the  Greeks,  he  goes  on  to  say,  there  is  no  honesty,  and 
among  the  Romans  no  taint  of  crime,  in  the  treatment  of  public 
moneys. 

This  tendency  of  Polybius  to  see  things  in  their  full  importance, 
and  to  describe  them  with  a  view  to  the  instruction  which  they  can 
give  to  his  readers,  is  one  that  throws  considerable  light  upon  the 
intellectual  interests  of  his  time,  for  every  historian,  like  every  thinking 
man,  is  affected  by  the  period  in  which  he  lives.  Just  as  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  vivid  and  picturesque  presentation  of  the  Middle  Ages,  itself 
the  result  of  the  renewed  interest  in  the  past  and  the  intensity  given 
to  national  patriotism  by  the  Napoleonic  wars,  made  over  the  methods 


THE  FUNCTIONS  OF   THE  HISTORIAN.  813 

of  historians  who  followed  him  and  taught  them  something  of  his 
brilliancy  in  drawing  the  past ;  and  just  as  now  a  historian  only  dis- 
charges his  duty  when  he  explains  the  growth  and  coherence  of  events, 
so  the  method  of  Polybius  shows  him  the  product  of  a  time  when 
science  ruled  and  helped  to  modify  men's  way  of  thinking.  We  find 
science  not  only  in  the  books  of  geometers  and  astronomers,  but  also 
affecting  the  poets  ;  and  in  the  rationalizing  of  Polybius,  in  his  orderly 
arrangement  and  search  for  hidden  causes,  we  may  detect  the  con- 
temporary of  the  great  grammarians,  mathematicians,  and  astronomers. 
The  vastness  of  his  design  indicates  the  new  views  that  existed  con- 
cerning the  power  of  accumulated  learning  to  interpret  even  the 
widest  problems.  The  decay  of  the  Greek  notion  of  the  importance 
of  the  city  as  the  political  unit  is  another  token  of  the  broader  scope 
of  intellectual  interests  in  these  later  times. 

The  work  of  Polybius  does  not  have  its  sole  value  as  an  indication 
and  expression  of  the  cosmopolitanism  which  the  Romans  were 
unconsciously  putting  into  practice  from  reasons  of  state,  just  as 
England  has  extended  its  power  over  the  globe  from  a  series  of 
reasons  that  had  been  based  on  pounds  and  shillings ;  nor  is  its  only 
interest  that  of  indicating  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  Greek  mind. 
What  we  have  to  be  additionally  grateful  for  is  that  we  have  any  ' 
history  at  all  of  this  period.  Polybius  is  the  first  to  break  the  silence 
of  a  century  and  a  half  which  is  the  long  stretch  of  time  between  the 
death  of  Xenophon  and  his  birth.  There  were,  to  be  sure,  plenty  of 
historians  of  greater  or  less  degree  during  that  interval ;  the  names  of 
more  than  one  hundred  have  come  down  to  us,  but  their  names  alone  ; 
time  has  spared  us  practically  nothing  of  their  work.  Of  Polybius  we 
have,  to  be  sure,  the  recital  of  but  the  half-century  after  219  B.C.,  but 
this  is  of  great  importance  in  the  general  dearth  of  information. 

Now,  of  all  the  precautions  that  have  been  mentioned,  the  first  to  which  a  com- 
mander should  attend,  is  that  of  observing  secresy.  That  neither  the  joy  which 
springs  from  an  unexpected  prospect  of  success,  nor  yet  the  dread  of  a  miscarriage ; 
that  neither  friendship  nor  affection  may  prevail  upon  him,  to  communicate  his  design 
to  any  persons,  except  those  alone  without  whose  assistance  it  cannot  be  carried  into 
execution :  and  not  even  to  these,  till  the  time  in  which  their  services  are  severally 
required  obliges  him  to  disclose  it.  Nor  is  it  necessary  only,  that  the  tongue  be  silent  ; 
but  much  more,  that  the  mind  also  make  not  any  discovery.  For  it  has  often  hap- 
pened, that  men,  who  have  carefully  restrained  themselves  from  speaking,  have  some- 
times by  their  countenance  alone,  and  sometimes  by  their  actions,  very  clearly  mani- 
fested their  designs.  A  second  thing  to  be  considered  are  the  different  routes,  either 
by  day  or  by  night,  and  the  manner  of  performing  them,  both  upon  land  and  sea. 
The  third,  and  indeed  the  greatest  object  is,  to  know  the  differences  of  the  times  that 
depend  upon  the  heavens;  and  to  be  able  to  accommodate  them  to  the  execution  of 
any  design.  Nor  is  the  manner  of  executing  any  enterprize  to  be  regarded  as  a 
point  of  small  importance.  For  this  alone  has  often  made  things  practicable  which 
appeared  to  be  impossible ;  and  rendered  others  impracticable,  which  were  easy  to 
be  performed.'     In  the  last  place,  great  attention  should  be  paid  to  signals  and  counter- 


8 14  THE  PROSE. 

signals  ;  as  well  as  to  the  choice  of  the  persons,  through  whose  means,  and  with  whose 
assistance,  the  undertaking  is  to  be  accomplished. 

Among  the  things  that  are  to  be  learned  in  this  method,  one  of  the  most  necessary 
is  the  investigation  of  the  theory  of  the  days  and  nights.  If  indeed  the  days  and 
nights  were  at  all  times  equal,  there  would  be  no  need  of  study,  in  order  to  acquire  a 
knowledge  which  would  in  that  case  be  common  and  obvious  to  all.  But  since  they 
are  different,  not  only  each  from  the  other,  but  also  from  themselves,  it  is  plainly  a 
matter  of  great  importance,  to  know  the  laws  by  which  they  are  severally  diminished 
or  increased.  For,  unless  he  be  acquainted  with  these  differences,  how  shall  a  com- 
mander be  able  to  measure  with  exactness  the  time  of  a  concerted  march,  either  by 
night  or  by  day  ?  How  can  he  be  assured,  without  this  knowledge,  that  he  shall  not 
either  arrive  too  early,  or  too  late .''  It  happens  also  upon  such  occasions,  and  indeed 
upon  such  alone,  that  the  first  of  these  mistakes  is  more  dangerous  than  the  other. 
For  he  who  arrives  too  late,  is  only  forced  to  abandon  his  design.  Perceiving  his 
error,  while  he  is  yet  at  a  distance,  he  may  return  back  again  with  safety.  But  he 
who  comes  before  the  appointed  time,  being  discovered  by  the  enemy  upon  his 
approach,  not  only  fails  in  the  intended  enterprize,  but  is  in  danger  also  of  suffering 
an  entire  defeat.  It  is  time  indeed,  which  principally  governs  in  all  human  actions ; 
and  most  particularly  in  the  affairs  of  war.  A  commander  therefore  should  be  per- 
fectly acquainted  with  the  time  of  the  summer  and  the  winter  solstice  ;  the  equinoxes ; 
and  the  different  degrees  of  the  diminution  or  increase  of  the  nights  and  days,  as  they 
fall  between  the  equinoctial  points.  For  this  is  the  only  method  that  can  enable  him 
to  adjust  his  motions  to  the  course  of  time,  either  by  land  or  sea. 

Thus  again  King  Philip,  when  he  attempted  to  take  Melite  in  the  manner  that  has 
before  been  mentioned,  was  guilty  of  a  double  error.  For  not  only  the  ladders  which 
he  carried  were  too  short ;  but  he  failed  also  with  respect  to  the  time.  Instead  of 
coming  to  the  place  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  as  it  had  been  concerted,  when  the 
people  would  have  been  all  fast  asleep,  he  began  his  march  from  Larissa  at  an  early 
hour;  and,  having  entered  the  territory  of  the  Melitaeans,  as  it  was  neither  safe  for 
him  to  halt,  lest  the  enemy  should  gain  notice  of  his  approach,  nor  possible  to  return 
back  again  without  being  perceived,  he  was  compelled  by  necessity  to  advance,  and 
arrived  at  the  city  before  the  inhabitants  were  yet  gone  to  rest.  But  as  he  could  not 
scale  the  walls,  because  the  ladders  were  not  proportioned  to  the  height ;  so  neither 
was  he  able  to  enter  through  the  gate,  because  the  time  of  the  attack  prevented  his 
friends  that  were  within  the  city  from  favouring  his  entrance.  At  last  therefore, 
having  only  provoked  the  rage  of  the  inhabitants,  and  lost  many  of  his  men,  he  was 
forced  to  return  back  without  accomplishing  his  purpose  ;  and  instructed  all  mankind 
for  the  time  to  come,  to  be  suspicious  of  his  designs,  and  set  themselves  on  their 
guard  against  him. 

V. 

After  his  death  there  occurs  another  period  of  silence,  and  indeed  we 
may  say  that  of  the  two  centuries  before  the  Christian  era  our  informa- 
tion is  far  scantier  than  is  that  of  two  centuries  earlier.  Two  hundred 
names,  thus  averaging  one  for  each  year,  show  the  extent  of  our  loss, 
but  excepting  the  five  books  and  the  fragments  of  Polybius,  the 
abridgment  of  the  mythological  and  genealogical  history  of  Apol- 
lodorus,  and  Sallust,  Caesar,  Diodorus  Siculus,  Dionysius  of  Halicar- 
nassus,  and  Livy,  we  have  nothing.  All  of  the  works  of  these  writers, 
with  the  single  exception  of  Caesar,  have  been  handed  down  to  us  in 
a  mutilated  condition,  and  the  crumbs  that  we  have  received  from  so 
full  a  feast  give  us  but  an  insufificient  record  of  a  momentous  age. 

Diodorus    Siculus,  or   the   Sicilian — he  was   born  at  Agyrium,  in 


THE  EARLY  HISTORIANS.  8lS 

Sicily — was  a  contemporary  of  Caesar  and  Augustus;  his  exact  dates, 
however,  are  not  known.  He  tells  us  that  he  spent  thirty  years  pre- 
paring for  the  composition  of  his  history  by  traveling  in  Europe  and 
Asia,  as  well  as  in  Egypt,  and  that  Latin  as  well  as  Greek  sources 
were  open  to  him.     His  aim  was  a  grand  one  : 

"  Having  diligently  perused  and  examined  the  works  of  several  authors,  I 
determined  to  compose  an  entire  history,  from  which  the  reader  might  reap 
much  advantage,  with  little  labour  and  pains." 

This  he  wrote  in  forty  books,  beginning  with  the  Trojan  War  and 
ending  with  60  B.C.,  the  date  of  Caesar's  consulship,  a  period  of  about 
eleven  hundred  years.  The  first  six  books  contained  the  early  his- 
tory of  Asia  and  the  Greeks  ;  the  next  eleven  carried  the  story  on  to 
the  death  of  Alexander  the  Great  ;  and  the  remainder  narrated  fur- 
ther events  until  Caesar's  war  against  the  Gauls.  Of  this  work  we 
have  the  first  five  books,  recounting  the  early  history  of  Egypt,  Ethi- 
opia, Asia,  and  Greece,  and  books  11-20,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
second  Persian  War  to  the  death  of  Alexander,  and  but  fragments  of 
the  rest.  This  work,  which  its  author  called  a  historical  library,  even 
in  the  defective  state  in  which  it  reaches  us  thus  covers  a  great  deal 
of  ground.  It  lacks,  however,  great  interest,  belonging  as  it  does  to 
a  time  when  books  were  made  by  compilation  from  various  authori- 
ties, with  no  marked  discretion  in  the  choice.  Moreover,  he  has  con- 
fused what  was  already  obscure  by  a  number  of  chronological  inaccu- 
racies. It  is  cruel  to  be  ungrateful  for  any  light  that  can  be  thrown 
on  Greek  history,  but  that  which  Diodorus  gives  us  has  found  any- 
thing but  lavish  praise. 

The  early  history  of  the  Romans  was  written  by  Dionysius  of  HaH- 
carnassus,  where  he  was  born  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  last  century 
before  Christ.  He  betook  himself  to  Rome  in  29  B.C.,  probably  giv- 
ing instruction  there  in  rhetoric,  and  preparing  his  history.  He  wrote 
a  number  of  books  on  both  subjects.  Those  on  rhetoric  are  intelli- 
gent ;  and  his  history,  although  his  method  ill  bears  the  test  of  mod- 
ern scientific  examination,  contains  a  vast  mass  of  information.  Ob- 
viously, archaeology  was  then  an  unknown  science,  and  the  explana- 
tion of  the  past  lay  beyond  the  powers  of  any  man,  but  the  accumu- 
lation of  material  that  he  made  has  been  found  of  service  in  later 
times. 

With  these  men  should  be  mentioned  Strabo,  who  lived  from 
about  60  B.C.  until  about  24  A.D.,  and  was  thus  a  contemporary  of 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus.  His  Description  of  the  Earth,  in  seven- 
teen books,  contains  abundant  historical  facts,  besides  many  interest- 
ing descriptions  of  places  that  the  author  had  himself  seen.      It  was 


8i6  THE  PROSE. 

not  a  mere  geography  that  he  wrote,  but  rather  a  sort  of  manual  of 
general  information  about  the  different  regions  he  describes. 

Flavius  Josephus,  born  about  37  A.D.,  is  a  marked  instance  of  the  cos- 
mopolitanism that  was  growing  up  with  the  increasing  power  of  Rome. 
He  w^s  a  Jew  of  distinguished  descent  who  saw  the  invincibility  of 
Rome,  and  wrote  his  histories  for  the  purpose  of  commending  the 
Jews  to  their  conquerors.  It  would  be  unfair  to  explain  this  inten- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  historian  as  a  simple  lack  of  patriotism.  An 
acknowledgment  of  the  power  of  Rome  was  at  that  time  no  more 
than  an  acknowledgment  of  the  power  of  civilization.  We  have 
seen  that  city  absorbing  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  Greeks,  and 
that  the  Jews  should  seek  to  find  a  place  in  it  was  neither  strange 
nor  new.  In  Alexandria,  ever  since  its  foundation,  they  had  begun 
the  life  they  have  since  led  of  comparative  political  isolation  within 
the  state.  They  were  then,  as  now,  active  in  trade,  and  an  element 
of  great  importance  in  Rome  as  well  as  elsewhere.  That  Josephus 
should  have  endeavored  to  set  his  fellow-religionists  in  a  favorable 
light  was  perhaps  the  best  service  that  he  could  have  done  them.  His 
history  of  the  Jewish  War,  which  he  first  composed  in  his  own  lan- 
guage and  then  translated  into  Greek,  was  much  admired  in  Rome, 
where  the  author  was  treated  with  great  respect.  Another  book,  on 
Jewish  Antiquities,  in  twenty  books,  begins  with  the  creation  of  the 
world  and  brings  the  record  down  to  66  A.D.,  when  Nero  was  emperor. 
Here  he  made  an  especial  effort  to  conciliate  the  Romans,  speaking 
of  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  as  nothing  more  than  ancient  his- 
tory, with  no  claim  to  divine  authority.  Yet  he  makes  very  clear 
the  difference  between  Judaism  and  Paganism,  in  spite  of  his  efforts 
to  smooth  them  away. 

When  Moses  had  thus  addressed  himself  to  God,  he  smote  the  sea  with 
his  rod,  which  parted  asunder  at  the  stroke,  and  receiving  those  waters  into 
itself,  left  the  ground  dry,  as*  a  road,  and  place  of  flight  for  the  Hebrews. 
Now  when  Moses  saw  this  appearance  of  God,  and  that  the  sea  went  out  of 
its  own  place,  and  left  dry  land,  he  went  first  of  all  into  it,  and  bid  the  He- 
brews to  follow  him  along  that  divine  road,  and  to  rejoice  at  the  danger  their 
enemies  that  followed  them  were  in  ;  and  gave  thanks  to  God  for  this  so 
surprising  a  deliverance  which  appeared  from  him. 

Now  while  these  Hebrews  made  no  stay,  but  went  on  earnestly,  as  led  by 
God's  presence  with  them,  the  Egyptians  supposed  at  first  that  they  were 
distracted,  and  were  going  rashly  upon  manifest  destruction.  But  when 
they  saw  that  they  were  gone  a  great  way  without  any  harm,  and  that  no 
obstacle  or  difficulty  fell  m  their  journey,  they  made  haste  to  pursue  them, 
hoping  that  the  sea  would  be  calm  for  them  also.  They  put  their  horse  fore- 
most, and  went  down  themselves  into  the  sea.  Now  the  Hebrews,  while 
these  were  putting  on  their  armour,  and  therein  spending  their  time,  were 
beforehand  with  them,  and  escaped  them,  and  got  first  over  to  the  land  on 


EXTRACT  FROM  JOSEPH  US. 


817 


the  other  side  without  any  hurt.  Whence  the  others  were  encouraged,  and 
more  courageously  pursued  them,  as  hoping  no  harm  would  come  to  them 
neither  :  but  the  Egyptians  were  not  aware  that  they  went  into  a  road  made 
for  the  Hebrews,  and  not  for  others  ;  that  this  road  was  made  for  the  deliv- 
erance of  those  in  danger,  but  not  for  those  that  were  earnest  to  make  use 
of  it  for  the  others'  destruction.  As  soon,  therefore,  as  ever  the  whole 
Egyptian  army  was  within  it,  the  sea  flowed  to  its  own  place,  and  came  down 
with  a  torrent  raised  by  storms  of  wind,  and  encompassed  the  Egyptians. 
Showers  of  rain  also  came  down  from  the  sky,  and  dreadful  thunders,  and 
lightning,  and  flashes  of  fire.  Thunderbolts  also  were  darted  upon  them. 
Nor  was  there  any  thing  which  used  to  be  sent  by  God  upon  men,  as  indica- 
tions of  his  wrath,  which  did  not  happen  at  this  time,  for  a  dark  and  dismal 
night  oppressed  them.  And  thus  did  all  these  men  perish,  so  that  there  was 
not  one  man  left  to  be  a  messenger  of  this  calamity  to  the  rest  of  the  Egyp- 
tians. But  the  Hebrews  were  not  able  to  contain  themselves  for  joy  at  their 
wonderful  deliverance,  and  destruction  of  their  enemies  ;  now  indeed  sup- 
posing themselves  firmly  delivered,  when  those  that  would  have  forced  them 
into  slavery  were  destroyed,  and  when  they  found  they  had  God  so  evidently 
for  their  protector.  And  now  these  Hebrews  having  escaped  the  danger 
they  were  in,  after  this  manner,  and  besides  that,  seeing  their  enemies  pun- 
ished in  such  a  way  as  is  never  recorded  of  any  other  men  whomsoever,  were 
all  the  night  employed  in  singing  of  hymns  and  in  mirth.  Moses  also  com- 
posed a  song  unto  God,  containing  his  praises,  and  a  thanksgiving  for  his 
kindness,  in  Hexameter  verse. 

As  for  myself,  I  have  delivered  every  part  of  this  history  as  I  found  it  in 
the  sacred  books.  Nor  let  any  one  wonder  at  the  strangeness  of  the  narra- 
tion, if  a  way  were  discovered  to  those  men  of  old  time,  who  were  free  from 
the  wickedness  of  the  modern  ages,  whether  it  happened  by  the  will  of  God, 
or  whether  it  happened  of  its  own  accord  ;  while,  for  the  sake  of  those  that 
accompanied  Alexander,  king  of  Macedonia,  who  yet  lived  comparatively 
but  a  little  while  ago,  the  Pamphylian  sea  retired  and  afforded  a  pas- 
sage through  itself,  when  they  had  no  other  way  to  go  ;  I  mean,  when  it 
was  the  will  of  God  to  destroy  the  monarchy  of  the  Persians.  And  this  is 
confessed  to  be  true  by  all  that  have  written  about  the  actions  of  Alexander. 
But  as  to  these  events,  let  every  one  determine  as  he  pleases. 


CHAPTER    IV.— PLUTARCH. 


I, — Plutarch.  His  Life  and  Work.  His  Metiiod.  His  Attractive  Simplicity.  His 
Influence.  H. — His  Naturalness  and  Impartiality.  III. — Extracts.  IV. — His 
Morals.     Extracts. 

T. 

PERHAPS  the  most  important  of  the  later  historians  is  Plutarch, 
who    did    more   than    any    other    man    toward    making   posterity- 
acquainted  with  both  Greeks  and  Romans.     He  was  born  at  Chaeronia, 

in  Bceotia,  about  the  middle 
of  the  first  century  of  our  era. 
Like  most  ambitious  young 
Greeks  he  found  his  way  to 
Rome,  the  capital  of  the 
world,  where  he  gave  instruc- 
tion in  philosophy  and  rhet- 
oric to  audiences  eager  to 
absorb  Greek  culture.  While 
in  Italy  he  used  only  his  own 
language,  which  was  familiar 
to  all  cultivated  people.  Later 
he  returned  to  his  native  city, 
where  he  held  positions  of 
honor,  and  he  appears  to  have 
been  also  a  priest  of  Apollo 
at  Delphi.  The  work  which 
has  made  him  famous  is  his 
Lives  of  Eminent  Greeks  and 
Romans,  which  he  composed 
probably  after  his  return  to 
Chaeronia.  The  date  of  his 
death  is  unknown.  These 
biographies,  or  Parallel  Lives, 
as  he  called  them,  are  forty-six 
in  number,  and  appear  in  the 
following  order:  i.  Theseus  and  Romulus.  2.  Lycurgus  and  Numa. 
3.  Solon  and  Valerius  Publicola.  4.  Themistocles  and  Camillus. 
5.   Pericles  and  Q.  Fabius  Maximus.     6.  Alcibiades  and  Coriolanus. 


PLUTARCH. 


PLUTARCH'S  LIVES  AND    THEIR  INFLUENCE.  819 

7.  Timoleon  and  Aemilius  Paulus.  8.  Pelopidas  and  Marcellus. 
9.  Aristides  and  Cato  the  Elder.  10.  Philopoemon  and  Flaminius. 
II.  Pyrrhus  and  Marius.  12.  Lycander  and  Sulla.  13.  Cimon  and 
Lucullus.  14.  Nicias  and  Crassus.  15.  Ermenes  and  Sertorius. 
16.  Agesilaus  and  Pompeius.  17.  Alexander  and  Caesar.  18.  Pho- 
cion  and  Cato  the  Younger.  19.  Agis  and  Cleomenes,  and  the  two 
Gracchi,  Tiberius  and  Caius.  20.  Demosthenes  and  Cicero.  21.  De- 
metrius Poliorketes  and  Marcus  Antonius.  22.  Dion  and  M.  Junius 
Brutus.  Lives  of  Artaxerxes  Mnemon,  Aratus,  Galbo  and  Otho,  and, 
in  some  editions,  of  Homer,  follow  these,  although  with  no  parallel 
order.  The  following  biographies  have  been  lost :  Epaminondas, 
Scipio,  Augustus,  Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius,  Nero,  Vitellius,  Hesiod, 
Pindar,  Crates  the  Cynic,  Daiphantus,  Aristomenes,  and  the  poet 
Aratus. 

His  aim  was  a  modest  one;  in  his  Life  of  Alexander  he  acknowl- 
edged that  he  did  not  give  the  actions  in  full  detail,  and  with  a  scrupu- 
lous exactness,  but  rather  in  a  short  summary,  because  he  was  writing 
not  histories,  but  lives. 

"  Nor  is  it,"  he  goes  on,  "  always  in  the  most  distinguished  achievements 
that  men's  virtues  or  vices  may  be  best  discerned  ;  but  very  often  an  action 
of  small  note,  a  short  saying,  or  a  jest,  shall  distinguish  a  person's  real  char- 
acter more  than  the  greatest  sieges  or  the  most  important  battles.  There- 
fore, as  painters  in  their  portraits  labour  the  likeness  in  the  face,  and  par- 
ticularly about  the  eyes,  in  which  the  peculiar  turn  of  mind  most  appears, 
and  run  over  the  rest  with  a  more  careless  hand  ;  so  we  must  be  permitted 
to  strike  off  the  features  of  the  soul,  in  order  to  give  a  real  likeness  of  these 
great  men,  and  leave  to  others  the  circumstantial  detail  of  their  labours  and 
achievements." 

The  faults  which  he  enumerates  have  been  detected  by  many  read- 
ers ;  and  attention  has  been  often  called  to  his  errors,  especially  in  the 
Roman  lives,  and  to  the  disorderly  arrangement  that  is  to  be  found 
in  nearly  all.  Yet,  granting  these  flaws,  the  existence  of  which  he  was 
the  first  to  point  out,  it  is  yet  undeniable  that  he  succeeded  in  what 
he  undertook  to  do,  and  this  was  to  represent,  so  far  as  he  could,  the 
personal  characteristics  of  the  various  leading  men  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  The  time  in  which  he  wrote  was  one  of  moral  decay,  and  by 
his  pictures  of  a  nobler  past  he  hoped  to  revive  an  interest  in  virtue 
and  right  living.  So  much  he  did  not  accomplish,  for  it  was  impossible 
for  any  series  of  biographies  to  avert  the  decadence  of  Roman  civili- 
zation ;  but  the  Lives  have  been  of  great  importance  in  modern  times, 
not  only  on  account  of  the  information  which  they  have  contained 
about  the  ancients,  but  also  as  direct  stimulants  to  men  who  were 
seeking  for  good  models.     The  conditions  under  which  he  wrote  nat- 


820  PLUTARCH. 

urally  modified  his  way  of  looking  at  the  past,  and  to  a  contemporary 
of  Nero  it  would  seem  that  the  one  thing  the  world  lacked  was  politi- 
cal virtue,  hence  Plutarch  sets  the  portraits  of  wise  rulers  and  leaders 
in  such  a  light  as  shall  best  convey  moral  instruction.  This  he  has 
done  by  presenting  them  as  human  beings,  by  recording  their  personal 
traits  rather  than  the  marches  and  countermarches  of  their  campaigns, 
by  giving  us  the  information  for  which  there  is  an  eternal  and  insatia- 
ble hunger,  that,  namely,  about  the  nature  of  men,  not  human  nature 
in  the  abstract — the  appetite  for  that  is  soon  stayed — but  as  it  has 
appeared  in  the  past  and  appears  to-day,  not  merely  in  emperors  and 
generals,  but  in  our  fellow-citizens  and  next-door  neighbors.  Hence 
almost  the  only  persons  of  antiquity  whom  we  may  be  said  to  know 
are  those  who  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  have  him  for  their 
biographer ;  of  the  undistinguished  citizens  we  know  scarcely  anything. 
He  has  filled  a  gallery  with  statues  of  illustrious  men  copied  from  the 
life.  One  result  of  this  has  been  that  we  always  think  of  the  ancients 
as  a  collection  of  statues,  our  only  conception  of  them  is  as  doing  some 
important  thing ;  we  have  no  knowledge  of  anything  else.  Plutarch 
is  by  far  the  most  valuable  interpreter  that  we  have  between  antiquity 
and  modern  times,  and  in  these  holds  a  position  unshared  by  any 
classic  or  post-classic  writer.  Another  result  of  the  vividness  of  his 
representation  of  great  men  has  been  his  authority  at  two  distinct 
periods  in  modern  history  when  individuality  has  made  its  appearance 
as  a  novel  force.  It  is  not  a  mere  accident  that  Plutarch  enjoyed  a 
revival  of  fame  at  the  time  of  the  Renaissance,  when  egoism  broke  the 
monotonous  bonds  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  again  in  the  last  century 
when  the  modern  hero  entered  poetry  and  fiction  as  the  representative 
of  the  development  of  personality  as  a  social  and  political  force. 
Amyot's  translation  of  Plutarch's  Lives  in  1559 — it  appeared  in 
English  form,  twenty  years  later, — gave  the  men  of  that  gener- 
ation not  a  mere  collection  of  rare  facts,  but  new  views  of  life.  As 
Plutarch's  best  pupil,  Montaigne,  said,  speaking  of  the  studies  suitable 
for  a  young  man  :  "  What  profit  shall  he  not  reap,  as  to  the  business 
of  men,  by  reading  the  lives  of  Plutarch  ?  But,  withal,  let  my  tutor 
remember  to  what  end  his  instructions  are  principally  directed,  and 
that  he  does  not  so  much  imprint  in  his  pupil's  memory  the  date  of 
the  ruin  of  Carthage,  as  the  manners  of  Hannibal  and  Scipio  ;  nor  so 
much  where  Marcellus  died,  as  why  it  was  unworthy  of  his  duty  that 
he  died  there."  He  was  certainly  justified  in  saying  that  he  never 
seriously  settled  himself  to  the  reading  of  any  book  of  solid  learning 
but  Plutarch  and  Seneca.  Indeed  Plutarch  was  a  writer  of  the  highest 
authority  among  Montaigne's  contemporaries,  as  with  Bacon  and  all 
of  the  men  of  that  day  who  were  seeking  to  draw  inspiration  from 


PLUTARCH'S   POPULARITY  IN  MODERN   TIMES.  821 

antiquity.  North's  Plutarch  inspired  three  of  Shakspere's  plays, — Ju- 
lius Caesar,  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  and  Coriolanus, — and  the  book  was 
doubtless  the  most  important  part  of  his  classical  education,  as  it  was 
that  of  many  generations  of  readers.  Moreover,  although  Shakspere 
drew  the  suggestions  of  his  plays  from  many  different  sources,  he 
never  followed  Bandello  or  any  Italian  novelist  with  half  the  fidelity 
that  he  showed  in  constructing  his  Julius  Caesar,  for  instance,  on  the 
very  words  of  Plutarch.  What  higher  proof  could  there  be  of  the 
biographer's  vividness  and  truth  ?  The  list  of  the  distinguished  men 
who  admired  him  is  a  long  one  :  Racine,  Bayle,  Henri  IV.  were  among 
the  early  ones  in  France ;  Falkland,  Clarendon,  and  Sydney,  in  Eng- 
land, drew  lessons  in  courage  and  patriotism  from  his  pages.  While 
Plutarch  never  lost  his  popularity,  we  may  notice  a  recrudescence  of 
his  authority  in  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the 
lessons  that  were  taught  in  his  Lives  found  apt  pupils  among  a  gen- 
eration who  were  preparing  for  an  outbreak  against  despotism. 
Rousseau,  Franklin,  and  others  took  delight  in  the  pictures  of  great 
men,  and  the  influence  of  the  book  may  be  seen  in  the  imitation  of 
Plutarch's  heroes  by  the  distinguished  personages  of  the  time.  The 
very  name  of  the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati ;  the  pseudonyms  under 
which  patriots  conveyed  their  thoughts  to  the  world,  such  as  Gracchus 
and  Publicola,  as  well  as  the  countless  references  to  his  pages,  make 
clear  the  extent  of  Plutarch's  influence. 


II. 


The  quality  by  means  of  which  he  moved  his  readers  at  these 
important  periods  is  that  of  drawing  the  men  as  they  were.  In  this 
art  he  is  a  master,  and  it  is  the  more  conspicuous  on  account  of  his 
dim  vision  of  great  movements  in  histor)\  Of  vast  political  complica- 
tions he  has  nothing  to  say ;  he  knows  only  the  men  who  were  con- 
spicuous in  them,  and  these  he  brings  before  us  with  the  utmost  dis- 
tinctness. His  favorite  method  is  to  use  anecdotes  to  illustrate  their 
prominent  qualities.  They  follow  one  another,  as  in  an  old  man's  talk, 
securing  their  long  literary  life  by  means  of  the  earnestness  that  went 
to  their  collection  and  utterance,  and  not  at  all  to  any  attempt  at 
literary  grace.  Who  that  reads  Plutarch  thinks  of  him  as  a  Greek 
writer?  He  is  a  perfect  cosmopolitan,  at  home  everywhere  and  in 
every  language.  He  has  the  right  of  citizenship  in  French,  English, 
and  German  ;  he  never  impresses  us  as  a  translated  Greek.  And  this 
position,  in  which  he  has  no  rival,  he  owes  to  the  simplicity  which  is 
much  rarer  and  nobler  than  literary  art. 


822  PLUTARCH. 

"I  began  the  Lives,"  he  said,  "for  the  benefit  of  others,  and  I  continue 
them  for  my  own,"  and  by  pleasing  himself,  with  absolute  disregard  of  con- 
ventional laws,  he  has  pleased  whole  generations  of  men.  "  For  it  does  not 
necessarily  follow,"  he  says  in  the  Life  of  Pericles,  "  that  if  a  piece  of  work 
please  for  its  gracefulness,  therefore  he  that  wrought  it  deserves  our  admira- 
tion. .  .  .  But  virtue,  by  the  bare  statement  of  its  actions,  can  so  affect  men's 
minds  as  to  create  at  once  both  admiration  of  the  things  done  and  desire  to 
imitate  them.  .  .  .  And  so,"  he  goes  on,  "we  have  thought  fit  to  spend  our 
time  and  pains  in  writing  of  the  lives  of  famous  persons." 

Indeed,  while  every  other  way  of  regarding  the  world  is  subject  to 
change,  and  literary  fashions,  political  ideals,  historical  proportions, 
vary  at  different  times,  ethical  laws  remain  as  firmly  fixed  as  physical 
laws,  the  eternal  conditions  of  human  existence ;  and  Plutarch,  by 
regarding  them,  while  yet  avoiding  preaching,  has  won  his  place  among 
the  immortals. 

The  moral  aim  of  his  biographical  work  was  doubtless  clearer  to 
himself  and  to  his  contemporaries  than  it  is  to  us.  The  parallelism  of 
the  several  Greek  and  Roman  lives,  with  the  final  comparison  between 
the  members  of  each  pair,  was  quite  as  important  to  him  as  anything 
else ;  and  probably  those  to  whom  the  question  of  the  relative  superi- 
ority of  Greece  or  Rome  was  an  open  one  found  a  delight  which  we 
do  not  share  in  weighing  the  newer  against  the  older  civilization  and  in 
reading  Plutarch's  thoughtful  summing-up.  He  kept  the  former  glory 
of  Greece  in  honor,  and  paid  the  highest  tribute  possible  to  Rome  by 
treating  the  two  nations  with  equal  respect.  The  difificulty  of  drawing 
the  comparisons  was  great,  and  Plutarch  has  naturally  not  escaped  the 
charge  of  partiality  to  his  own  countrymen,  but  he  has  escaped  con- 
viction by  the  disagreement  of  the  jury.  It  would  not  be  so  easy  to 
panel  a  new  one,  for  we  care  less  for  the  proportional  merits  of  his 
heroes  than  for  the  humanity  in  each  one,  and  perhaps  we  are  free  to 
admire  him  more  than  did  the  ancients,  because  we  are  not  under  the 
necessity  of  making  up  our  minds  on  what  is  after  all  a  side  issue.  It 
is  only  the  abundance  of  human  nature  that  gives  books  immortal  life, 
and  Plutarch's  fame  has  grown  with  the  approach  of  indifference  to 
what  he  perhaps  thought  was  the  important  part  of  his  work.  His 
greatest  merit  was  in  good  part  an  unconscious  one,  as  is  often  the 
case  with  the  best  books.  At  least,  when  we  speak  of  Plutarch's 
Lives,  we  mean  the  biographical  part,  and  not  the  weighing  of  two 
men  in  a  balance :  those  pages  we  are  apt  to  leave  unread,  like  the 
moral  of  a  fable. 

What  we  do  admire  is  the  way  in  Avhich  the  petty  traits  that  he 
lovingly  records  illuminate  the  great  ones,  as  they  do  in  life.  Not  all 
gossip  has  this  power,  any  more  than  long  accumulation  of  details  is 
realism  in  the  composition  of  a  novel.     Everything  depends  on  the 


EXTRACT  FROM  PLUTARCH'S    TIMOLEON.  823 

artist,  and  Plutarch  gives  us  the  air  of  the  great  men  he  writes  about, — 
their  nature — by  his  wise  tact,  just  as  a  great  painter  can  draw  a  striking 
likeness  with  two  or  three  charcoal  lines.  He  narrates  trifles,  but  he 
does  not  narrate  them  trivially ;  he  sees  the  men  he  writes  about,  and 
he  puts  them  before  us  without  any  preconceived  notion  of  what  the 
dignity  of  the  biographer's  art  demands ;  and  the  result  is  that  one  of 
the  latest  of  the  Greeks  maintains  the  accustomed  supremacy  of  his 
country  by  setting  the  standard  of  biography  for  future  times. 


III. 

Although  Greece  had  in  his  time  produced  several  persons  of  extraor- 
dinary worth,  and  much  renowned  for  their  achievements,  such  as  Timotheus 
and  Agesilaus  and  Pelopidas  and  (Timoleon's  chief  model)  Epaminondas, 
yet  the  lustre  of  their  best  actions  was  obscured  by  a  degree  of  violence  and 
labor,  insomuch  that  some  of  them  were  matter  of  blame  and  of  repentance  ; 
whereas  there  is  not  any  one  act  of  Timoleon's,  setting  aside  the  necessity 
he  was  placed  under  in  reference  to  his  brother,  to  which,  as  Timaeus  observes, 
we  may  not  fitly  apply  that  exclamation  of  Sophocles  : 

O  gods  !  what  Venus,  or  what  grace  divine, 
Did  here  with  human  workmanship  combine  ? 

For  as  the  poetry  of  Antimachus  and  the  painting  of  Dionysius,  the  artists 
of  Colophon,  though  full  of  force  and  vigor,  yet  appeared  to  be  strained  and 
elaborate  in  comparison  with  the  pictures  of  Nicomachus  and  the  verses 
of  Homer,  which,  besides  their  general  strength  and  beauty,  have  the  peculiar 
charm  of  seeming  to  have  been  executed  with  perfect  ease  and  readiness  ; 
so  the  expeditions  and  acts  of  Epaminondas  or  Agesilaus,  that  were  full  of 
toil  and  effort,  when  compared  with  the  easy  and  natural  as  well  as  noble  and 
glorious  achievements  of  Timoleon,  compel  our  fair  and  unbiassed  judgment 
to  pronounce  the  latter  not  indeed  the  effect  of  fortune,  but  the  success  of 
fortunate  merit.  Though  he  himself  indeed  ascribed  that  success  to  the  sole 
favor  of  fortune  ;  and  both  in  the  letters  which  he  wrote  to  his  friends  at 
Corinth,  and  in  the  speeches  he  made  to  the  people  of  Syracuse,  he  would 
say  that  he  was  thankful  unto  God,  who,  designing  to  save  Sicily,  was  pleased 
to  honor  him  with  the  name  and  title  of  the  deliverance  he  vouchsafed  it. 
And  having  built  a  chapel  in  his  house,  he  there  sacrificed  to  Good  Hap,  as 
a  deity  that  had  favored  him,  and  devoted  the  house  itself  to  the  Sacred 
Genius ;  it  being  a  house  which  the  Syracusans  had  selected  for  him,  as  a 
special  reward  and  monument  of  his  brave  exploits,  granting  him  together 
with  it  the  most  agreeable  and  beautiful  piece  of  land  in  the  whole  country, 
where  he  kept  his  residence  for  the  most  part,  and  enjoyed  a  private  life  with 
his  wife  and  children,  who  came  to  him  from  Corinth.  For  he  returned  thither 
no  rnore,  unwilling  to  be  concerned  in  the  broils  and  tumults  of  Greece,  or  to 
expose  himself  to  public  envy  (the  fatal  mischief  which  great  commanders 
continually  run  into,  from  the  insatiable  appetite  for  honors  and  authority)  ; 
but  wisely  chose  to  spend  the  remainder  of  his  days  in  Sicily,  and  there  par- 
take of  the  blessings  he  himself  had  procured,  the  greatest  of  which  was  to 


824  PLUTARCH. 

behold  so  many  cities  flourish,  and  so  many  thousands  of  people  live  happy 
through  his  means. 

As,  however,  not  only,  as  Simonides  says,  "  on  every  lark  must  grow  a 
crest,"  but  also  in  every  democracy  there  must  spring  up  a  false  accuser  ; 
so  was  it  at  Syracuse  :  two  of  their  popular  spokesmen,  Laphystius  and 
Demaenetus  by  name,  fell  to  slander  Timoleon.  The  former  of  whom  requir- 
ing him  to  put  in  sureties  that  he  would  answer  to  an  indictment  that  would 
be  brought  against  him,  Timoleon  would  not  suffer  the  citizens,  who  were 
incensed  at  this  demand,  to  oppose  it  or  hinder  the  proceeding,  since  he  of 
his  own  accord  had  been,  he  said,  at  all  that  trouble,  and  run  so  many  danger- 
ous risks  for  this  very  end  and  purpose,  that  every  one  who  wished  to  try 
matters  by  law  should  freely  have  recourse  to  it.  And  when  Demaenetus,  in 
full  audience  of  the  people,  laid  several  things  to  his  charge  which  had  been 
done  while  he  was  general,  he  made  no  other  reply  to  him,  but  only  said  he 
was  much  indebted  to  the  gods  for  granting  the  request  he  had  so  often 
made  them,  namely,  that  he  might  live  to  see  the  Syracusans  enjoy  that 
liberty  of  speech  which  they  now  seemed  to  be  masters  of.  Timoleon,  there- 
fore, having  by  confession  of  all  done  the  greatest  and  the  noblest  things  of 
any  Greek  of  his  age,  and  alone  distinguished  himself  in  those  actions  to 
which  their  orators  and  philosophers,  in  their  harangues  and  panegyrics  at 
their  solemn  national  assemblies,  used  to  exhort  and  incite  the  Greeks,  and 
being  withdrawn  beforehand  by  happy  fortune,  unspotted  and  without  blood, 
from  the  calamities  of  civil  war,  in  which  ancient  Greece  was  soon  after 
involved  ;  having  also  given  full  proof,  as  of  his  sage  conduct  and  manly 
courage  to  the  barbarians  and  tyrants,  so  of  his  justice  and  gentleness  to  the 
Greeks,  and  his  friends  in  general  ;  having  raised,  too,  the  greater  part  of 
those  trophies  he  won  in  battle,  without  any  tears  shed  or  any  mourning  worn 
by  the  citizens  either  of  Syracuse  or  Corinth,  and  within  less  than  eight  years' 
space  delivered  Sicily  from  its  inveterate  grievances  and  intestine  distempers, 
and  given  it  up  free  to  the  native  inhabitants,  began,  as  he  was  now  growing 
old,  to  find  his  eyes  fail,  and  awhile  after  became  perfectly  blind.  Not  that 
he  had  done  anything  himself  which  might  occasion  this  defect,  or  was 
deprived  of  his  sight  by  any  outrage  of  fortune  ;  it  seems  rather  to  have  been 
some  inbred  and  hereditary  weakness  that  was  founded  in  natural  causes, 
which  by  length  of  time  came  to  discover  itself.  For  it  is  said  that  several 
of  his  kindred  and  family  were  subject  to  the  like  gradual  decay,  and  lost  all 
use  of  their  eyes,  as  he  did,  in  their  declining  years.  Athanis  the  historian 
tells  us  that  even  during  the  war  against  Hippo  and  Mamercus,  while  he 
was  in  camp  at  Mylae,  there  appeared  a  white  speck  within  his  eye,  from 
whence  all  could  foresee  the  deprivation  that  was  coming  on  him  ;  this,  how- 
ever, did  not  hinder  him  then  from  continuing  the  siege  and  prosecuting 
the  war  till  he  got  both  tyrants  into  his  power  ;  but  upon  his  coming  back 
to  Syracuse,  he  presently  resigned  the  authority  of  sole  commander,  and 
besought  the  citizens  to  excuse  him  from  any  further  service,  since  things 
were  already  brought  to  so  fair  an  issue.  Nor  is  it  so  much  to  be  wondered 
that  he  himself  should  bear  the  misfortune  without  any  marks  of  trouble  ; 
but  the  respect  and  gratitude  which  the  Syracusans  showed  him  when  he  was 
entirely  blind  may  justly  deserve  our  admiration.  They  used  to  go  them- 
selves to  visit  him  in  troops,  and  brought  all  the  strangers  that  travelled 
through  their  country  to  his  house  and  manor,  that  they  also  might  have  the 
pleasure  to  see  their  noble  benefactor  ;  making  it  the  great  matter  of  their  joy 
and  exultation  that  when,  after  so  many  brave  and  happy  exploits,  he  might 


EXTRACT  FROM  PLUTARCH'S    TIMOLEON.  825 

have  returned  with  triumph  into  Greece,  he  should  disregard  all  the  glorious 
preparations  that  were  made  to  receive  him,  and  choose  rather  to  stay  here 
and  end  his  days  among  them.  Of  the  various  things  decreed  and  done  in 
honor  of  Timoleon,  I  consider  one  most  signal  testimony  to  have  been  the 
vote  which  they  passed,  that,  whenever  they  should  be  at  war  with  any  foreign 
nation,  they  should  make  use  of  none  but  a  Corinthian  general.  The  method, 
also,  of  their  proceeding  in  council,  was  a  noble  demonstration  of  the  same 
deference  for  his  person.  For,  determining  matters  of  less  consequence 
themselves,  they  always  called  him  to  advise  in  the  more  difficult  cases,  and 
such  as  were  of  greater  moment.  He  was,  on  these  occasions,  carried  through 
the  market-place  in  a  litter,  and  brought  in,  sitting,  into  the  theatre,  where  the 
people  with  one  voice  saluted  him  by  his  name  ;  and  then,  after  returning 
the  courtesy,  and  pausing  for  a  time,  till  the  noise  of  their  gratulations  and 
blessings  began  to  cease,  he  heard  the  business  in  debate,  and  delivered  his 
opinion.  This  being  confirmed  by  a  general  suffrage,  his  servants  went  back 
with  the  litter  through  the  midst  of  the  assembly,  the  people  waiting  on  him 
out  with  acclamations  and  applauses,  and  then  returning  to  consider  other 
public  matters  which  they  could  despatch  in  his  absence.  Being  thus  cher- 
ished in  his  old  age,  with  all  the  respect  and  tenderness  due  to  a  common 
father,  he  was  seized  with  a  very  slight  indisposition,  which,  however,  was 
sufficient,  with  the  aid  of  time,  to  put  a  period  to  his  life.  There  was  an 
allotment  then  of  certain  days  given,  within  the  space  of  which  the  Syra- 
cusans  were  to  provide  whatever  should  be  necessary  for  his  burial,  and  all 
the  neighboring  country  people  and  strangers  were  to  make  their  appearance 
in  a  body  ;  so  that  the  funeral  pomp  was  set  out  with  great  splendor  and 
magnificence  in  all  other  respects,  and  the  bier,  decked  with  ornaments  and 
trophies,  was  borne  by  a  select  body  of  young  men  over  that  ground  where 
the  palace  and  castle  of  Dionysius  stood  before  they  were  demolished  by 
Timoleon.  There  attended  on  the  solemnity  several  thousands  of  men  and 
women,  all  crowned  with  flowers,  and  arrayed  in  fresh  and  clean  attire,  which 
make  it  look  like  the  procession  of  a  public  festival ;  while  the  language  of 
all,  and  their  tears  mingling  with  their  praise  and  benediction  of  the  dead 
Timoleon,  manifestly  showed  that  it  was  not  any  superficial  honor  or  com- 
manded homage  which  they  paid  him,  but  the  testimony  of  a  just  sorrow  for 
his  death,  and  the  expression  of  true  affection.  The  bier  at  length  being 
placed  upon  the  pile  of  wood  that  was  kindled  to  consume  his  corpse,  Deme- 
trius, one  of  their  loudest  criers,  proceeded  to  read  a  proclamation,  to  the 
following  purpose  :  "  The  people  of  Syracuse  has  made  a  special  decree 
to  inter  Timoleon,  the  son  of  Timodemus,  the  Corinthian,  at  the  common 
expense  of  two  hundred  minas,  and  to  honor  his  memory  forever,  by  the 
establishment  of  annual  prizes  to  be  competed  for  in  music,  and  horse-races, 
and  all  sorts  of  bodily  exercise  ;  and  this  because  he  suppressed  the  tyrants, 
overthrew  the  barbarians,  replenished  the  principal  cities,  that  were  desolate, 
with  new  inhabitants;  and  then  restored  the  Sicilian  Greeks  to  the  privilege 
of  living  by  their  own  laws."  Besides  this,  they  made  a  tomb  for  him  in 
the  market-place,  which  they  afterwards  built  round  with  colonnades,  and 
attached  to  it  places  of  exercise  for  the  young  men,  and  gave  to  it  the  name 
of  the  Timoleonteum.  And  keeping  to  that  form  and  order  of  civil  policy 
and  observing  those  laws  and  constitutions  which  he  left  them,  they  lived 
themselves  a  long  time  in  great  prosperity. 


826  PLUTARCH. 


IV. 


Besides  his  Lives,  Plutarch  left  many  writings  which  are  conveniently 
put  together  under  the  title  of  Morals.  The  subjects  that  he  treats 
in  these  essays  are  manifold,  and  the  essays  themselves  are  not  all  of 
the  same  importance.  Some  appear  to  be  notes  of  lectures  in  which 
trifles  are  discussed,  others  again  are  thoughtful  dissertations  on  the 
most  serious  problems  of  life.  Throughout,  Plutarch's  interest  in 
moral  questions  is  continually  manifest,  and  there  is  nothing  more 
charming  than  his  attitude  toward  the  world  as  it  appears  on  almost 
every  page.  When  we  think  of  the  condition  of  the  ancient  world  at 
this  time,  as  we  shall  find  it  pictured  by  Juvenal  and  other  Roman 
writers,  we  are  struck  by  Plutarch's  innocence  and  simplicity  ;  we  seem 
to  have  found  a  writer  of  the  Golden  Age,  not  of  literature,  to  be  sure, 
but  of  morals.  He  seems  wrapped  up  against  the  corruption  that  sur- 
rounded him  in  his  knowledge  of  the  past  from  which  he  continually 
draws  lessons  of  uprightness  and  honesty.  The  old  mythology  is  re- 
ferred to  by  him  as  a  storehouse  of  moral  lessons  ;  he  brings  instruction 
from  all  the  philosophical  systems,  especially  from  his  master,  Plato ; 
and  he  continually  refers  to  the  teachings  to  be  drawn  from  the  study 
of  ancient  history.  So  marked  is  the  moral  tendency  of  these  writings 
that  some  have  thought  that  Plutarch  must  have  been  a  Christian  in 
disguise,  or  at  least  have  had  knowledge  of  Christian  writings.  It  is, 
however,  an  unfounded  assumption  ;  what  is  fairer  is  to  see  in  his  work 
one  of  the  many  bits  of  evidence  that  go  to  show  the  general  moral 
reaction  against  the  widespread  corruption  of  the  time.  This  feeling, 
which  was  one  of  the  antecedent  causes  as  well  as  a  most  powerful 
ally  of  Christianity,  was  evoked  in  the  mind  of  every  thoughtful  man  by 
the  sight  of  the  collapse  of  paganism,  and  the  only  hope  for  humanity 
seemed  to  lie  in  a  reinforcement  of  the  moral  teachings  of  the  past, 
whence  a  universal  religion  might  be  drawn  by  combining  the  various 
elements  of  truth  from  all  available  sources.  And  Plutarch  only  anti- 
cipated the  early  Fathers  of  the  Church  in  the  prominence  he  gave  to 
Plato  when  they  saw  in  Greek  philosophy  a  revelation  of  divine  truth. 
If  for  nothing  else,  the  moral  writings  of  Plutarch  would  be  valuable 
as  indications  of  the  last  struggles  of  paganism  to  raise  itself  to  the 
highest  level,  and  of  the  interest  in  ethical  questions  which  could  not 
fail  to  make  the  lessons  of  Christianity  acceptable.  They  prove  that 
there  was  a  generally  felt  need  of  a  loftier  teaching,  that  the  world  was 
ready  for  the  reception  of  a  new  code  of  morals.  We  shall  find  some 
of  his  Roman  contemporaries  bringing  forward  abundant  evidence  of 
the  crying  need  of  a  new  dispensation,  but  it  is  in  these  times  that 


PLUTARCH'S  MORAL  ESSAYS.  827 

those  who  escape  the  infection  are  most  concerned  about  the  state  of 
affairs.  This  is  natural — otherwise,  to  be  sure,  it  would  not  happen — 
it  is  when  our  house  is  burning  that  we  are  most  interested  about  the 
means  of  extinguishing  fire. 

The  long  study  of  ethical  questions  by  the  various  schools  of  philo- 
sophy had  differed  as  to  the  measures  to  be  applied,  but  they  had 
agreed  in  seeking  a  cure.  Indeed,  since  the  days  of  Socrates,  phil- 
osophy had  grown  more  ethical  as  the  times  grew  worse,  and  the  old 
religion  faded  out,  and  dejection  and  despair  were  the  alternatives 
of  indifference  and  recklessness.  The  old  world  was  practically 
moribund. 

Now,  if  truth  be  a  ray  of  the  divinity,  as  Plato  says  it  is,  and  the  source  of 
all  the  good  that  derives  upon  either  gods  or  men,  then  certainly  the  flatterer 
must  be  looked  upon  as  a  public  enemy  to  all  the  gods,  and  especially  to 
Apollo  ;  for  he  always  acts  counter  to  that  celebrated  oracle  of  his,  Know 
thyself,  endeavoring  to  make  every  man  his  own  cheat,  by  keeping  him 
ignorant  of  the  good  and  ill  qualities  that  are  in  him  ;  whereupon  the  good 
never  arrive  at  perfection,  and  the  ill  grow  incorrigible. 

Did  flattery,  indeed,  as  most  other  misfortunes  do,  generally  or  altogether 
wait  on  the  debauched  and  ignoble  part  of  mankind,  the  mischief  were  of 
less  consequence,  and  might  admit  of  an  easier  prevention.  But,  as  worms 
breed  most  in  sweet  and  tender  woods,  so  usually  the  most  obliging,  the 
most  brave  and  generous  tempers  readiliest  receive  and  longest  entertain 
the  flattering  insect  that  hangs  and  grows  upon  them.  And  since,  to  use 
Simonides'  expression,  it  is  not  for  persons  of  a  narrow  fortune,  but  for 
gentlemen  of  estates,  to  keep  a  good  stable  of  horses  ;  so  never  saw  we  flat- 
tery the  attendant  of  the  poor,  the  inglorious  and  inconsiderable  plebeian, 
but  of  the  grandees  of  the  world,  the  distemper  and  bane  of  great  families 
and  affairs,  the  plague  in  kings'  chambers,  and  the  ruin  of  their  kingdoms. 
Therefore  it  is  a  business  of  no  small  importance,  and  one  which  requires  no 
ordinary  circumspection,  so  to  be  able  to  know  a  flatterer  in  every  shape  he 
assumes,  that  the  counterfeit  resemblance  some  time  or  other  bring  not  true 
friendship  itself  into  suspicion  and  disrepute.  For  parasites — like  lice,  which 
desert  a  dying  man,  whose  palled  and  vapid  blood  can  feed  them  no  longer — 
never  intermix  in  dry  and  insipid  business  where  there  is  nothing  to  be  got ; 
but  prey  upon  a  noble  quarry,  the  ministers  of  state  and  potentates  of  the 
earth,  and  afterwards  lousily  shirk  off  if  the  greatness  of  their  fortune  chance 
to  leave  them.  But  it  will  not  be  wisdom  in  us  to  stay  till  such  fatal  junctures, 
and  then  try  the  experiment,  which  will  not  only  be  useless,  but  dangerous 
and  hurtful ;  for  it  is  a  deplorable  thing  for  a  man  to  find  himself  then  des- 
titute of  friends  when  he  most  wants  them  and  has  no  opportunity  either  of 
exchanging  his  false  and  faithless  friend  for  a  fast  and  honest  one.  And 
therefore  we  should  rather  try  our  friend,  as  we  do  our  money,  whether  or 
not  he  be  passable  and  current,  before  we  need  him.  For  it  is  not  enough 
to  discover  the  cheat  to  our  cost,  but  we  must  so  understand  the  flatterer, 
that  he  put  no  cheat  upon  us ;  otherwise  we  should  act  like  those  who  must 
needs  take  poison  to  know  its  strength,  and  foolishly  hazard  their  lives  to 
inform  their  judgment.  And  as  we  cannot  approve  of  this  carelessness,  so 
neither  can  we  of  that  too  scrupulous  humor  of  those  who,  taking  the  measures 


828  PLUTARCH. 

of  true  friendship  only  from  the  bare  honesty  and  usefulness  of  the  man, 
immediately  suspect  a  pleasant  and  easy  conversation  for  a  cheat.  For  a 
friend  is  not  a  dull  tasteless  thing,  nor  does  the  decorum  of  friendship  consist 
in  sourness  and  austerity  of  temper,  but  its  very  port  and  gravity  is  soft  and 
amiable, — 

Where  Love  and  all  the  Graces  do  reside. 
For  it  is  not  only  a  comfort  to  the  afflicted, 

To  enjoy  the  courtesy  of  his  kindest  friend, 

as  Euripides  speaks  ;  but  friendship  extends  itself  to  both  fortunes,  as  well 
brightens  and  adorns  prosperity  as  allays  the  sorrows  that  attend  adversity. 
And  as  Evenus  used  to  say  that  fire  makes  the  best  sauce,  so  friendship, 
wherewith  God  has  seasoned  the  circumstances  of  our  mortality,  gives  a  relish 
to  every  condition,  renders  them  all  easy,  sweet,  and  agreeable  enough.  And 
indeed,  did  not  the  laws  of  friendship  admit  of  a  little  pleasantry  and  good 
humor,  why  should  the  parasite  insinuate  himself  under  that  disguise?  And 
yet  he,  as  counterfeit  gold  imitates  the  brightness  and  lustre  of  the  true, 
always  puts  on  the  easiness  and  freedom  of  a  friend,  is  always  pleasant  and 
obliging,  and  ready  to  comply  with  the  humor  of  his  company.  And  there- 
fore it  is  no  way  reasonable  either,  to  look  upon  every  just  .character  that  is 
given  us  as  a  piece  of  flattery  ;  for  certainly  a  due  and  seasonable  commenda- 
tion is  as  much  the  duty  of  one  friend  to  another  as  a  pertinent  and  serious 
reprehension  ;  nay,  indeed,  a  sour  querulous  temper  is  perfectly  repugnant 
to  the  laws  of  friendship  and  conversation  ;  whereas  a  man  takes  a  chiding 
patiently  from  a  friend  who  is  as  ready  to  praise  his  virtues  as  to  animadvert 
upon  his  vices,  willingly  persuading  himself  that  mere  necessity  obliged  him 
to  reprimand,  whom  kindness  had  first  moved  to  commend. 

But  what  is  at  length  in  death,  that  is  so  grievous  and  troublesome  ?  For 
I  know  not  how  it  comes  to  pass  that,  when  it  is  so  familiar  and  as  it  were 
related  to  us,  it  should  seem  so  terrible.  How  can  it  be  rational  to  wonder 
if  that  cleaves  asunder  which  is  divisible,  if  that  melts  whose  nature  is  lique- 
faction, if  that  burns  which  is  combustible,  and  so,  by  a  parity  of  reason,  if 
that  perisheth  which  by  nature  is  perishable  !  For  when  is  it  that  death  is 
not  in  us  !  For,  as  Heraclitus  saith,  it  is  the  same  thing  to  be  dead  and 
alive,  asleep  and  awake,  a  young  man  and  decrepit ;  for  these  alternately  are 
changed  one  into  another.  For  as  a  potter  can  form  the  shape  of  an  animal 
out  of  his  clay  and  then  as  easily  deface  it,  and  can  repeat  this  backwards 
and  forwards  as  often  as  he  pleaseth,  so  Nature  too  out  of  the  same  materials 
fashioned  first  our  grandfathers,  next  our  fathers,  then  us,  and  in  process  of 
time  will  engender  others,  and  again  others  upon  these.  For  as  the  flood  of 
our  generation  glides  on  without  any  intermission  and  will  never  stop,  so  in 
the  other  direction  the  stream  of  our  corruption  flows  eternally  on,  whether 
it  be  called  Acheron  or  Cocytus  by  the  poets.  So  that  the  same  cause  which 
first  showed  us  the  light  of  the  sun  carries  us  down  to  infernal  darkness. 
And  in  my  mind,  the  air  which  encompasseth  us  seems  to  be  a  lively  image 
of  the  thing  ;  for  it  brings  on  the  vicissitudes  of  night  and  day,  life  and  death, 
sleeping  and  waking.  For  this  cause  it  is  that  life  is  called  a  fatal  debt, 
which  our  fathers  contracted  and  we  are  bound  to  pay ;  which  is  to  be  done 
calmly  and  without  any  complaint,  when  the  creditor  demands  it ;  and  by 
this  means  we  shall  show  ourselves  men  of  sedate  passions.  And  I  believe 
Nature,  knowing  the  confusion  and  shortness  of  our  life,  hath  industriously 
concealed  the  end  of  it  from  us,  this  making  for  our  advantage.     For  if  we 


EXTRACT  FROM  PLUTARCH'S  ESSAYS.  829 

were  sensible  of  it  beforehand,  some  would  pine  away  with  untimely  sorrow, 
and  would  die  before  their  death  came.  For  she  saw  the  woes  of  this  life, 
and  with  what  a  torrent  of  cares  it  is  overflowed — which  if  thou  didst  under- 
take to  number,  thou  wouldst  grow  angry  with  it,  and  confirm  that  opinion 
which  hath  a  vogue  amongst  some,  that  death  is  more  desirable  than  life. 

And  did  we  in  like  manner  but  take  an  impartial  survey  of  those  troubles, 
lapses,  and  infirmities  incident  to  our  nature,  we  should  find  we  stood  in  no 
need  of  a  friend  to  praise  and  extol  our  virtues,  but  of  one  rather  that  would 
chide  and  reprimand  us  for  our  vices.  For  first,  there  are  but  few  who  will 
venture  to  deal  thus  roundly  and  impartially  with  their  friends,  and  fewer 
yet  who  know  the  art  of  it,  men  generally  mistaking  railing  and  ill  language 
for  a  decent  and  friendly  reproof.  And  then  a  chiding,  like  any  other  physic, 
if  ill-timed,  racks  and  torments  you  to  no  purpose,  and  works  in  a  manner 
the  same  effect  with  pain  that  flattery  does  with  pleasure.  For  an  unseason- 
able reprehension  may  be  equally  mischievous  with  an  unseasonable  com- 
mendation, and  force  your  friend  to  throw  himself  upon  the  flatterer ;  like 
water  which,  leaving  the  too  precipitous  and  rugged  hills,  rolls  down  upon 
the  humble  valleys  below.  And  therefore  we  ought  to  qualify  and  allay  the 
sharpness  of  our  reproofs  with  a  due  temper  of  candor  and  moderation, — as 
we  would  soften  light  which  is  too  powerful  for  a  distempered  eye, — lest  our 
friends,  being  plagued  and  ranted  upon  every  trivial  occasion,  should  at  last 
fly  to  the  flatterer's  shade  for  their  ease  and  quiet.  For  all  vice,  Philopappus, 
is  to  be  corrected  by  an  intermediate  virtue,  and  not  by  its  contrary  extreme, 
as  some  do  who,  to  shake  off  that  sheepish  bashfulness  which  hangs  upon 
their  natures,  learn  to  be  impudent ;  to  lay  aside  their  country  breeding, 
endeavor  to  be  comical ;  to  avoid  the  imputation  of  softness  and  cowardice, 
turn  bullies  ;  out  of  an  abhorrence  of  superstition,  commence  atheists  ;  and 
rather  than  be  reputed  fools,  play  the  knave  ;  forcing  their  inclinations,  like 
a  crooked  stick,  to  the  opposite  extreme,  for  want  of  skill  to  set  them  straight. 
But  it  is  highly  rude  to  endeavor  to  avoid  the  suspicion  of  flattery  by  only 
being  insignificantly  troublesome,  and  it  argues  an  ungenteel,  unconversable 
temper  in  a  man  to  show  his  just  abhorrency  of  mean  and  servile  ends  in  his 
friendship  only  by  a  sour  and  disagreeable  behavior ;  like  the  freedman  in 
the  comedy,  who  would  needs  persuade  himself  that  his  railing  accusation 
fell  within  the  limits  of  that  freedom  in  discourse  which  every  one  had  right 
to  with  his  equals.  Since,  therefore,  it  is  absurd  to  incur  the  suspicion  of  a 
flatterer  by  an  over-obliging  and  obsequious  humor,  and  as  absurd,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  endeavoring  to  decline  it  by  an  immoderate  latitude  in  our 
apprehensions,  to  lose  the  enjoyments  and  salutary  admonitions  of  a  friendly 
conversation,  and  since  the  measures  of  what  is  just  and  proper  in  this,  as  in 
other  things,  are  to  be  taken  from  decency  and  moderation  ;  the  nature  of 
the  argument  seems  to  require  me  to  conclude  it  with  a  discourse  upon  this 
subject. 


CHAPTER  v.— LUCIAN. 

I, — Lucian,  the  Satirist.  The  First  of  the  Moderns.  More  Greek  than  the  Greeks  of 
his  Time.  His  Life.  II. — His  Onslaughts  upon  the  Moribund  Religion.  His 
Dialogues.  III. — The  Broad  Burlesque  which  he  sometimes  Employs  against 
Gods,  Philosophers,  and  Men  of  Letters.  IV.— His  Later  Fame.  His  Notion  of 
Hades.  His  Treatment  of  Gross  Superstitions.  Alexander  the  Medium.  Various 
Writings  of  his.  V. — His  Wit,  Comparison  between  it  and  the  Same  Quality  as 
Exhibited  by  Others.  His  Denunciation  of  Science.  His  Exhibition  of  the 
General  Condition  of  the  Greek  Man  of  Letters  in  those  Times. 


I. 

WHILE  Plutarch  thus  presents  us  a  picture  of  what  was  best  in  the 
old  religion  and  early  society,  and  drew  from  them  lessons  that 
should  counteract  the  corruption  of  his  day,  Lucian,  on  the  other 
hand,  broke  with  the  past,  derided  its  religion,  scorned  its  philosophy, 
denounced  his  contemporaries  as  well,  with  no  occult  purpose  of 
favoring  any  sect,  but  merely  to  show  the  age  its  own  rottenness. 
Plutarch  fought  wrongdoing  with  good  advice  and  good  examples  from 
early  history :  Lucian's  weapons  were  ridicule  and  satire.  Plutarch 
has  been  well  called  the  last  of  the  ancients,  and  Lucian  the  first  of 
the  moderns.  Yet,  true  as  this  statement  is,  Lucian  still  shows  many 
of  the  qualities  of  an  ancient  in  the  artistic  completeness  of  his  work, 
the  lightness  and  certainty  of  his  touch,  and  in  his  freedom  from  deep 
imprecations.  He  says  what  he  has  to  say  without  sullen  wrath,  and, 
having  said  it,  he  stops. 

Lucian's  possession  of  this  classic  quality  is  the  more  striking  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  he  was  not  a  Greek.  He  was  born  at  Samorata, 
near  Antioch,  at  an  uncertain  date  in  the  second  century  of  our  era, 
I20  A.D.,  or  140  A.D.,  and,  like  Socrates,  began  to  prepare  himself  to 
be  a  sculptor.  But,  if  we  may  believe  the  account  that  he  gives  in 
one  of  his  writings,  he  broke  the  piece  of  marble  on  which  he  was  at 
work,  an  accident  for  which  he  was  promptly  punished,  and  in  a  dream 
Science  appeared  to  him,  exhibiting  to  him  the  rewards  that  awaited 
the  successful  sophist,  and  these  persuaded  him  to  devote  himself  to 
this  profession.  He  studied  at  home,  and  practiced  for  some,  time  at 
Antioch  ;  then  he  traveled,  like  the  itinerant  lecturers  of  the  present 
day,  through  foreign  lands,  declaiming  and  writing  his  own  compo- 
sitions.     He  appears  to  have   passed  through  Asia  Minor,  Greece, 


LUCIAN'S  ATTACK  ON   THE   OLD  RELIGION.  831 

and  Gaul,  and  everywhere  to  have  been  successful.  His  audiences 
demanded  of  these  wandering  sophists  the  slightest  intellectual 
food.  Just  as  now,  in  these  days  of  science,  diluted  information  of 
familiar  facts,  with  a  number  of  photographic  views,  gives  delight  for 
an  hour,  so  then  literary  jugglery  was  deemed  a  fascinating  amuse- 
ment, and  audiences  applauded  mock  praise  of  a  fly,  and  similarly 
ingenious  parodies.  Lucian  after  leaving  Gaul,  which  was  a  most 
fruitful  territory  for  those  who  lived  by  this  exercise  of  their  wits, 
visited  Rome,  and  finally,  when  about  forty  years  old,  returned  to 
Greece  and  established  himself  at  Athens.  Then  he  determined  to 
abandon  an  occupation  which  had  probably  brought  him  a  compe- 
tence as  well  as  supplied  him  with  abundant  material  for  satire,  and 
from  this  time  he  devoted  himself  to  literature.  Later,  when  an  old 
man,  he  was  reduced  to  poverty  and  compelled  to  fill  a  minor  office 
in  an  Egyptian  court  of  law.     He  died  at  an  advanced  age. 

II. 

The  cleverest  of  Lucian's  satires  are  those  directed  against  the 
moribund  mythology.  He  lived  in  a  period  of  gross  superstition, 
when  paganism  had  revived  for  a  last  struggle  against  decay,  and  the 
old  traditions  joined  hands  with  all  sorts  of  novel  extravagances. 
Lucian  set  his  face  against  both.  His  attack  upon  the  old  Greek 
mythology  was  especially  ingenious.  He  wrote  a  number  of  short 
dialogues  in  which  the  absurdities  of  the  old  beliefs  were  exposed 
without  passion,  but  merely  as  obvious  facts  that  possibly  had  been 
overlooked,  though  when  once  stated  they  could  not  be  denied.  The 
poets  had  drawn  pictures  of  greater  or  less  length  for  centuries  from 
the  abundant  legendary  history,  and  he  might  have  defended  himself 
from  attack  by  appealing  to  these  familiar  precedents.  Writing  them 
in  prose  could  not  certainly  be  regarded  as  blasphemy,  and  even 
serious  persons  who  might  have  been  pained  would  have  found  it  hard 
to  put  their  finger  on  the  offensive  passages.  This  is,  after  all  the 
secret  of  his  power  ;  he  puts  things  before  his  readers  exactly  as  they 
were  recorded,  and  if  his  statement  is  destructive,  it  is  because  the 
facts  are  unworthy  of  admiration.  Lucian  simply  records  the  myth  ; 
his  irony  is  concealed,  and  the  sting  of  the  attack  lies  in  the  absurdi- 
ties that  poets  have  long  hidden  under  a  cloud  of  fine  language.  As 
to  the  form  that  he  chose,  he  explains  it  as  a  combination  devised  by 
himself,  of  comedy  and  dialogue.  Comedy,  he  says,  was  wholly  devoted 
to  the  services  of  Dionysus,  it  used  to  march  to  the  sound  of  the 
flute,  and  ridiculed  the  friends  of  the  dialogue,  calling  them  dreamers, 
chasers  of  wild  geese,  etc.,  with  no  other  aim  than  amusement  and 


83^ 


LUCIA  N. 


denunciation.  Thus,  as  in  the  Clouds  of  Aristophanes,  it  represented 
them  floating  in  the  air,  or  carefully  measuring  the  leap  of  a  flea,  to 
signify  that  the  philosophers  lived  in  the  clouds.  Dialogue  was  em- 
ployed solely  for  grave  discussion,  and  philosophical  controversies  on 
nature  and  virtue,  so  that  between  dialogue  and  comedy  there  existed 
complete  discord.  He,  however,  had  ventured  to  combine  the  two, 
although  there  seems  to  be  no  common  ground  between  them.  As  to 
stealing,  there  is  none,  he  boasts  in  his  works.  "  From  whom  could 
I  steal  ?  "  he  asks. 

It  will  be  noticed  however,  that  while   he  invented  this  new  form, 

he  is  so  far  from  being  a  creator,  that 

he  merely  combined  two  forms  already 

existing. 

Here  is  an  example  of  this  part  of  his 

work : 

Alexander  and  Diogenes. 

Diogenes.  How  is  this,  Alexander  ?  So 
you  were  forced  to  die  as  well  as  the  rest  of 
us  ! 

Alex.  As  you  see,  Diogenes.  Is  it  any- 
thing so  extraordinary  that  a  mortal  should 
die  ! 

DiOG.  Ammon,  then,  was  only  passing  a 
joke  upon  us  when  he  declared  you  his 
son,  while  you  were  only  the  son  of  Philip  ? 

Alex.  Undoubtedly  ;  I  should  scarce 
have  died  if  Ammon  had  been  my  father. 

DiOG.  Yet  in  support  of  this  pretence  a 
tale  was  spread  that  your  mother  Olympias 
had  a  mysterious  intercourse  with  a  dragon, 
that  the  dragon  was  seen  in  her  bed,  that 
you  were  the  fruit  of  it,  and  that  Philip  was 
erroneously  reputed  to  be  your  father. 

Alex.  These  reports  did  reach  my  ears 

as  they  did  yours  ;  but  I  perceive  now  that 

^.^^..^..  Qf  ^jj  ^^^^  ^^g  g^i^  q£  j^y  mother  and  the 

priest  of  Ammon  not  a  word  was  true. 

DioG.  Their  lies,  however,  were  of  great  service  to  you  in  your  enterprises  ; 
for  many  submitted  to  you  merely  because  they  took  you  for  a  god. — But 
tell  me,  who  succeeds  you  in  that  prodigious  empire  which  cost  you  so  much 
trouble  ? 

Alex.  I  cannot  tell,  my  good  Diogenes  ;  I  had  made  no  dispositions 
about  it,  except  that  when  at  the  last  gasp  I  gave  ray  seal-ring  to  Perdiccas. — 
What  makes  you  laugh,  Diogenes  ? 

DioG.  What  should  make  me  laugh,  but  that,  while  I  behold  you  thus.  I 
remember  all  the  fooleries  acted  by  our  Greeks,  to  please  you  ;  how  they 
flattered  you  from  your  first  acceding  to  the  government,  chose  you  their 


EXTRACT  FROM  LUCIAN'S  DIALOGUES.  833 

commander  in  chief  against  the  barbarians,  some  even  associated  you  with 
the  twelve  great  deities,  and  built  temples,  and  offered  sacrifice  to  the  sup- 
posed son  of  the  dragon.  But,  with  permission,  where  did  the  Macedonians 
bury  you  ? 

Alex.  This  is  the  third  day  that  I  have  been  lying  in  state  at  Babylon. 
In  the  mean  time,  Ptolemy,  the  captain  of  my  satellites,  has  promised,  as 
soon  as  the  present  disturbances  will  afford  him  leisure,  to  convey  me  to 
yEgypt,  and  inter  me  there,  in  order  to  procure  me  a  place  among  the 
Egyptian  deities. 

DiOG.  And  I  shall  not  laugh,  Alexander,  when  I  see  you,  even  in  the  king- 
dom of  the  dead,  still  so  silly  as  to  wish  to  be  an  Anubis  or  Osiris  !  But 
soothe  yourself  with  no  such  expectations,  my  divine  sir  !  He  that  has  once 
crossed  our  lake,  and  entered  within  the  mouth  of  Tartarus,  cannot  return, 
^acus  takes  too  much  care,  and  there  is  no  joking  with  Cerberus.  But  are 
you  not  greatly  surprised,  when  you  look  round  you  and  perceive  what  all  is 
come  to,  the  satellites  and  satraps,  and  all  the  treasures  and  the  kneeling 
nations,  and  the  great  Babylon  and  Bactria,  together  with  all  the  elephants  ? — 
and  the  high  triumphal  car  on  which  you  shone  and  were  gazed  at  as  a 
meteor  !  and  the  regal  diadem  on  the  head,  and  the  purple  flowing  down  in 
ample  folds,  when  you  think  upon  the  glorious  life  and  the  majesty  and  the 
fame  which  you  were  forced  to  leave  behind  you  !  That  may  well  cause  you 
to  lament ! — Why  do  you  weep,  silly  man  !  Did  not  your  wise  Aristotle 
teach  you  how  unsubstantial  all  those  gifts  of  fortune  are  ? 

Alex.  Oh,  that  wise  man,  as  you  call  him,  was  the  vilest  of  all  my  flatter- 
ers !  Tet  me  alone  to  say  what  Aristotle  was  !  For  I  best  know  how  much 
he  was  perpetually  desiring  to  have  of  me,  what  letters  he  wrote  to  me,  how 
he  abused  my  vain-glorious  thirst  of  knowledge,  how  he  was  always  compli- 
menting me,  and  now  praised  me  for  my  beauty  (as  if  that  too  was  in  the 
number  of  real  goods),  now  on  account  of  my  exploits  and  my  riches  :  for 
even  riches  he  pronounced  to  be  a  real  good,  to  palliate  the  ignominy  of  his 
accepting  so  much  from  me.  My  good  Diogenes,  the  fellow  was  a  charlatan, 
who  knew  how  to  act  his  part  in  a  masterly  manner,  no  sage  !  All  the  bene- 
fit I  reap  from  his  wisdom  is  that  I  now  bewail  the  loss  of  those  things 
which  you  have  enumerated,  because  he  taught  me  to  regard  them  as  the 
greatest  blessings. 

DiOG.  Do  you  know  what  ?  Since  we  have  no  hellebore  growing  here, 
I  will  prescribe  another  remedy  for  your  grief.  Repair  to  Lethe,  and  swal- 
low some  copious  draughts  of  its  waters,  that  will  infallibly  render  you 
insensible  to  the  loss  of  the  Aristotelian  goods. — But  are  not  those  Clitus 
and  Calesthenes,  whom  I  see,  with  some  others  hurrying  towards  you  with 
such  fury  as  if  they  would  enforce  the  law  of  retaliation  against  you,  and  tear 
you  to  pieces  in  return  for  the  injuries  they  formerly  suffered  from  you  ? 
Strike  therefore  into  this  other  road  to  Lethe,  and,  as  I  said,  drink  till  these 
phantasies  leave  you. 

Menippus  and  Mercury. 

Menippus.  Where,  then,  are  those  beautiful  men  and  women  of  whom  there 
was  so  much  talk  above.  Mercury  ?  Be  so  good  as  to  conduct  me  to  them, 
as  I  am  quite  a  new-comer  and  know  not  how  to  find  my  way  about. 

Mercury,  I  have  not  time  for  it,  dear  Menippus  :  look,  however,  yonder  ; 
rather  more  to  the  right :  there  are  Hyacinthus  and  Narcissus,  and  Nireus, 


834 


LUCIAN. 


and  Achilles,  and  Tyro,  and  Helena,  and  Leda,  in  short  all  the  celebrated 
beauties  of  antiquity,  all  together  in  a  cluster. 

Menippus.  I  see  nothing  but  bare  bones  and  skulls,  in  which  nothing  is  to 
be  discriminated. 

Mercury.  Yet  these  bones,  which  appear  to  you  so  contemptible,  have 
been  extolled  by  the  poets  to  this  day. 

Menippus.  But  show  me  at  least  Helen  ;  for  of  myself  I  cannot  find 
her  out. 

Mercury.  That  skull  there  is  the  beautiful  Helen. 

Menippus.  That,  then,  was  the  cause  that  all  Greece  was  stowed  together 
in  a  thousand  ships,  that  so  many  Greeks  and  barbarians  were  slain,  and  so 
many  cities  razed  to  the  ground  ? 

Mercury.  My  good  Menippus,  you  should  have  seen  her  when  alive  ! 
You  would  for  certain  (as  well  as  the  old  counsellors  of  Priam  in  the  Iliad) 
have  confessed  that  Nemesis  herself  could  not  take  it  amiss — 

if  such  celestial  charms 
For  nine  long  years  should  set  the  world  in  arms. 

He  that  looks  upon  a  withered  flower  can  indeed  not  discover  how  beauti- 
ful it  was  while  standing  in  full  bloom  and  brilliant  in  its  natural  dyes. 


Menippus.  What  I  wonder  at.  Mercury,  is  how  it  came  to  pass  that  the 
Greeks  did  not  perceive  that  it  was  for  the  sake  of  such  a  transitory  and 
evanescent  object  that  they  gave  themselves  all  that  trouble. 

Mercury.  I  have  no  time  to  philosophize  with  you,  Menippus  ;  look  thou 
therefore  for  a  place  where  you  choose  to  lodge.  I  must  go  and  fetch  over 
the  rest  of  the  dead. 

III. 


These  simple  dialogues  are  not  the  only  ones  of  the  sort.  Others, 
in  which  the  burlesque  is  more  prominent,  are  included  among  Lucian's 
works  ;  in  one,  Jupiter  is  confronted  by  a  sophist   who  makes  short 


LUCIAN'S  RIDICULE   OF    THE   GREEK  DIVINITIES.  835 

work  of  the  king  of  the  gods  when  he  has  a  chance  to  cross-examine 
him  about  the  absolute  power  possessed  by  the  Fates  ;  and  in  another 
there  is  a  long  discussion  in  Olympus  about  the  insolence  of  a  philo- 
sopher who  has  ventured  to  assert  that  the  gods  do  not  exist.  Zeus 
is  furious  over  the  suggestion  ;  he  splutters  and  storms,  imitating  one 
of  the  prologues  of  Euripides,  while  Athene  uses  Homeric  language, 
as  he  bids  the  gods  to  assemble  in  order  to  discuss  the  affair.  Then 
there  is  commotion  in  Olympus  over  questions  of  precedence.  Most 
of  the  new  foreign  deities  are  made  out  of  gold,  and  so  the  old  Greek 
divinities,  being  represented  in  less  costly  marble,  have  to  take  the 
back-seats.  Poseidon — or  Neptune  in  his  Roman  name — for  example, 
loses  his  temper  because  the  Egyptian  deity,  the  dog-faced  Anubis, 
was  given  a  more  honorable  place  than  himself  ;  but  finally  Zeus 
explains  the  state  of  affairs  to  the  assembled  gods.  He  tells  them 
that  Damis,  the  sophist  who  denies  the  existence  of  the  gods,  has  the 
sympathy  of  the  crowd  who  listened  to  him,  but  that  they  are  waiting 
to  hear  what  his  antagonist  Timocles  shall  say  before  coming  to  a 
final  decision.  The  different  deities  suggest  various  courses  ;  Poseidon 
proposes  that  Damis  be  killed  by  a  thunderbolt  ;  Heracles  proposes 
to  enter  the  hall  and  pull  down  the  roof  on  his  blasphemous  head  ; 
Apollo  tries  to  foretell  the  result  of  the  discussion  by  a  most  ambigu- 
ous oracle,  but  nothing  is  decided  on.  Suddenly  the  scene  changes 
to  the  scene  of  the  debate,  and  Timocles  tries  to  prove  the  existence 
of  the  gods.  His  task  is  a  difficult  one,  however,  and  when  he 
adduces  the  general  consent  of  mankind,  the  order  of  the  universe, 
the  impossibility  that  things  could  go  on  as  they  do  without  a  pilot, 
Damis  meets  him,  until  finally  Timocles  loses  his  temper  and  bursts 
out  in  stormy  abuse  of  his  opponent,  who  runs  away  laughing.  Zeus 
is  much  pained  at  the  discomfiture  of  his  advocate,  but  Hermes  com- 
forts him  by  pointing  out  that  he  still  has  the  majority  on  his  side  : 
most  of  the  Greeks,  the  wild  rabble,  and  all  the  barbarians. 

"  True,"  answers  Zeus,  "  but  I  had  rather  have  a  single  champion  like 
Damis  than  be  the  ruler  over  ten  thousand  Baby  Ions." 

Again  in  the  council  of  the  gods  there  is  a  somewhat  similar  scene 
when  Momus  appeals  to  Greece  against  the  admission  of  a  crowd  of 
foreign  deities  to  Olympus,  the  upshot  of  which  is  that  Zeus  publishes 
an  edict  stating  in  the  preamble  that  the  number  of  the  gods  had 
grown  inconveniently  large,  so  that  their  meetings  were  tumultuous 
assemblages  in  which  a  thousand  incomprehensible  jargons  were 
spoken,  and  that  the  supply  of  nectar  and  ambrosia  threatened  to 
run  short,  the  price  having  already  risen,  and  that  the  intruders  kept 


836  LUCIAN. 

thrusting  themselves  into  the  best  seats ;   therefore  be  it  ordered  that 
steps  be  taken  to  decide  who  have  proper  claims  to  their  places,  etc. 

If  the  gods  fare  ill  at  the  hands  of  this  merciless  satirist,  the  philo- 
sophers, even  those  whom  he  seemed  to  be  aiding,  could  not  con- 
gratulate themselves  on  escaping  his  notice.  In  one  dialogue,  the 
Sale  of  the  Philosophers,  he  lets  eminent  representatives  of  each  sect 
announce  their  various  qualifications  and  then  be  sold  by  auction,  most 
of  them  for  some  trifling  sum.  Socrates,  however,  fetches  a  good 
round  price,  two  talents,  about  two  thousand  dollars,  Diogenes  only 
six  cents.  Pyrrho,  the  Sceptic,  is  unable  to  determine  whether  he  is 
sold  or  not.  In  a  sort  of  sequel  Lucian  represents  himself  fleeing  for 
his  life  from  the  enraged  philosophers,  who  have  managed  to  escape 
from  Hades  for  a  single  day  in  order  to  avenge  themselves.  Lucian 
is  brought  up  for  judgment  before  Philosophy  itself,  and  in  answer  to 
a  question  about  his  profession  asserts  that  he  is  a  hater  of  bragging, 
humbug,  lying,  pride,  and  the  whole  breed  of  men  infected  with  these 
vices. 

"  By  Hercules,"  says  Philosophy,  '*  that's  a  business  that  exposes  you  to  a 
good  deal  of  hatred."  Lucian  goes  on  :  "I  love,  on  the  other  hand,  truth, 
honesty,  simplicity,  and  everything  that  is  kindly,  but  I  find  very  few  with 
whom  I  can  exercise  this  talent.  Indeed,  there  are  more  than  fifty  thousand 
in  the  other  camp,  so  that  my  affection  runs  the  risk  of  perishing  for  lack  of 
practice." 

This  statement  may  be  fairly  taken  as  a  just  explanation  of  Lucian's 
position  as  a  satirist,  and  it  agrees  very  well  with  his  impartiality  and 
apparent  lack  of  any  other  object  than  the  desire  to  attack  the  special 
cause  of  wrath  then  before  him.  He  does  not  appear  as  an  advocate 
against  religion  when  he  laughs  at  the  possible  grotesqueness  of  the 
popular  beliefs,  and  in  this  very  dialogue  he  discriminates  between 
the  absurdities  of  individual  philosophers  and  philosophy  itself. 

"  Some  of  them,"  he  says,  "  follow  the  precepts  of  philosophy  and  observe 
its  laws,  and  far  be  it  from  me  to  say  anything  wounding  or  insulting  about 
them  !  " 

This  distinction  is  one  more  often  made  by  those  who  are  criticising 
satirical  writing  than  by  satirists  themselves,  who  are  apt  to  see  noth- 
ing but  harm  in  the  objects  of  their  wrath.  Lucian  held  a  brief  for 
general  sanity,  rather  than  one  against  any  particular  foible  or  folly 
of  society.  He  was  a  Greek,  by  nature  if  not  by  birth,  and  shunned 
exaggeration,  whereas  the  Roman  satirists  who  set  the  fashion  for 
modern  times  worked  themselves  into  a  rage  in  order  to  make  their 
assault   impressive.     There  is  a  rolling  accompaniment   of  melodra- 


HIS  SUBTLE  INTELLIGENCE.  837 

matic  thunder  in  their  work  which  Lucian  never  employed  ;  they 
attack  everything  in  a  sort  of  blind  fury,  while  he  dexterously  inserts 
his  rapier  into  vital  spots  with  an  easy  grace  and  an  air  of  quiet  com- 
posure that  the  Roman  satirists  did  not  know.  This  self-possession, 
apparent  even  in  the  excitement  of  conflict,  is  still  more  marked  in 
his  choice  of  the  objects  to  be  condemned,  for  he  was  not  a  mere 
sneerer  at  everything,  but  rather  a  man  who  detested  a  charlatan 
because  he  loved  an  honest  man,  and  he  knew  how  to  admire  as  well 
as  to  dislike ;  and  this  ability  to  see  both  sides,  which  is  generally  the 
exclusive  privilege  of  posterity,  made  his  work  effective  at  the  time 
and  has  kept  it  fresh  and  admirable  ever  since.  The  same  fair-mind- 
edness that  he  showed  in  his  treatment  of  philosophy  may  be  seen  in 
his  discussion  of  literary  subjects,  as,  for  example,  in  the  essay  on  the 
proper  way  to  write  history.  There  he  makes  easy  fun  of  the  efforts 
of  various  contemporary  writers  to  imitate  Thucydides  and  Herodotus, 
and  gives  convincing  proofs  of  their  incompetence  ;  but  this  is  not  all : 
he  goes  on  to  show  how  history  should  be  written,  with  what  pains 
the  facts  were  to  be  gathered,  arranged,  and  described.  In  the 
account  of  Demonax,  that  is  included,  though  with  grave  doubts  of 
its  authenticity,  among  his  works,  we  may  see  again  that  the  capacity 
for  seeing  faults  did  not  mar  its  author's  appreciation  of  a  fine  char- 
acter. Lucian  was  not  a  mere  destroyer,  for  whom  nothing  was 
good  enough ;  he  also  constructed  models  to  replace  those  which  he 
destroyed.  Thus,  in  this  brief  account  of  his  dead  friend,  if  we  may 
accept  its  genuineness,  he  says  that  he  undertakes  the  task  in  order 
to  make  him  live,  so  far  as  possible,  in  the  memory  of  virtuous  men, 
and  further  in  order  that  young  students  of  philosophy  may  not  be 
compelled  to  look  back  to  antiquity  for  models,  but  may  follow  in 
the  footsteps  of  a  philosopher  of  their  own  time.  Then  he  goes  on 
to  narrate  a  number  of  instances  of  the  wit  and  wisdom  of  Demonax. 

IV. 

If  the  direct  influence  of  Lucian  on  literature  and  philosophy 
was  slight,  we  may  yet  find  much  in  his  writings  that  not  only  secured 
for  this  bold  scoffer  toleration  during  the  Middle  Ages, — when  he  was 
read  although  with  disapproval,  as  the  harsh  comments  on  the  manu- 
scripts show, — but  also  affected  the  literature  of  that  time.  To  the 
early  Christians  his  denunciations  of  the  old  mythology  and  his  proofs 
of  inSufificiency  of  philosophy  must  have  been  welcome  support  from 
an  unexpected  ally,  and  it  is  easy  to  imagine  with  what  delight  they 
would  have  read  the  opening  of  the  Timon,  when  the  misanthropist 
taunts  the  King  of  the  Gods  with  his  incompetence  : 


838  LUCIAN. 

"  0  Zeus,  protector  of  friendship,  god  of  hosts,  of  friends,  of  the  hearth- 
stone, of  lightning,  of  oaths,  clouds,  thunder,  or  whatever  may  be  the  name 
under  which  thou  art  invoked  by  the  wild  brain  of  poets,  especially  when 
they  are  in  a  boggle  with  the  metre,  for  then  they  give  thee  all  sorts  of  names 
to  hide  the  confusion  of  the  sense  and  the  lapses  of  the  rhythm  ;  what  has 
become  of  the  flash  of  your  lightning,  and  the  long  roar  of  your  thunder  ? 
All  that  must  be  sheer  nonsense,  a  poetic  fiction,  a  mere  clatter  of  words. 
And  as  for  the  boasted  thunderbolts  which  thou  hast  always  kept  in  thy 
hand,  they  must  have  gone  out  and  have  lost  the  faintest  spark  of  wrath 
with  evil-doers.  .  .  .  Thou  liest  asleep,  as  if  drugged,  so  that  thou  dost  not 
overhear  perjurers  or  see  men  doing  injustice  ;  thy  sight  is  dimmed,  so  thou 
seest  not  human  actions,  and  thou  art  become  hard  of  hearing." 

The  whole  of  the  dramatic  sketch,  for  so  much  it  really  is,  will  be 
found  interesting;  it  presents  a  picture  not  merely  of  a  decayed 
Olympus  where  Zeus  is  doing  his  best  to  keep  up  the  old  state,  and 
bids  Hermes  to  order  Cyclops  to  put  a  new  point  on  his  thunderbolts, 
but  also  of  the  society  of  Lucian's — indeed  of  all — time,  when  wealth 
has  proved  a  magnet  for  flattery.  The  piece  is  one  of  the  fullest  of 
suggestion  and  moral  instruction  that  Lucian  ever  wrote.  But  at  this 
moment  it  may  be  worth  while  merely  to  mention  one  of  its  qualities, 
even  if  it  be  one  of  the  least  important,  namely,  the  prominence  given 
to  personifications  in  the  dialogue,  where  Wealth  and  Poverty  appear, 
act,  and  speak  like  human  beings,  reaching  back  to  the  Plutus  of 
Aristophanes  on  one  hand  and  to  the  Middle  Ages  on  the  other.  Not 
even  in  the  Middle  Ages,  however,  did  such  abstractions  more  nearly 
exist  than  here.  And  other  analogies  are  to  be  found  :  some  of  the 
most  vivid  of  the  pictures  that  Lucian  draws  are  those  of  scenes  in  the 
lower  world,  when  the  souls  of  men  make  their  appearance  before  the 
infernal  powers  and  are  judged  with  hopeless  severity.  The  scenes  in 
the  Menippus,  for  example,  could  hardly  be  make  more  terrible  by 
even  the  mediaeval  imagination,  fed  as  it  was  on  visions  of  horror,  and 
it  is  but  a  short  step  from  the  conceptions  of  this  pagan  to  Dante's 
Inferno.  Thus,  in  the  place  where  evil-doers  are  punished,  Lucian 
saw  and  heard,  as  he  says, — 

"  only  terrible  things  :  the  noise  of  whips,  wheels,  fetters,  and  racks  ;  the 
lamentations  of  those  who  are  consumed  by  the  flames.  Chimsera  rends 
them  ;  Cerberus  devours  them  ;  all  are  punished  together,  kings,  slaves, 
satraps,  poor,  rich,  beggars,  all  are  repenting  their  sins.  We  recognized  a 
few  of  these  evil  ones  who  had  recently  died  ;  but  they  tried  to  hide,  and 
turned  away,  or,  if  they  did  look  at  us,  it  was  with  a  servile  and  flattering 
expression.  And  yet  these  were  the  men  who  alive  had  been  full  of  haughti- 
ness and  contempt." 

Lucian  by  no  means  invented  this  list  of  horrors,  for  information 
about    the    lower   regions   had   been  steadily   growing  more  precise 


HIS  PICTURE   OF    THE  LOWER    WORLD.  839 

throughout  antiquity,  as  we  may  see  by  comparing  Virgil's  picture  of 
a  retributive  Hades  with  the  pallid  corner  of  the  universe  through 
which  Odysseus  passed  many  centuries  before,  yet  nowhere  do  we  find 
a  more  graphic  statement  of  it  than  here,  or  one  which  came  nearer 
the  mediaeval  visions.  Another  touch  which  Lucian  supplies  is  this ; 
that  the  dead  are  mere  skeletons,  as  they  figure  in  the  modern  concep- 
tions ;  this  we  find  in  the  same  Menippus,  in  the  first  of  the  Dialogues 
of  the  Dead,  where  Diogenes  bids  Pollux  to  tell  the  sturdy  athletes 
that  in  the  other  world  there  is  no  glow  of  health  or  strength,  nothing 
but  dust,  a  mass  of  unbeautiful  skulls,  and  far  more  vividly  in  the 
piece  called  the  Cataplus,  or  Ferrying  Over,  which  describes  the  passage 
across  the  Styx  in  Charon's  bark  with  all  the  vividness  of  Bunyan. 
It  is  a  Greek  Dance  of  Death  that  Lucian  puts  before  us  :  the  philo- 
sopher Cyniscus  complains  that  he  has  been  forgotten  so  long ;  Mega- 
penthes,  the  tyrant,  on  the  other  hand,  asks  to  be  allowed  to  return 
for  a  moment  to  finish  his  half-built  palace,  to  tell  his  wife  what  is  to 
be  her  share  of  the  property,  to  conquer  his  enemies.  He  offers  to 
give  bonds  for  his  speedy  return.  More  solemn  is  his  conviction  of 
infamous  sins  and  his  condemnation  to  the  eternal  memory  of  his 
wicked  life,  for  he  alone  is  not  allowed  to  drink  of  Lethe,  which  wipes 
out  the  memory  of  the  past. 

In  another  sketch  we  find  Charon  coming  forth  from  Hades  to  see 
what  sort  of  a  place  this  world  is  which  the  dead  always  lament  to 
leave.  Hermes  serves  as  his  guide,  and  Charon  has  a  good  oppor- 
tunity to  see  men  with  their  petty  passions,  vain  ambitions,  futile 
hopes.     As  Hermes  says  : 

"  What  would  a  man  do,  if,  when  he  begins  to  build  a  house  and  hurries 
the  workmen,  he  should  learn  that  when  the  roof  was  scarcely  raised,  he  was 
to  leave  it  for  his  heirs  and  would  not  have  the  satisfaction  of  eating  a  single 
meal  there  ?  Another  is  glad  because  his  wife  has  presented  him  with  a 
son  ;  he  invites  his  friends  to  a  supper  ;  he  names  his  boy  after  his  brother : 
if  he  knew  that  the  child  would  die  at  the  age  of  seven,  do  you  think  he 
would  rejoice  much  at  his  birth  ?  He  is  happy  because  he  sees  the  delight 
of  the  father  of  a  victor  in  the  Olympic  games  ;  but  his  neighbor,  who  is 
following  his  son  to  the  grave,  does  not  see  him  and  does  not  think  how 
slight  is  his  hold  upon  his  own  boy.  See  the  quarrels  of  men  to  enlarge 
their  estates,  to  heap  up  riches  ;  then  before  they  have  begun  to  enjoy  them, 
they  are  summoned  away." 

To  this  Charon  makes  answer: 

"When  I  see  all  that,  I  fail  to  understand  what  charm  men  find  in  life, 
and  why  they  lament  to  leave  it.  If  one  considers  kings,  who  pass  for  the 
most  fortunate  of  mortals,  one  sees  that  besides  the  instability  and  uncer- 
tainty of  their  state,  they  are  subject  to  more  pain  than  pleasure,  forever 
exposed  to  fear,  trouble,  hatred,  plots,  resentment,  flattery.     I  say  nothing 


840  LUCIAN. 

of  mourning,  illness,  sufferings,  which  are  the  common  lot  of  all.     Judge 
from  their  miseries  what  must  be  those  of  simple  citizens. 

"  Shall  I  tell  you,  Hermes,  to  what  I  liken  men  and  their  lives  ?  You  have 
seen  foam-covered  bubbles  floating  below  a  waterfall ;  some,  the  lightest, 
burst  almost  as  soon  as  they  are  formed,  others  are  longer-lived,  and  increase 
in  bulk  by  absorbing  others  that  swell  them  up  beyond  measure,  but  soon 
even  they  burst,  for  they  cannot  escape  their  fate.  Such  is  the  life  of  man. 
All  are  puffed  up  with  a  little  breath  ;  some  more,  some  less  ;  these  perish 
speedily,  their  breath  lasts  but  a  moment  ;  the  others  perish  when  gathering 
new  force,  but  all  burst  at  last." 

Passages  like  these,  and  that  in  the  Sacrifices,  when  he  laughs  at  the 
stories  told  about  the  gods  of  the  ancients,  show  how  ripe  the  world 
was  for  a  new  dispensation,  how  great  was  the  moral  bent  that  some 
of  the  philosophers  had  given  to  men's  thoughts. 

Before  closing,  it  is  important  to  speak  of  Lucian's  descriptions  of 
society,  as  in  a  passage  where  he  portrays  the  humiliations  endured  by 
a  philosopher  in  the  house  of  a  patron,  and  in  his  account  of  the  so- 
called  magicians  who  lived  upon  the  credulity  and  folly  of  men.  Thus 
one  of  them — Alexander  by  name — used  to  receive  written  questions 
from  the  faithful,  who  would  seal  them  carefully  before  handing  them 
in  ;  Alexander,  however,  managed  to  find  out  what  the  notes  con- 
tained, and  would  give  wise  answers.  Something  of  the  same  kind 
has  been  reported  on  similar  authority  in  these  later  times.  Lucian 
exposed  the  charlatan's  tricks,  but  with  no  more  success  than  usually 
attends  the  pricking  of  such  bubbles.  The  whole  story  of  this  charlatan's 
career  is  most  interesting  and  instructive  reading,  as  an  example  of 
the  curious  working  of  superstition  at  this  period  when  the  old  religion 
was  breaking  up  and  Christianity  was  commonly  regarded  as  a  sort  of 
atheism.  Alexander  was  born  about  102  of  our  era,  under  the  reign 
of  Trajan,  and  died  about  172,  when  Marcus  Aurelius  was  emperor. 
No  student  can  afford  to  overlook  this  brilliant  picture  of  what  we  may 
call  the  desperation  of  paganism  that  is  drawn  here.  While  the  more 
educated  classes,  in  the  wreck  of  the  old  religion,  turned  to  the  lessons 
of  philosophy  for  spiritual  guidance  and  consolation,  following  the 
teaching  of  the  leading  schools  that  almost  without  exception  turned 
from  the  contemplation  of  abstract  questions  to  the  study  of  life,  the 
lower  classes,  on  the  other  hand,  as  they  broke  from  the  old  tenets  of 
their  faith,  welcc^med  foreign  deities  and  novel  rites  in  place  of  the 
proved  insufficiency  of  the  old  faith.  Indeed,  part  of  the  success  of 
Christianity  may  well  be  ascribed  to  this  hospitality  to  new  ideas. 
They  adopted  new  divinities  by  right  of  conquest,  and  all  manner  of 
oriental  gods  and  superstitions  found  a  new  home  throughout  the 
Roman  empire,  and  it  was  among  this  motley  band  that  Alexander 
established  himself  with  wonderful  success.     By  the  device  of  burying 


HIS  EXPOSURE   OF  A    CHARLATAN.  841 

tablets  in  the  ground,  soon  to  be  exhumed,  to  announce  the  arrival  of 
a  divine  being,  a  plan  that,  slightly  modified,  has  succeeded  in  this 
country  within  the  last  half-century,  he  was  at  once  accepted  by  men 
who  took  a  great  deal  of  local  pride  in  this  manifestation  of  divine 
preference.  Alexander  played  his  game  with  vast  profit  to  himself 
and  his  confederates.  To  the  god  whom  he  brought  in  the  guise  of  a 
serpent,  he  gave  the  name  of  Glycon  and  declared  it  a  descendant  of 
Aesculapius ;  his  money  he  earned  by  the  utterance  of  oracles  and  by 
answering  the  questions  contained  in  sealed  notes.  These  he  opened 
after  the  fashion  still  followed  by  swindlers,  and  when  this  was  impos- 
sible he  gave  replies  that  might  mean  anything.  How  successful  he 
was  is  shown  by  Lucian's  account  of  him,  and  it  is  further  attested  by 
the  discovery  in  modern  times  of  three  inscriptions, — one  in  Macedonia 
and  two  at  Carlsburg  in  Transylvania, — in  which  divine  honors  are 
offered  to  Glycon.  Coins  bearing  the  same  name  have  also  been 
found.  The  whole  story  cannot  be  recounted  here,  but  it  is  well 
worth  reading  for  the  light  it  throws  on  the  condition  of  the  time. 

In  Lucian's  account  of  the  death  of  Peregrinus,  a  Cynic  philosopher, 
we  may  see  his  repugnance  to  the  Cynics, — a  repugnance  that  he  felt, 
it  is  true,  for  all  systems  of  philosophy,  except  his  own  Epicureanism, 
and  for  scientific  teaching  as  well.  Doubt  was  his  strongest  feeling. 
This  essay  is  also  of  interest  as  showing  the  contempt  that  was  felt  by 
a  well-educated  pagan  for  the  early  Christians. 

In  his  True  History  Lucian  wrote  the  first  of  the  long  line  of  impos- 
sible adventures  that  have  since  become  famous,  an  account  of  gro- 
tesque travels,  like  those  of  Munchausen,  Gulliver,  etc.  But  to  go 
through  the  whole  list  of  his  various  writings  is  impossible ;  enough 
have  been  mentioned  to  show  their  variety  and  the  general  tendency 
of  his  brilliant  work. 

V. 

Enough,  too,  has  been  quoted  to  illustrate  his  wit,  a  quality  so  rare 
that  if  we  look  at  the  whole  literature  of  the  world  we  shall  find  that 
those  who  really  possessed  it  may  be  readily  counted  on  our  fingers. 
Even  wisdom  by  its  side  is  as  common  as  it  is  commonplace;  and 
besides  Aristophanes,  Lucian,  Erasmus,  Voltaire,  and  Heine,  it  would 
be  hard  to  name  any  one  who  would  not  be  exalted  by  a  place  in  the 
second  rank  alongside  of  Cervantes  and  Moliere.  However  the  list 
may  be  made  out,  it  is  certainly  worthy  of  note  that  there  are  no 
applications  for  admission  to  it,  except  Rabelais,  between  Lucian  and 
Erasmus,  and  that  in  that  lapse  of  time  the  use  of  the  rapier  was  as 
obsolete  in  controversy  as  is  now  that  of  the  cross-bow  in  war.    Indeed, 


842  LUCIA  N. 

not  until  Voltaire  did  the  world  see  such  keen  thrusts  and  so  fatal  stabs 
inflicted  without  a  bruise  or  portentous  letting  of  blood.  The  Roman 
clubbed  his  adversary  ;  and  in  the  Middle  Ages  wit  was  something  un- 
holy. Even  Erasmus  was  at  times  tongue-tied  by  authority  ;  Voltaire, 
more  than  any  one,  reminds  us  of  Lucian,  as  a  master,  not  of  verbal 
fence,  but  of  verbal  offense,  and,  more  than  that,  of  a  fatal  venom.  In 
Lucian's  case  this  dangerous  gift  was  applied  impartially  to  all  society, 
but  with  a  consummate  grace  free  from  apparent  malevolence.  He 
has  more  than  almost  any  writer  the  quality  that  is  rare  at  every  period 
and  peculiar  to  none,  the  indefinable  charm  of  a  man  of  the  world. 
Perhaps  the  fact  that  he  had  nothing  to  prove  only  intensifies  the 
impression.  In  old  days,  to  be  sure,  he  was  denounced  for  not  recog- 
nizing the  truth  of  Christianity ;  indeed,  as  was  said  above,  he  does 
not  distinguish  between  them  and  heretics;  but  at  the  present  time 
one  of  the  severest  charges  brought  against  him  is  that  in  the  Her- 
motinus  he  spoke  disrespectfully  of  geometry: 

"It  points  absurd  axioms,  it  asks  you  to  imagine  things  without  con- 
sistence, invisible  points,  lines  without  breadth,  and  the  like  ;  then  it  con- 
structs on  these  unsubstantial  foundations  a  building  just  like  them,  and  so 
pretends  to  demonstrate  the  truth,  while  starting  from  falsehood  ;  " 

and  similarly  girds  at  astronomers  in  the  Ikaromenippos ; 

"  Their  sight  is  no  better  than  ours ;  most  of  them  are  half  blind  from 
old  age  or  weakness,  and  yet  they  boast  that  they  can  have  distinct  vision  of 
the  limits  of  the  heavens  ;  they  measure  the  sun,  penetrate  the  region 
beyond  the  moon,  and  describe  the  size  and  shape  of  the  stars.  They 
cannot  tell  you  the  distance  from  Megara  to  Athens,  but  they  know  just 
how  far  the  sun  is  from  the  moon  ;  they  measure  the  height  of  the  atmos- 
phere, the  depths  of  the  ocean,  the  circumference  of  the  earth,  trace  circles, 
draw  triangles  in  squares,  with  any  number  of  spheres,  and  actually  presume 
to  measure  the  heavens  themselves  !  " 

Others,  again,  lament  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  his  treatise  on  the 
proper  way  of  writing  history.  He  is  said  to  utter  only  common- 
places, but  unfortunately  good  advice  is  always  commonplace. 

Moreover,  what  we  have  left  of  his  productions,  and  the  supply  is 
not  a  scanty  one,  has  a  greater  importance  than  that  of  attesting  his 
wit  and  intelligence,  in  showing  us  the  general  condition  of  the  minds 
of  his  contemporaries.  Not  only,  as  Gibbon  has  said  (vol.  i.,  cap.  ii.) 
can  we  be  sure  "  that  a  writer  conversant  with  the  world  would  never 
have  ventured  to  expose  the  gods  of  his  country  to  public  ridicule, 
had  they  not  already  been  the  objects  of  secret  contempt  among  the 
polished  and  enlightened  orders  of  society," — for  not  only  would 
Lucian  have  never  ventured  to  publish  them,  but  they  would  not  have 


ROMAN-  DEPENDENCE    ON  GREEK  CIVILIZATION. 


843 


APOLLONIUS   OF   TYANA. 


entered  into  his  mind — but  we  may  also  gather  much  useful  informa- 
tion on  the  extremely  interesting  period  in  which  he  lived.  The  most 
striking  fact  of  this  age  is  the  new  prominence  of  the  Greeks  and  the 
way  in  which  their  intellectual  acuteness  conquered  the  swiftly  decay- 
ing Romans.  The  influence  of  the  Greek  men  of  letters — for  by  that 
phrase  we  may  understand  rhetoricians,  sophists,  and  grammarians — 
was  enormous.  It  spread  far  into  the  East,  for  in  Philostratus's  Life 
of  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  we  find  him  talking  in  Greek  to  an  Indian 
king  who  amuses  himself  with  listening  to 
recitations  from  Greek  poets,  although  this 
is  the  last  book  in  the  world  to  use  as  an  au- 
thority; but  we  also  know  from  other  sources 
— what  is  in  itself  only  credible — that  Greek 
rhetoricians  made  their  way  into  Asia  along 
with  the  armies  of  Alexander  the  Great. 
Their  greatest  influence  was,  however,  in 
Rome  and  throughout  the  whole  vast  Roman 
empire,  which  offered  a  vast  field  for  the 
Greeks  with  their  older  and  riper  culture. 
The    rhetoricians    and    sophists    were   the 

teachers  of  Rome;  all  the  young  men  received  their  instructions 
from  these  sole  representatives  of  a  higher  civilization,  in  whose 
hands  alone  lay  the  care  of  all  intellectual  matters.  The  whole 
tone  of  Roman  literature  makes  clear  the  wide-spread  dependence 
on  later  Greek  models ;  the  interest  of  the  Roman  emperors  in 
these  teachers  was  most  active:  Hadrian  and  the  Antonines  sup- 
ported them  with  the  weight  of  their  authority ;  they  gave  the 
philosophers  high  positions,  appointed  them  tutors  to  their  sons, 
listened  to  their  debates  and  lectures,  sought  their  society.  Under 
this  powerful  encouragement  the  tone  of  the  Greek  teachings  im- 
proved, and  the  consciousness  of  their  intellectual  superiority  to  the 
Romans  who  ruled  the  world  aroused  their  patriotism  and  ambition. 
It  is  curious  to  notice  their  indifference  to  the  work  of  the  Roman 
writers.  Only  once  or  twice  had  Plutarch  quoted  any  Latin  author, 
and  Lucian  is  equally  contemptuous,  while  both  praise  not  only 
Greece,  but  especially  Athens,  the  brain  of  Greece.  With  the  decay 
of  the  vast  power  of  Rome,  the  self-satisfaction  of  the  Greeks  could 
only  grow  stronger,  and  their  efforts  to  maintain  their  pre-eminence 
were  many  and  interesting.  To  speak  of  literature  alone,  we  find 
countless  fanciful  discussions  on  trivial  themes  ;  thus  Lucian's  eulogy 
of  the  fly  is  an  example  of  the  futile  exercise  of  intelligence  com- 
mon at  periods  of  general  apathy,  such  as  we  see  among  the  later 
writers  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  and  possibly  in  some  of  the  modern 


844 


LUCIA  N; 


verse-making  of  English  bards  who  make  very  clear  the  schism  be- 
tween life  and  literary  cleverness.  Imaginary  questions  were  put  up 
for  discussion,  such  as  the  feelings  of  Hector  on  learning  that  Priam 
had  sat  at  the  table  of  Achilles,  and  similar  hypothetical  problems 
wherein  everything  depended  on  the  ingenuity  of  the  speaker.  Con- 
fused ethical  questions  had  to  be  settled  by  the  ready  tongues  and 
quick  wits  of  those  practiced  debaters. 

Nor  is  it  in  prose  alone  that  we  find  instances  of  this  semi-dramatic 
toying  with  the  subjects  of  the  older  literature :  in  the  Anthology 
there  are  a  number  of  epigrams  treating  various  scenes  of  antiquity  ; 
thus,  we  come  across  such  fantastic  subjects  as  these  :  What  Helen 
might  have  said  during  the  combat  between  Menelaus  and  Paris  ;  what 
Agamemnon  might  have  said  when  Achilles  was  armed  ;  words  of 
Achilles  to  Aias,  to  reconcile  him  with  Odysseus,  etc., — the  list  is 
a  long  one,  and  serves  to  show  how  the  later  writers  were  never 
wearied  of  threshing  the  old  straw.  The  literary  cleverness  survived 
the  decay  of  genuine  feeling,  and  inspired  the  continual  rehandling  of 
the  old  themes  in  both  prose  and  verse.  After  all,  the  warnings 
against  artificial  literature  are  distinctly  more  numerous  than  impres- 
sive, and  the  authority  of  the,  ancient  Greeks  has  served  much  more 
as  an  admirable  model  than  as  a  warning. 


YOUNG     MAN     READING. 


CHAPTER  VL— PROSE  WRITERS.— (:^«^/««^^. 

I. — Literary  Trifles  not  the  Only  Interests.  The  New  View  of  Moral  Greatness. 
The  Life  of  Epictetus.  IL — Marcus  Aurelius.  His  Work  as  a  Writer.  IIL — 
Philostratus,  and  his  Discussion  of  Literary  and  Artistic  Subjects.  IV. — The 
Final  Gatherings  from  Antiquity.  Athenaeus,  and  his  Collection  of  Anecdotes, 
.^lian.  Some  Historians.  V. — Pausanias.  Longinus,  and  his  Literary  Criticism. 
The  Later  Philosophy.  VI. — In  529,  the  Closing  of  the  University  of  Athens, 
and  the  Conversion  of  the  Temple  of  Hermes  into  a  Monastery.  VII. — Further 
Fragments.     The  Thrashing  of  Thrashed  Straw. 


I. 

IT  was  not  mere  trifling  subjects  like  those  ridiculed  by  Lucian  that 
were  chattered  about  in  this  busy  time.  Some  of  the  wandering 
sophists  discussed  more  serious  questions :  such  were  Dion  Chrysos- 
tomus,  or  golden-mouthed,  so  called  from  his  eloquence  ;  Polemon  of 
Laodicea,  Herodes  Atticus,  and  Adrian  of  Tyre.  Dion  began  as  the 
merest  disclaimer  of  attractive  novelties,  but  after  his  conversion  to 
the  principles  of  a  sounder  philosophy  he  became  a  sort  of  itinerant 
preacher,  who  wandered  throughout  the  civilized  world  giving  conso- 
lation and  advice  from  the  teachings  of  the  past,  very  much  as  the  early 
Christians  carried  the  gospel  from  place  to  place.  The  account  that 
we  have  of  Paul's  preaching  at  Athens  is  but  one  of  many  examples 
of  the  eagerness  of  the  public  to  hear  them  who  brought  them  instruc- 
tion. A  writer  has  pointed  out  the  resemblance  between  the  desire 
of  the  Athenians  to  hear  Paul's  new  teachings  and  the  way  in  which 
Dion  was  urged  to  preach, — for  there  is  no  other  word  for  it — at  the 
Olympic  games.  Another  curious  similarity  is  this:  Dion  used  to 
choose  a  text  from  Homer,  then,  as  ever,  the  great  book,  on  which 
he  would  speak,  and  at  the  conclusion  he  would  invoke  the  kind 
offices  of  Persuasion,  the  Muses,  and  Apollo  to  give  his  words  convic- 
tion. The  whole  story  of  the  blending  of  Christianity  with  this 
decaying  society  is  too  vast  to  be  more  than  touched  on  here.  More 
appropriate  to  this  place  is  the  consideration  of  the  influence  of  litera- 
ture at  this  time  on  that  which  has  followed  it.  But  belonging  to 
both  religion  and  literature  is  the  philosophical  teaching,  already  noted 
in  Dion  Chrysostom,  but  more  marked  in  Epictetus  and  Marcus  Au- 
relius.    How  wide-spread  was  the  feeling  that  reform  was  necessary 


846  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

we  may  judge  from  many  instances;  the  depth  of  the  corruption  inev- 
itably begot  great  efforts  to  eradicate  it,  and  with  the  decay  of  the 
beh'ef  in  the  old  mythology  there  existed  the  need  of  appealing  to 
other  and  more  deeply  seated  principles  that  should  direct  right-doing. 
Everywhere  we  see  the  ground  being  made  ready  for  the  reception  of 
Christianity,  and  in  both  Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius  we  may  see 
the  most  serious  statements  of  the  dignity  of  the  moral  law.  While 
these  two  men  were  alike  in  announcing  this  important  truth,  no 
greater  contrast  can  be  found  than  that  between  their  respective 
conditions ;  M.  Aurelius  was  Emperor,  Epictetus  a  slave.  The  two 
men,  however,  met  on  a  ground  which  does  not  concern  itself  with 
social  position.  Both  owed  the  direction  of  their  thought  to  the 
philosophy  of  the  Stoics,  and  both  taught  the  same  lofty  lessons.  The 
manual  of  Epictetus  was  not  written  down  by  him,  but  by  one  of  his 
disciples,  Arrian,  who  took  Xenophon  for  his  model,  and,  as  we  shall 
see  below,  besides  writing  a  book  on  history  which  he  called  an  Ana- 
basis, and  a  minor  treatise  to  which  he  gave  a  name  already  used  by 
Xenophon,  remembering  the  service  his  model  had  done  to  Socrates, 
recorded  his  own  recollection  of  his  master's  talk. 

Epictetus  was  born  in  Phrygia  in  the  first  century  of  our  era,  and 
was  the  slave  of  a  freedman  in  Rome  at  the  time  of  Nero.  In  that 
city  he  lived  many  years,  until  Domitian  exiled  the  philosophers, 
when  he  betook  himself  to  Nicopolis,  a  town  in  Epeirus,  and  there  he 
is  supposed  to  have  died.  All  that  we  know  of  his  life  is  his  lameness, 
his  poverty,  and  his  untiring  zeal  in  teaching  uprightness  in  thought 
and  conduct.  The  upshot  of  his  maxims  may  be  expressed  in  the 
words,  "  Bear  and  forbear";  endurance  and  abstinence  he  forever 
inculcated  with  an  intensity  of  language  which  is  very  different  from 
the  grace  of  the  earlier  philosophers.  His  commands  have  the  severity 
of  laws,  with  no  appeal,  no  mercy,  and  no  recognition  of  human  weak- 
ness. How  impressive  his  lessons  were  may  be  gathered  from  the 
fact  that  two  of  the  early  Christians  were  able  to  adapt  them,  with  but 
slight  modifications,  for  the  study  of  the  young.  The  rigor  of  what 
we  may  call  his  statute  book  is  modified  in  the  Discourses,  of  which 
four  books  have  come  down  to  us  out  of  the  eight  in  which  Arrian  set 
forth  his  master's  exposition  of  his  doctrines.  What  in  the  manual  is 
uttered  as  an  edict,  is  here  urged  by  a  direct,  impressive  eloquence 
that  was  most  convincing.  He  has  no  grace  or  charm,  no  tenderness, 
and  above  all,  none  of  the  sympathy  that  gave  Christianity  its  foot- 
hold, but  rather  a  force  of  rugged  conviction.  Yet  the  teachings  of 
the  philosophers  who  acquired  their  enormous  influence  in  the  decay- 
ing Roman  empire  in  succession  to  the  Greek  rhetoricians  and  sophists 
manifested  in  their  new  religious  spirit  the  same  intolerance  of  artistic 


EXTRACT  OF  EPICTETUS  847 

beauty  that  characterized  the  early  Christianity.  In  its  place  the 
Christians  set  the  idea  of  moral  beauty ;  the  philosophers,  however, 
not  only  looked  on  art  as  a  degradation,  they  maintained  the  impor- 
tance of  an  appeal  to  the  reason.  Epictetus  is  forever  arguing,  as  the 
philosophers  had  been  trained  for  centuries  to  argue,  but  philosophy 
never  acquired  a  popular  form ;  its  rewards  were  vague  and  intangible. 
It  appealed,  too,  only  to  the  learned,  and,  wise  as  its  lessons  were,  they 
were  too  reasonable  for  general  acceptance.  It  failed  to  inspire  the 
magnificent  enthusiasm  which  a  mighty  religion  calls  forth. 

It  is  circumstances  (difficulties)  which  show  what  men  are.  Therefore 
when  a  difficulty  falls  upon  you,  remember  that  God,  like  a  trainer  of  wrestlers, 
has  matched  you  with  a  rough  young  man.  For  what  purpose  ?  you  may  say. 
Why,  that  you  may  become  an  Olympic  conqueror  ;  but  it  is  not  accomplished 
without  sweat.  In  my  opinion  no  man  has  had  a  more  profitable  difficulty 
than  you  have  had,  if  you  choose  to  make  use  of  it  as  an  athlete  would  deal 
with  a  young  antagonist.  We  are  now  sending  a  scout  to  Rome  ;  but  no 
man  sends  a  cowardly  scout,  who,  if  he  only  hears  a  noise  and  sees  a  shadow 
anywhere,  comes  running  back  in  terror  and  reports  that  the  enemy  is  close 
at  hand.  So  now  if  you  should  come  and  tell  us.  Fearful  is  the  state  of  affairs 
at  Rome,  terrible  is  death,  terrible  is  exile,  terrible  is  calumny  ;  terrible  is 
poverty  ;  fly,  my  friends  ;  the  enemy  is  near — we  shall  answer,  Be  gone,  proph- 
esy for  yourself  ;  we  have  committed  only  one  fault,  that  we  sent  such  a  scout. 
'  Diogenes,  who  was  sent  as  a  scout  before  you,  made  a  different  report  to  us. 
He  says  that  death  is  no  evil,  for  neither  is  it  base  :  he  says  that  fame  (repu- 
tation) is  the  noise  of  madmen.  And  what  has  this  spy  said  about  pain,  about 
pleasure,  and  about  poverty?  He  says  that  to  be  naked  is  better  than  any 
purple  robe,  and  to  sleep  on  the  bare  ground  is  the  softest  bed  ;  and  he  gives 
as  a  proof  of  each  thing  that  he  affirms,  his  own  courage,  his  tranquillity,  his 
freedom,  and  the  healthy  appearance  and  compactness  of  his  body.  There 
is  no  enemy  near,  he  says  ;  all  is  peace.  How  so,  Diogenes?  See,  he  replies, 
if  I  am  struck,  if  I  have  been  wounded,  if  I  have  fled  from  any  man.  This 
is  what  a  scout  ought  to  be.  But  you  come  to  us  and  tell  us  one  thing  after 
another.  Will  you  not  go  back,  and  you  will  see  clearer  when  you  have  laid 
aside  fear  ? 

What  then  shall  I  do?  What  do  you  do  when  you  leave  a  ship  ?  Do  you 
take  away  the  helm  or  the  oars  ?  What  then  do  you  take  away  ?  You  take 
what  is  your  own,  your  bottle  and  your  wallet ;  and  now  if  you  think  of  what 
is  your  own,  you  will  never  claim  what  belongs  to  others.  The  emperor 
(Domitian)  says,  T.ay  aside  your  Laticlave.  See,  I  put  on  the  angusticlave. 
Lay  aside  this  also.  See,  I  have  only  my  toga.  Lay  aside  your  toga.  See, 
I  am  now  naked.  But  you  still  raise  my  envy.  Take  then  all  my  poor 
body  ;  when,  at  a  man's  command,  I  can  throw  away  my  poor  body,  do  I  still 
fear  him  ?  ' 

But  a  certain  person  will  not  leave  me  the  succession  to  his  estate.  What 
then  ?  had  I  forgotten  that  not  one  of  these  things  was  mine  ?  How  then  do 
we  call  them  mine?  Just  as  we  call  the  bed  in  the  inn.  If  then  the  inn- 
keeper at  his  death  leaves  you  the  beds ;  all  well ;  but  if  he  leaves  them  to 
another,  he  will  have  them,  and  you  will  seek  another  bed.  If  then  you  shall 
not  find  one,  you  will  sleep  on  the  ground  :  only  sleep  with  a  good  will  and 
snore,  and  remember  that  tragedies  have  their  place  among  the  rich  and  kings 


848  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

and  tyrants,  but  no  poor  man  fills  a  part  in  a  tragedy,  except  as  one  of  the 
chorus.  Kings  indeed  commence  with  prosperity  :  "  Ornament  the  palace 
with  garlands  "  :  then  about  the  third  or  fourth  act  they  call  out,  "  Oh  Ci- 
thaeron,  why  didst  thou  receive  me  ?  "  Slave,  where  are  the  crowns,  where 
the  diadem  ?  The  guards  help  thee  not  at  all.  When  then  you  approach 
any  of  these  persons,  remember  this,  that  you  are  approaching  a  tragedian, 
not  the  actor,  but  Oedipus  himself.  But  you  say.  Such  a  man  is  happy  ;  for 
he  walks  about  with  many,  and  I  also  place  myself  with  the  many  and  walk 
about  with  many.  In  sum  remember  this  :  the  door  is  open  ;  be  not  more 
timid  than  little  children,  but  as  they  say,  when  the  thing  does  not  please 
them,  "  I  will  play  no  longer,"  so  do  you,  when  things  seem  to  you  of 
such  a  kind,  say  "  I  will  no  longer  play,"  and  be  gone  :  but  if  you  stay,  do 
not  complain. 

II. 

The  Thoughts  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  the  last  of  the  great  pagan 
moralists,  show  us  the  same  intense  feeling  of  the  claims  of  duty, 
expressed  with  a  certain  tendency  to  meditation  on  the  emptiness  of 
all  things,  that  is  rather  a  matter  of  sentiment  than  of  cold  reason.  In 
some  measure,  doubtless,  this  new  spirit  was  a  result  of  the  inevitable 
absence  of  companions  enforced  upon  the  emperor  by  his  high  position. 
His  loneliness  intensified  his  experience  of  the  incapacity  of  any  earthly 
grandeur  to  supply  the  place  of  an  approving  conscience,  and  hence 
he  modifies  the  rigid  tone  of  Epictetus,  and  turns  continually  to  the 
statement  of  the  need  of  toleration.     Thus:  (ix.  11.) 

"  If  thou  art  able,  correct  by  teaching  those  who  do  wrong  ;  but  if  thou 
canst  not,  remember  that  indulgence  is  given  thee  for  this  purpose.  And 
the  gods  too  are  indulgent  to  such  persons  ;  and  for  some  purposes  they 
even  help  them  to  get  health,  wealth,  reputation  ;  so  kind  they  are.  And  it 
is  in  thy  power  also  ;  or  say,  who  hinders  thee  ? " 

Elsewhere  he  speaks  of  the  need  of  love  for  all  men,  and  of  kindness 
towards  all.  This  tendency,  however,  is  not  to  be  fully  accounted  for 
as  a  personal  peculiarity  of  the  emperor's,  for  in  Seneca  and  others 
we  notice  a  similar  change,  as  if  the  lessons  of  philosophy,  when  they 
had  become  more  nearly  popular,  had  acquired  a  humaner  tone.  In 
Marcus  Aurelius,  indeed,  we  find  many  references  to  that  much  abused 
conception,  the  brotherhood  of  men,  "  to  care  for  all  men  is  according 
to  men's  nature."  No  writer,  too,  has  had  a  more  vivid  feeling  of  the 
two  infinities,  of  the  past  and  the  future,  that  bound  the  imaginary 
movement  that  we  call  the  present : 

"  Consider,  for  example,  the  times  of  Vespasian.  Thou  wilt  see  all  these 
things,  people  marrying,  bringing  up  children,  sick,  dying,  warring,  feasting, 
trafficking,  cultivating  the  ground,  flattering,  obstinately  arrogant,  suspect- 
ing, plotting,  wishing  for  some  to  die,  grumbling  about  the  present,  loving. 


THE    WRITINGS  OF  PHILOSTRA  TUS.  849 

heaping  up  treasure,  desiring  consulship,  kingly  power.  Well  then,  that  life 
of  these  people  no  longer  exists  at  all.  Again,  remove  to  the  times  of  Trajan. 
Again,  all  is  the  same.  Their  life  too  is  gone.  In  like  manner  view  also  the 
other  epochs  of  time  and  of  whole  nations,  and  see  how  many  after  great 
efforts  soon  fell  and  were  resolved  into  the  elements.  But  chiefly  thou 
shouldst  think  of  those  whom  thou  hast  thyself  known  distracting  themselves 
about  idle  things,  neglecting  to  do  what  was  in  accordance  with  their  proper 
constitution  and  to  hold  firmly  to  this  and  to  be  content  with  it."  And 
again,  "Some  things  are  hurrying  into  existence,  and  others  are  hurrying  out 
of  it ;  and  of  that  which  is  coming  into  existence  part  is  already  extinguished. 
Motions  and  changes  are  continually  renewing  the  world,  just  as  the  unin- 
terrupted course  of  time  is  always  renewing  the  infinite  duration  of  ages.  In 
this  flowing  stream,  then,  on  which  there  is  no  abiding,  what  is  there  of  the 
things  which  hurry  by  on  which  a  man  would  set  a  high  price  ?  It  would  be 
just  as  if  a  man  should  fall  in  love  with  one  of  the  sparrows  which  fly  by,  but 
It  has  already  passed  out  of  sight."  And  this,  "  But  perhaps  the  desire  of  the 
thing  called  fame  will  torment  thee — See  how  soon  everything  is  forgotten, 
and  look  at  the  chaos  of  infinite  time  on  each  side  of  the  present,  and  the 
emptiness  of  applause,  and  the  changeableness  and  want  of  judgment  in  those 
who  pretend  to  give  praise,  and  the  narrowness  of  the  space  within  which  it 
is  circumscribed." 

This  exalted  thought,  with  the  tendency  to  mysticism  that  occa- 
sionally shows  itself,  has  comforted  many  minds,  in  spite  of  its  apparent 
austerity,  by  means  of  its  undebatable  sincerity  and  dignity.  The 
upshot  of  its  teaching  is  virtue  and  a  reasonable,  determined  virtue, 
which  is  surely  a  good  fruit  by  which  to  judge  its  value  for  mankind. 

On  returning  to  literature  we  find  an  abundance  of  less  important 
work.  Thus  Philostratus,  born  at  about  172  A.D.,  presents  a  state  of 
society  from  which  mankind  might  well  have  turned  with  a  feeling  of 
weariness.  His  life  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana  recounts  the  impossible 
adventures  of  a  famous  charlatan,  who  deceived  a  credulous  public  by 
alleged  walking  in  the  air,  prophecy,  and  other  accomplishments  that 
never  fail  to  find  supporters  among  people  intelligent  in  other  respects, 
for  the  disposition  to  believe  is  often  stronger  than  the  proof  of  the 
facts  which  are  believed.  Besides  this  curious  book,  he  wrote  some 
Lives  of  the  Sophists,  which  well  portray  these  men.  In  addition  to 
the  older  ones  from  Gorgias  to  Socrates,  he  describes  the  later  ones 
who  flourished  not  long  before  his  own  time,  and  about  them  he  has 
collected  a  considerable  amount  of  information.  In  the  Heroica 
another  Philostratus,  a  relative,  has  written  a  dialogue  concerning  the 
heroes  of  the  Trojan  war.  It  is  a  collection  of  mythological  discus- 
sions treating  those  famous  men  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  man 
who  is  prepared  to  discredit  Homer,  and  who  brings  much  evidence 
from  the  lost  cyclic  poets.  Homer  is  blamed  for  his  partiality  to 
Odysseus  and  his  unkind  treatment  of  Palamedes.  Possibly  the  point 
of  view,  besides  suggesting  the  general  rupture  with  the  past,  also 


850  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

illustrates  the  particular  tendency  of  the  later  times  to  modify  with 
unwearying  ingenuity  all  the  old  traditions.  Protesilaus  is  repre- 
sented as  returned  from  the  shades  to  this  world,  where  he  lives 
in  the  position  of  a  sort  of  domesticated  ghost,  and  it  is  his  report 
as  told  by  a  vintner  to  a  Phenician  visitor  that  makes  up  the  book. 
The  Homeric  poem,  it  is  explained,  gives  credit  only  to  Achilles 
and  Odysseus,  and  he  tries  to  do  justice  to  the  other  heroes. 
Thus,  Palamedes  comes  in  for  some  good  words  ;  the  Trojan  leaders 
are  kindly  spoken  of,  yet  Achilles  himself  is  treated  at  great  length 
and  with  admiration.  Homer  remains  the  leading  authority,  but 
many  of  the  statements  are  taken  from  the  lost  cyclic  poets.  In  the 
Imagines,  Philostratus  describes  a  number  of  pictures,  apparently 
some  definite  collections,  and  thus  throws  light  on  some  of  the  ref- 
erences of  the  poets,  besides  explaining  some  of  the  customs  of  the 
artists.  The  Epistles  are  seventy-three  long  letters  of  trifling  value. 
Possibly  some  may  think  this  judgment  inevitable  in  any  circumstances, 
and  it  cannot  be  avoided  when  mere  rhetorical  exercises  are  under 
consideration 

IV. 

Of  professional  rhetoricians  should  be  mentioned  Hermogenes,  born 
about  160  A.D.,  who  wrote  a  number  of  text-books  on  this  art,  which 
were  for  a  long  time  in  general  use.  Maximus  of  Tyre,  who  belongs 
probably  about  thirty  years  later,  left  a  number  of  essays  on  subjects 
that  interested  the  later  Platonists.  Of  Publius  ^lius  Aristides, 
born  about  129,  or  perhaps  ten  years  earlier,  we  have  left  a  number  of 
speeches,  of  moderate  interest ;  some  are  panegyrics  of  different  cities, 
others  are  addresses  defending  the  moribund  Greek  deities,  still  others 
are  the  merest  rhetorical  exercises.  Athenaeus  deserves  longer  men- 
tion for  his  Deipnosophists,  or  Learned  Guests,  as  its  puzzling  title  is 
sometimes  translated,  although  it  yet  remains  uncertain  whether  it  is 
their  gastronomic  or  their  literary  acquirements  that  are  signified  :  pos- 
sibly the  word  may  have  had  the  same  double  meaning  for  the  author. 
There  is  certainly  nothing  in  the  book  to  enable  the  modern  reader  to 
come  to  a  decision,  for  the  rival  claims  of  gluttony  and  letters  are  pre- 
sented with  wonderful  impartiality.  The  author  was  born  at  Naucratis 
in  Egypt  at  an  uncertain  date.  A  good  part  of  his  life  was  spent  at 
Alexandria,  whence  he  betook  himself  to  Rome.  We  know  that  part 
at  least  of  his  book  must  have  been  written  after  228  A.D.  His  book 
consists  of  a  conversation  or  series  of  conversations  that  are  sup- 
posed to  have  taken  place  at  Rome  in  the  house  of  a  rich  man  named 
Laurentius,  when  twenty-nine  guests  were  assembled,  among  whom 
were  Galen  of  Pergamon,  the  physician,  and  Ulpian,  the  lawyer. 
These  conversations  are  reported   by  the  author  to  one  Timocrates, 


THE    WORKS  OF  ATHENyEUS,    OF  A  ELI  AN.  851 

a  clumsy  device  that  mars  the  artistic  form  of  the  work.  Yet  even 
without  this  double  machinery  and  its  additional  awkwardness,  the 
pedantry  of  the  conversations  would  have  swamped  any  machinery  that 
could  have  been  devised,  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  such  talk  could 
ever  have  come  from  human  lips.  The  conversation  is  mei^ely  the 
author's  excuse  for  discharging  a  commonplace  book  that  is  crammed 
with  extracts  on  the  greatest  possible  variety  of  subjects.  The  arti- 
cles of  food  are  placed  on  the  table,  and  the  proper  way  of  spelling 
and  accenting  their  names  at  once  call  forth  copious  quotations  ;  they 
suggest  what  this  and  that  poet  has  said  about  them,  such  or  such  an 
incident  in  the  life  of  a  man  who  spoke  of  them.  Meanwhile  various 
subjects  come  up,  not  for  discussion,  but  as  outlets  for  more  quota- 
tions and  anecdotes.  The  result  is  that  the  book  is  a  most  complete 
summary  of  rare  facts,  interesting  citations,  and  curious  learning, 
thrown  together  with  a  helpless  struggle  after  coherence  that  leaves 
the  separate  facts  almost  as  independent  of  one  another  as  the  defini- 
tions in  a  dictionary.  Fortunately  there  is  almost  the  same  abun- 
dance, and  the  variety  of  the  subjects  treated  has  given  us  a  vast 
amount  of  curious  information  on  a  great  many  subjects,  on  the  cus- 
toms of  the  Greeks,  their  language,  natural  history,  and  especially  on 
their  poetry.  The  number  of  authors  whom  Athenaeus  quotes  is  about 
800,  and  of  about  700  of  these  we  have  no  other  line.  He  certainly 
has  claims  for  our  forgiveness  if  he  has,  at  times,  mingled  his  food 
with  his  learning.  We  do  not  know  so  much  about  the  life  of  the 
ancient  Greeks  that  we  can  afford  to  dispense  with  any  information 
about  them,  even  if  it  be  in  good  part  mere  gossip  ;  on  the  contrary, 
we  are  quite  as  eager  for  mere  gossip  about  them  as  we  are  for  gossip 
about  our  neighbors  in  the  next  street. 

To  the  other  collectors  of  anecdotes  less  praise  can  be  given.  Of 
Aelian,  for  example,  it  may  be  said  that  he  owes  his  long-lived  fame 
to  the  chance  that  has  preserved  some  of  his  writings,  rather  than  their 
safety  to  his  celebrity.  He  was  an  Italian  by  birth,  and  he  lived  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  in  Rome  in  the  third  century,  but  he  acquired 
the  mastery  of  the  Greek  language,  and  wrote  in  it  a  work  called  Mis- 
cellaneous Inquiries,  which  is  a  collection  of  scrappy  anecdotes,  bio- 
graphical, historical,  and  antiquarian,  which  are  all  huddled  together 
without  the  slightest  attempt  at  orderly  arrangement.  He  also  com- 
piled a  similar  work  on  natural  history  which  is  as  discursive  and  inco- 
herent as  a  column  of  items  in  a  newspaper. 

Diogenes  Laertius,  whose  date  is  uncertain,  wrote  a  series  of  lives 
of  the  philosophers,  which,  in  the  absence  of  other  authorities,  pos- 
sesses a  value  quite  independent  of  its  intrinsic  merits.  The  book  is 
evidently  compiled  from  the  various  works  of  a  number  of  writers,  but 


852  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

with  great  Cc^relessness,  so  that  it  is  often  obscure  and  contradictory. 
Anecdotes  are  strung  together  without  purpose,  and  there  is  little  care 
shown  in  distinguishing  the  various  philosophical  systems,  so  that  the 
best  thing  that  can  be  said  of  the  book  is  that  it  is  better  than  no 
book  at  all. 

Arrian  has  been  mentioned  above  as  an  imitator  of  Xenophon,  and 
as  the  writer  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  a  record  of  the  sayings  of 
Epictetus ;  having  thus  copied  his  master's  Memorabilia,  he  wrote  an 
Anabasis  of  Alexander  the  Great,  describing  the  campaigns  of  that 
general  in  the  East.  This  is  a  valuable  book  ;  singularly  enough  what 
knowledge  we  have  of  Alexander's  campaigns  comes  to  us  mainly  from 
two  authors,  Q.  Curtius  and  Arrian,  who  lived  five  hundred  years  later, 
but  Arrian's  work  is  complete  and  drawn  from  the  best  authorities. 
For  the  facts  he  consulted  the  contemporary  histories  of  Alexander, 
written  by  his  two  generals,  Ptolemy,  the  son  of  Lagos,  and  Aristobulus, 
while  at  the  same  time  he  referred  also  to  others.  He  thus  imitated 
something  more  than  the  mere  style  of  the  best  Greek  writers.  The 
battles  are  described  with  great  care  and  vividness ;  indeed  the  whole 
book  is  valuable  as  a  trustworthy  account  of  one  of  the  most  important 
events  in  the  world's  history.  Arrian  also  wrote  an  account  of  a  voy- 
age around  the  Euxine,  and  in  the  Ionic  dialect  a  brief  description 
of  India. 

Appian,  who  lived  in  the  middle  of  the  second  century  in  Alexandria, 
where  he  was  born,  and  in  Rome,  wrote  a  Roman  history,  by  which  he 
meant  that  of  the  whole  empire.  Only  part  of  this  has  come  down  to 
us,  that  on  the  civil  wars,  of  which  we  have  no  other  full  record. 

Dion  Cassius  Cocceianus,  the  son  of  a  Roman  senator,  and  grandson, 
it  is  thought,  of  the  rhetorician  Dion  Chrysostom,  was  born  at  Nicaea 
in  Bithynia,  in  155  A.D.  The  best  part  of  his  life  was  spent  in  Rome, 
where  he  held  various  public  positions,  and  at  Capua  and  in  his  birth- 
place he  composed  a  history  of  that  city  from  its  foundation  until  229 
A.D.  The  author's  public  life  made  him  familiar  with  administrative 
details ;  he  was  naturally  acquainted  with  the  Latin  language,  and 
thus  able  to  prepare  a  work  that  should  be  a  standard  authority.  It 
consisted  originally  of  eighty  books,  of  which  xxxvii-lx.  have  come 
down  to  us  either  complete  or  nearly  complete,  and  much  of  the  rest 
in  fragments.  The  part  that  has  survived  treats  of  the  period  between 
the  overthrow  of  Mithridates  and  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  war  between 
Caesar  and  Pompey,  and  is  obviously  of  the  greatest  importance.  Dion 
Cassius  took  Thucydides  and  Polybius  for  his  models,  and  tried  to  elu- 
cidate as  well  as  to  chronicle  the  events  of  which  he  wrote.  Naturally 
enough,  the  defects  of  a  rhetorical  age  are  to  be  distinguished  in  the 
book,  but  these  are  very  far  from  seriously  injuring  its  value. 


LONGINUS  ON   THE   SUBLIME.  853 


V. 

Of  the  life  of  Pausanias  scarcely  any  more  is  known  or  even  plau- 
sibly conjectured  than  that  he  was  a  Lydian  by  birth  who  flourished  in 
the  second  half  of  the  second  century.  He  left  a  description  of  Greece 
as  it  was  before  it  was  robbed  of  its  artistic  treasures,  and  when,  as  its 
quality  as  a  guide-book  indicates,  a  tour  in  that  country  was  a  common 
thing.  The  book  describes  the  different  regions  and  mentions  the 
various  objects  of  interest  to  be  seen  in  each,  referring  to  them  mainly, 
however,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  pious  pagan  who  is  visiting  this 
home  of  the  old  mythology. 

Longinus  does  not  belong,  except  in  time,  with  these  historians  and 
geographers,  but  place  may  perhaps  be  found  here  for  the  mention  of 
the  famous  treatise  On  the  Sublime,  which  is  ascribed  to  him.  The 
author,  whose  full  name  was  Dionysius  Cassius  Longinus,  was  probably 
a  Syrian ;  and  although  his  exact  date  is  uncertain,  it  is  conjectured 
that  he  was  born  about  210  A.D.  He  was  famous  among  his  contem- 
poraries for  his  profound  learning ;  he  was  called  "  a  living  library 
and  a  walking  museum."  He  wrote  commentaries  on  Homer,  Plato, 
Demosthenes,  and  on  some  of  the  poets,  as  well  as  on  philosophy,  but 
all  that  we  have  of  him  is  this  treatise  on  the  Sublime.  Even  this 
is  of  doubtful  genuineness,  and  it  has  been  supposed  that  the  essay 
may  belong  to  some  other  person  or  very  different  period,  but  it  is 
at  least  inextricably  bound  up  with  his  name  by  common  assent.  The 
treatise  itself  is  an  attempt  to  explain  what  it  is  that  goes  to  the  forma- 
tion of  an  impressive  style.  This  is  certainly  a  tempting  subject,  and 
the  exposition  has  won  great  fame,  especially  among  those  who  hoped 
that  perhaps  the  merit  of  the  Greek  writers  was  due  to  some  secret 
which  Longinus  would  unfold.  When  modern  literature  recognized 
no  other  merit  than  the  imitation  of  the  ancient,  the  one  man  who 
taught  writers  how  to  attain  sublimity  was  thought  more  useful  if  not 
more  admirable  than  those  who  were  merely  sublime  without  saying 
how  they  became  so.  Yet  the  secret  is  as  dark  as  ever;  if  Longinus 
knew  it,  he  never  told  it,  for  his  precepts  about  the  omission  of 
the  copulative  conjunctions  in  order  to  attain  grandeur,  and  the  live- 
liness that  results  from  the  use  of  question  and  answer,  as  in  the  ora- 
tions of  Demosthenes,  are  simply  rhetorical  explanations  after  the 
event.  The  essay,  however,  is  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  literary  art  which  well  meets  the  objection  that  there  is  no 
use  to  be  derived  from  the  study  of  rhetoric.  The  author  runs  over 
ancient  literature ;  indeed  he  also  quotes  the  beginning  of  the  book 
of  Genesis  as  a  sample  of   eloquence,  and  illustrates  his  intelligent 


854  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

remarks  with  apt  examples.  The  book  is  certainly  full  of  merit,  even 
if  it  has  been  overrated  in  modern  times  by  those  who  have  expected 
too  much  from  it.  The  later  days,  when  the  intelligence  of  the  Greeks 
was  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  great  works  of  the  past,  produced 
innumerable  commentators,  and  we  are  fortunate  in  having  one  of 
the  best  of  their  studies. 

What  was  done  in  literature  was  also  done  in  philosophy  in  its 
wanderings  away  from  Athens.  As  the  moralists  had  at  length  pro- 
duced an  ethical  code  which  bore  distinct  resemblance,  in  its  serious- 
ness at  least,  to  some  of  the  principles  of  Christianity,  the  schools 
which  rested  on  the  Platonic  doctrines  became  so  far  modified  in 
Alexandria  by  Oriental  thought  as  to  produce  a  sort  of  theology, 
which  exercised  great  influence  on  early  Christianity.  All  that  inge- 
nuity could  do  in  the  manipulation  of  philosophical  problems  had 
been  done  by  generations  of  accomplished  thinkers,  and  the  result 
was  nothing  ;  the  questions  that  had  been  asked  with  every  refine- 
ment of  thought  and  expression  found  no  answer  awaiting  them.  The 
mystery  of  the  Universe  was  unsolved  and  insoluble  in  spite  of  the 
most  cunning  intellectual  machinery  that  the  world  had  ever  krfown, 
and  the  world  was  tired  of  a  failure  that  only  became  evident  when 
every  attempted  solution  had  failed.  Convinced  of  its  impotence, 
philosophy  sought  the  aid  of  faith,  and,  thereby  advocating  its  supre- 
macy, it  became  theology.  In  short,  all  that  was  Greek  in  Neo-platon- 
ism  was  its  name  and  the  language  in  which  it  was  written. 

Philo,  commonly  called  Judaeus  or  the  Jew,  was  born  in  Alexandria 
about  twenty  years  before  Christ,  and  in  his  writings  we  see  an  attempt 
to  reconcile  the  sacred  writings  of  his  people  with  the  methods  of 
Greek  thought.  This  he  did  by  explaining  the  Old  Testament  allegori- 
cally,  showing  that  they  contained  the  highest  truths  in  a  veiled  form. 
By  his  statement  of  the  impossibility  of  conceiving  God,  except  as  he 
manifests  himself  in  the  Logos,  or  word,  he  built  up  an  enormous  part 
of  the  theology  of  the  early  Christian  writers.  Numenius,  a  Syrian, 
who  lived  in  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  and  Ammonius,  a 
porter  of  Alexandria,  born  170  A.D.,  carried  on  the  study  of  philoso- 
phy, but  one  of  its  most  important  adherents  was  Plotinus,  born  at 
Lycopolis  in  Egypt,  in  205  A.D.  He,  like  the  others,  started  from 
Plato.  Porphyry,  his  commentator,  born  233  A.D.,  sought  to  find  alle- 
goric truth  in  the  old  Greek  mythology.  lamblichus,  who  died  about 
330,  also  did  his  best  to  present  the  good  side  of  the  dying  system. 
But  the  fight,  though  long,  was  hopeless,  and  while  Christianity  ab- 
sorbed much  from  the  higher  teaching  of  the  Neo-platonists,  its  growth 
went  on  at  the  expense  of  the  tiresome  repetitions  of  the  Rhetoricians 
and  Sophists.     Among  the  last  of  these  were   Libanius,  of  the  fourth 


THE  LAST  DA  YS  OF  PAGANISM.  855 

century,  of  whose  speeches  many  are  left,  which  thresh  over  once 
more  the  old  straw,  with  a  certain  literary  excellence  but  no  serious 
importance.  Himerias,  born  315,  left  a  great  many  orations  on  imag- 
inary subjects,  no  more  literature  than  school  declamation  is  oratory. 
More  important  than  these  word-jugglers  was  the  Emperor  Julian  the 
Apostate,  331-363,  who  relapsed  from  Christianity  to  paganism,  and  en- 
deavored to  enforce  a  similar  change  by  eloquence  as  well  as  by  author- 
ity. Of  his  relations  to  Christianity  this  is  not  the  place  to  speak, 
but  it  may  be  observed  that  what  inspired  these  is  what  is  to  be  seen 
in  his  literary  memorials,  namely,  a  great  interest  in  the  grand  past  of 
Greece,  which  outweighed  the  merit  of  what  he  perceived  in  the  new 
dispensation.  In  Proclus,  the  last  great  name  of  the  Greek  philoso- 
phers, we  see  another  foe  of  the  new  religion.  He  too  upheld  the 
dying  paganism,  from  which  he  drew  an  eclectic  teaching.  He  died 
in  485. 

VI. 

In  529  the  Emperor  Justinian  closed  the  school  of  philosophy  at 
Athens,  the  one  founded  by  Plato,  that  had  existed  nine  hundred 
years,  and  with  its  extinction  disappeared  also  the  Hellenism  that  had 
to  the  last  struggled  vainly  against  Christianity.  It  died  a  violent  death, 
.succumbing  to  the  same  harshness  that  paganism  had  before  employed 
against  its  at  last  successful  rival.  In  the  same  year,  as  part  of  the  per- 
secution of  the  heathen  which  had  long  existed,  St.  Benedict  destroyed 
the  last  temple  of  Apollo  at  Monte  Casino,  and  established  there  the 
first  monastery  of  his  order,  which  formed  one  of  the  most  important 
links  between  the  old  world  and  the  new.  In  Alexandria,  the  Hellenic 
spirit  had  expired  in  blood  and  riot,  with  Hypatia  for  its  martyr. 

The  closing  of  the  university  at  Athens  put  an  end  to  the  last  glim- 
mering of  the  classical  influence  of  that  city  in  ancient  times.  Its 
history  meanwhile,  since  the  establishment  of  Alexandria,  had  not 
been  without  interest  ;  far  from  it.  The  Peloponnesian  war  had  shat- 
tered its  brief  supremacy,  but  its  intellectual  and  artistic  importance 
had  long  survived  its  political  ruin,  and  the  memory  of  its  wonderful 
past  had  at  times  moderated  the  severity  of  its  conquerors.  When 
the  Macedonians  conquered,  the  city  resigned  itself  easily  to  its  new 
masters,  for,  as  Parmenion  said  to  Antipater,  "  what  could  be  done  by 
men  who  passed  their  lives  in  celebrating  Dionysos,  in  public  feasts  and 
dancing?"  Its  ancient  eloquence  turned  to  ingenious  flattery  when 
at  the  Eleusinian  festival  a  chorus  of  noble  Athenians  sang  thus  to 
Demetrius  Poliorcetes :  "  The  other  gods  are  remote,  or  do  not  give 
us  the  least  attention.  But  you  we  adore  as  a  god  who  is  present,  not 
one  of  wood  or  stone,  but  true  and  living ;  and  it  is  to  you  that  we 


856  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

offer  our  prayers.  And  first,  O  beloved  one,  grant  us  peace  ;  for  you 
can.  Punish  the  Sphinx  who  ravages  all  Greece.  .  .  .  As  for  me,  I 
can  fight  no  more."  Naturally  when  the  Romans  advanced,  in  their 
conquest  of  the  world,  towards  Greece,  Athens  was  ready  to  receive 
them.  Before  that  time  it  had  known  little  of  this  new  Roman  power. 
Plutarch  tells  us  that  a  mere  vague  rumor  of  the  capture  of  Rome 
had  reached  Greece ;  Heraclides  of  Pontus,  one  of  Plato's  disciples, 
states  that  an  army  coming  from  the  Hyperborean  regions  had  con- 
quered a  Greek  city  called  Rome,  which  lies  in  the  West,  not  far  from 
the  great  sea.  Rome  was  revenged  in  the  Middle  Ages  when  it  was 
held  that  Latin  was  the  native  speech  of  the  Athenians. 

When,  after  the  first  Punic  war,  ambassadors  came  to  Corinth  and 
Athens  with  messages  of  amity,  Athens  was  the  first  to  adapt  itself  to 
the  new  conditions ;  it  granted  to  the  Romans  Athenian  citizenship 
and  the  privilege  of  initiation  in  the  Eleusinian  mysteries — all  it  had 
to  give.  Its  intelligence  survived  these  dynastic  changes ;  the  old 
tragedies  were  produced  on  the  stage,  and  the  new  comedies  of 
Menander  and  his  rivals;  philosophy  flourished  and  rhetoric,  and  the 
influence  of  its  cultivation  spread  over  the  West  as  well  as  towards 
the  East,  and  Athens  was  honored  as  the  home  of  arts  and  letters. 

After  the  city  was  taken  by  storm  by  Sylla  in  his  war  with  Mithri- 
dates,  it  was  long  in  recovering  from  its  harsh  fate.  Grain  was  grown 
within  its  walls,  even  in  the  Agora.  The  statues  were  half  hidden  in 
the  corn,  but  the  old  fame  of  the  city  still  attracted  to  it  hosts  of 
Romans  who  sought  for  culture.  These  visited  it  for  study  or  for  the 
aesthetic  delight  which  tempts  us  moderns  to  the  same  place  or  to 
Rome.  And  what  we  call  the  Athenian  university,  which  was  in  part 
supported  by  imperial  generosity,  became  a  most  important  means  of 
support  for  the  whole  city. 

This  tact,  which  led  them  to  flatter  their  conquerors,  their  devotion 
to  the  refining  influences  of  life  and  their  aversion  to  war,  made  the 
Athenians  generally  popular.  Lucian  in  his  Nigrinus  says  that  they 
were  brought  up  in  devotion  to  philosophy  and  poverty,  and  that  they 
detested  extravagance  and  display,  which  they  regarded  as  proper 
rather  for  Rome.  Praise  was  given  to  the  liberty,  the  absence  of 
petty  jealousy,  the  quiet,  and  leisure  of  Athens.  Libanius  called  the 
Athenians  "  godlike  " ;  thus  the  old  glory  of  the  citizens  of  Athens 
was  inherited  by  their  descendants. 

Yet  there  was  not  an  unbroken  devotion  to  study  even  here — after 
all  there  was  discord  in  Olympus — for  the  young  men  knew  other 
interests  than  philosophy  and  letters  ;  the  pupils  of  the  various  teachers 
formed  societies,  which  fought  with  stones  or  even  swords  over  the 
new  arrivals  whom  they  strove   to  enroll  among  their  number.     Un- 


THE  ARTIFICIAL    COMPOSITIONS  OF   THE   SOPHISTS.  857 

popular  instructors  were  occasionally  tossed  in  a  rug  by  their  discon- 
tented scholars,  and  even  less  creditable  stories  are  told  of  the  dis- 
orderly conduct  of  the  students.  But  these  trivialities  only  indicate, 
what  other  things  more  clearly  prove,  the  decay  of  real  interest  in 
Athens,  which  had  sunk  to  the  condition  of  a  provincial  city,  full,  to 
be  sure,  of  inspiring  memories,  but  insignificant  by  the  side  of  Alex- 
andria, Rhodes,  Pergamon,  or  even  Rome  and  Marseilles.  Its  past 
remained  its  greatest  glory.  The  library  of  Alexandria  made  residence 
there  imperative  for  men  who  were  doing  active  work  in  exegesis,  and 
the  wealth  of  Rome  drew  teachers  as  well  as  pupils  from  all  quarters. 
Philosophy,  as  we  have  seen,  continued  to  be  taught  for  many  cen- 
turies in  its  old  home  by  many  generations  of  teachers,  but  the  growth 
of  Christianity  was  about  to  displace  even  this. 

VII. 

Not  all  these  later  Greeks,  however,  were  philosophers,  and  amid 
the  general  literary  work  of  this  time  with  its  continual  return  to  old 
subjects  we  find  numerous  imaginary  letters,  such  as  those,  already 
mentioned,  of  Philostratus,  and  many  other  collections  of  fictitious 
correspondence,  some  of  which  have  at  different  times  deceived  unprac- 
tised students  by  their  mock  air  of  genuineness.  Letters  of  Phalaris, 
Themistocles,  Alexander,  and  other  great  men,  were  composed  many 
centuries  after  their  death,  as  an  exercise  in  literary  composition  that 
ran  in  parallel  lines  with  the  fictitious  declamations  devised  by  ingeni- 
ous rhetoricians  to  represent  the  imaginary  speeches  of  great  orators. 
The  so-called  letters  of  Phalaris  acquired  an  importance  enormously 
disproportionate  to  their  original  worth  by  Bentley's  proof  that  they 
were  forgeries,  whereby  he  placed  the  modern  criticism  of  the  classics 
on  a  sure  footing  and  gave  most  valuable  aid  to  the  development  of 
modern  English  literature,  helping  to  bring  it  out  from  beneath  the 
shadow  of  the  ancient.  The  mistake  which  had  been  made  was  some- 
thing like  that  which  would  take  place  if  at  some  future  time  Tenny- 
son's Idyls  of  the  King  should  be  thought  real  mediaeval  poems,  or  Lan- 
dor's  "  Pericles  and  Aspasia  "  a  genuine  translation  from  the  classics. 

The  Greeks  and  Romans  were  in  fact  living  on  their  capital,  on  the 
traditions  and  memories  that  had  gathered  about  ancient  Hellas.  The 
present  seemed  dead.  Just  as  an  old  man  loses  all  memory  of  current 
events  and  recalls  only  the  incidents  of  his  boyhood,  so  these  dying 
races  recurred  for  ever  to  their  own  youth.  The  later  Sophists,  when 
they  came  down  to  the  earth  at  all,  discussed  remote  events  at  the 
time  of  the  Peloponnesian  and  Persian  wars,  or  even  earlier:  they 
invented  a  speech  for  Xenophon,  who  proposes  to  die  in  place  of 


858  PROSE    WRITERS— {CONTINUED). 

Socrates ;  they  composed  an  oration  that  Demosthenes  might  have 
uttered,  or  Solon  ;  they  composed  imaginary  debates  between  Alex- 
ander and  his  generals,  whether  or  not  he  should  push  on  to  the  ocean  : 
Agamemnon  considers  the  advisability  of  slaying  Iphigeneia,  etc. ; 
the  list  was  as  long  as  ancient  history.  In  Ovid  we  shall  see  similar 
fantastic  treatment  of  the  past,  and  without  going  so  far  from  the  sub- 
ject before  us  we  may  find  abundant  instances  in  the  imaginary  letters 
of  famous  persons,  in  the  fictitious  poems  that  were  composed  on  every 
hand  for  the  confusion  of  modern  commentators.  Dio  Chrysostomos, 
who  lived  in  the  time  of  Trajan,  apologizes  for  an  invention  concerning 
modern  and  inglorious  times,  on  the  ground  that  he  will  be  thought 
an  idle  prattler  for  not  appearing  in  the  usual  guise  of  Cyrus  or  Alci- 
biades.  Nor  was  it  in  literature  alone  that  this  tendency  appeared  ; 
Dio  Cassius  tells  that  at  the  games  celebrating  the  opening  of  the 
Colosseum  and  the  Baths  of  Titus  in  Rome,  the  naval  combats  repre- 
sented those  fought  between  the  Corcyraeans,  Syracusans,  and  Athe- 
nians in  the  Peloponnesian  war,  and  not  any  Roman  victory. 

The  eloquence  or  rhetorical  skill  with  which  these  fanciful  compo- 
sitions were  uttered  was  their  warrant  for  existing,  and  amply  justified 
their  production.  No  other  purpose  was  served  in  the  death  of  political 
power;  and  just  as  the  accumulation  and  display  of  rich  material  had 
become  the  sole  aim  of  architects,  and  in  sculpture  the  same  profusion 
of  luxury  took  the  place  of  the  long-lived  beauty  of  the  art,  and  costly 
mosaic  expelled  painting,  so  the  playing  with  words  was  the  last  sign 
of  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  Greeks.  It  was  a  mere  mechanical 
existence  that  they  led ;  they  went  through  the  motions  of  living,  but 
with  only  a  pitiable  imitation  of  their  former  grandeur.  Yet  even  all 
these  inventions  were  not  wholly  without  benefit.  It  was  a  period  of 
dwindling  importance,  but  one  that  indicated  a  possible  advance  in 
the  future.  Nature  cannot  be  forever  producing;  and  even  the  bleak 
storms  of  winter  enrich  the  frozen  soil. 

While  the  true  explanation  of  this  beating  over  the  old  straw  is  to 
be  found  in  the  absence  of  real  interest  in  life,  it  must  yet  be  remem- 
bered that  the  very  virtue  of  this  race,  their  interest  in  the  form  of 
any  utterance,  led  to  this  constant  repetition  of  artificial  methods  ; 
and  the  incessant  toying  with  the  familiar  material,  the  perpetual 
restatement  of  old  problems,  became  in  time,  both  in  prose  and  verse, 
a  very  meagre  outlet  for  the  intelligence,  while  an  ingenious  device 
for  the  cleverness,  of  the  Greeks.  This  artificiality  was  something  like 
an  unending  building  of  block  houses,  to  be  destroyed  as  soon  as  com- 
pleted, and  while  we  see  some  of  its  results  in  the  dwindling  excellence 
of  Greek  letters,  we  may  detect  a  part  of  its  influence  in  the  literature 
of  the  Romans,  and  notably  in  the  heroic  poems  of  Ovid,  which  have 


THE  EXTREME  ARTIFICIALITY  OF  THIS  LITERATURE.  859 

served  as  models  for  a  good  many  writers  who  kept  closely  to  the 
methods  of  the  ancients.  These  later  Greeks  were  not  filled  with  any- 
thing to  say  :  they  rather  possessed,  partly  by  inheritance,  a  keen  desire 
to  speak,  and  hence  said  the  same  thing  over  and  over  with  unwearying 
repetition,  and  the  issue  was  emptiness  and  barrenness  of  thought. 
Literary  expression  became  then  a  mere  thing  of  schools,  not  an  utter- 
ance of  the  feelings  that  inspire  a  mighty  people,  and  the  way  in  which 
things  were  formulated  became  of  the  chief  moment.  These  stories 
show  the  consequences  in  their  remoteness  from  the  actual  life  of  the 
time.  That  is  wholly  lost  sight  of,  and  we  get  pictures  of  the  impos- 
sible, placed  in  a  fantastic  region  in  which  puppets  move  on  the  end 
of  conspicuous  wires.  Thus  is  explained,  too,  the  origin  of  the  Greek 
romances  in  the  disposition  which  showed  itself  both  in  poetry  and 
prose  to  play  with  imaginary  subjects,  as  in  the  elegies  of  Callimachus, 
many  of  the  epigrams  of  the  Anthology,  and  in  the  imaginary  letters, 
debates,  orations  dexterously  inserted  in  mouths  of  long  dead  cha- 
racters, all  being  indications  of  the  death  of  genuine  enthusiasm  while 
the  art  survived.  The  art,  too,  has  in  its  turn  triumphed  in  modern 
literature.     Yet  its  greatest  success  was  at  home.. 


WOODEN     TABLET. 


CHAPTER  VII.— THE  GREEK  ROMANCES. 

I. — This  Confusion,  Great  as  it  was,  Led  to  an  Attempted  Reorganization  of  Literary 
Work  in  the  Romances.  The  Method  of  Composition :  Prominence  of  Love, 
Wildness  of  Incident,  etc.  IL — lamblichus  Xenophon  of  Ephesus.  ApoUonius 
of  Tyre.  Hehodorus.  The  Modern  Descendants  of  these  Romances.  IIL — Achil- 
les Tatius.     Charitons.     IV. — Longus  and  his  Pastoral.     The  End. 


I. 

IN  its  own  time,  as  we  have  said,  this  fantastic  forged  literature  was 
of  great  service  in  furthering  the  development  of  a  new  form  of 
composition  which  was  destined  to  have  much  influence  on  modern 
writing,  and  the  qualities  of  the  Greek  romance,  the  impossible  adven- 
tures, the  succession  of  catastrophes,  the  complicated  intrigues,  the 
intense  love-making,  had  long  formed  the  ingenious  exercises  of  orators 
and  speakers  who  lived  by  entertaining  hearers  and  readers.  The 
tendency  of  literature  towards  the  discussion  of  love  themes  we  have 
noticed  even  in  Euripides,  and  we  have  seen  how  much  more  distinct 
it  became  when  Greek  letters  found  their  new  home  at  Alexandria. 
Obviously,  the  disconnected  manner  in  which  this  favorite  subject  was 
treated  in  the  later  days  by  men  who  sought  to  concentrate  all  their 
acuteness  upon  a  brief  declamation  or  essay  stood  in  the  way  of  a 
patient  development  of  the  study  of  the  individual  character.  It 
furthered  the  production  of  rather  a  number  of  vivid  scenes  than  of  a 
carefully  composed  whole,  and  the  Greek  romances  that  have  come 
down  to  us  abound  in  incident ;  they  lack  psychological  unity.  Inven- 
tion is  exhausted  in  devising  a  succession  of  events ;  there  is  no  growth, 
no  careful  study,  of  character.  The  fragmentary  nature  of  the  previous 
studies  for  the  romance  were  not  the  only  cause  of  the  absence  of 
careful  treatment  of  character ;  another  explanation  may  be  found  in 
that  law  of  intellectual  economy  which  forbids  the  combination  of 
exciting  incidents  with  psychological  analysis.  If  a  succession  of 
catastrophes  will  sustain  the  reader's  interest,  there  is  no  necessity  of 
strengthening  this  by  describing  the  mental  growth  of  the  hero  and 
heroine.  It  is  only  when  readers  have  learned  every  possible  combina- 
tion of  flood,  flames,  earthquakes,  wild  beasts,  robbers,  murderers,  and 
poisons,  and  they  no  longer  shudder  at  grewsome  casualties  because 
they  know  that  there  is  salvation  only  a  few  pages  ahead,  that  the 


THE   CRUDITY  OF    THE  ROMANCES. 


86 1 


more  delicate  and  more  difficult  work  of  portraying  a  human  being 
begins.  The  Greek  romance  did  not  attain  this  point,  which  was  left 
for  modern  times,  yet  it  is  sufficiently  creditable  that  before  their  final 
intellectual  extinction  this  wonderful  race  should  have  completed  their 
task  of  founding  every  form  of  literature  on  which  posterity  was  to 
work.  The  romance  nearly  escaped  them,  and  if  they  appropriated  it 
too  late  to  develop  it  thoroughly,  they  yet  in  intellectual  matters  ruled 
an  empire  vaster  than  the 
material  empire  of  Rome. 

While  the  absence  of 
smoothness  in  the  course  of 
true  love  is  the  leading  sub- 
ject of  these  early  romances, 
there  is  to  be  found  in  all  of 
them  an  evasion  of  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  psychological 
problem  which  hides  itself 
under  the  accumulation  of 
geographical  wonders.  In- 
cidents and  stories  of  this 
sort  had  long  found  a  place 
in  Greek  literature.  The 
Odyssey  contains  them,  and 
even  the  philosophers,  as 
Plato,  with  his  fantastic  is- 
lands of  Atlantis,  had  em- 
ployed the  same  inventions 
which  appear  in  all  litera- 
tures. While  the  literary 
history  of  the  Greek  ro- 
mances is  obscure  in  many 
points,  owing  to  their  share 
in  the  uncertainty  that  cov- 
ers the  whole  later  period 
of  Greek  letters,  the  titles 
of  some  of  the  earliest  indi- 
cate the  free  employment  of  this  device,  and  their  frequency  is 
attested  by  the  fact  that  Lucian  caricatured  them  in  his  True 
History.  Apparently,  the  love-stories  began  by  adopting  the  still 
earlier  geographical  romances,  which  were  crammed  with  impossible 
details,  the  human  element  that  bound  the  incidents  together  being 
a  couple  of  lovers  in  whose  experience  these  adventures  occur.  One 
of  the  very  first  was  written  by  Antonius  Diogenes ;  it  consisted  of 


EROS,    GOD   OF    LOVE. 


862  THE    GREEK  ROMANCES 

twenty-four  books,  and  bore  for  its  title  The  Wonders  Beyond  Thule. 
The  exact  date  of  its  composition  is  ahnost  hopelessly  lost,  yet  the 
name  of  the  author  makes  it  clear  that  he  must  have  lived  during  this 
period  of  the  Roman  dominion,  and  it  is  conjectured  to  belong  to  the 
first  century  of  our  era.  The  epitome  of  this  book  which  was  made 
by  the  patriarch  Photius  in  the  ninth  century  shows  how  close  an 
analogy  it  bore  to  the  geographical  romances ;  the  novel  contains  the 
recital  of  most  adventuresome  travels,  not  only  up  and  down  the  face 
of  the  earth,  but  also  through  the  regions  beneath  the  earth,  into 
Hades  and  out  again,  and  even  to  the  moon.  These  details  quite  over- 
balance the  romantic  love  incidents,  which  in  comparison  are  few  and 
insignificant.  Indeed  the  prominence  of  the  fantastic  adventures, 
made  up  of  folk-lore,  travelers'  tales,  and  the  collections  of  geographers, 
places  the  composition  of  the  story  at  an  early  date,  before  the  per- 
petual treatment  of  love-themes  by  sophists  and  rhetoricians  had 
acquired  the  full  growth  that  it  reached  towards  the  middle  of  the 
second  century  of  our  era.  As  has  been  said,  it  was  these  exercises 
that  gave  this  form  of  fiction  its  most  important  quality,  the  human 
element,  which  has  been  the  basis  of  modern  as  of  ancient  romance ; 
the  framework  in  which  this  vital  part  was  set  came,  as  we  have  seen, 
from  the  geographical  accounts  and  romances. 

II. 

The  earliest  of  those  which  contained  a  real  romantic  quality  is  that 
of  lamblichus,  a  Syrian,  and  contemporary  of  Lucian.  Before  learning 
Greek  and  becoming  a  rhetorician,  he  acquired  a  knowledge  of  the 
language  of  Babylon  from  one  of  the  officials  of  the  king  of  that  city 
who  was  taken  prisoner  in  Trajan's  Parthian  expedition.  In  the  reign 
of  Marcus  Aurelius  he  wrote  his  romance  which  he  called  the  Baby- 
loniaca.  Curiously  enough,  he  pretended  that  it  was  merely  a  version 
of  an  old  Babylonian  story  which  had  been  told  him  by  his  teacher, 
who,  after  all,  may  have  been  invented  for  the  occasion.  This  method 
of  smuggling  the  romance  into  Greek  literature  betrays  a  certain 
timidity  with  regard  to  its  novelty,  and  it  is  one  that  is  not  unfamiliar 
to  later  times.  Thus  Horace  Walpole  pretended  that  his  Castle  of 
Otranto  "was  printed  at  Naples,  in  the  black  letter,  in  the  year  1529 
A.D.,"  and  that  it  was  "  found  in  the  library  of  an  ancient  Catholic  family 
in  the  north  of  England."  The  Babylonian  friend  and  teacher  of 
lamblichus  may  be  fellow-citizens  of  Onuphrio  Muralto,  the  alleged 
author,  and  of  William  Marshall,  the  alleged  translator,  of  the  later 
romance.     Chatterton's  device  was  the  product  of  similar  conditions. 

Unfortunately,  the  phrase  which  continually  meets  the  student  of 


THE    COMPLICATED   PLOTS.  863 

Greek  literature  must  be  used  again  here,  for  the  book  itself  has  not 
come  down  to  us ;  but  the  same  Photius  who  described  the  work  of 
Antonius  Diogenes  has  also  left  us  an  analysis  of  a  good  part  of  this 
important  romance.  Even  a  brief  account  of  its  confused  plot  would 
take  up  too  much  space.  It  need  only  be  said  that  it  concerns  the 
manifold  persecutions  and  sufferings  of  a  loving  couple,  Simonis,  who 
is  the  object  of  the  odious  attentions  of  Garmus,  king  of  Babylon,  and 
Rhodanes,  her  husband.  Yet  it  is  not  their  mental  agony,  the  growth 
of  their  love  under  peril,  or  the  force  of  despair,  that  is  portrayed,  but 
rather  the  simple  succession  of  cruel  incidents.  Some  of  these  were 
facts  that  even  now  have  a  place  in  the  reports  of  Egyptian  travelers, 
such  as  the  bees  that  sting  the  soldiers  to  death  ;  others  were  the  com- 
monplaces of  folk-lore ;  while  others  again  were  to  have  a  long  life  in 
later  romance,  as  when  the  hero  and  heroine  take  a  sleeping  potion 
in  place  of  poison.  These  various  casualties  and  trials  are  not  artis- 
tically arranged  so  that  one  is  in  any  way  an  outgrowth  of  the  other ; 
they  are  rather,  as  it  were,  pinned  together  in  artificial  sequence,  yet 
we  notice  that  they  are  more  truly  devices  to  inflict  anguish  on  the 
suffering  man  and  woman  than  a  mere  recital  of  geographical  details. 

Impossible  and  incoherent  as  are  the  accumulated  agonies  of  this 
hero  and  heroine,  they  have  been  employed  in  modern  literature,  and 
especially  in  the  Sofonisbe  of  de  Gerzan,  1627,  which  contains  many 
imitations  of  the  plot,  and  some  translations  of  the  few  fragments  that 
have  been  elsewhere  preserved.  Later  we  shall  see  other  proofs  of  the 
authority  of  these  Greek  romances  over  those  written  in  France  and 
read  everywhere  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

Xenophon  of  Ephesus,  the  author  of  the  Ephesian  Story  of  An- 
theia  and  Habrocomes,  may  be  mentioned  next,  although  the  exact 
dates  of  these  late  writers  are  almost  as  uncertain  as  those  of  the  most 
remote,  and  the  age  to  which  this  author  belongs  is  variously  set  every- 
where between  the  second  and  the  fifth  centuries  of  our  era,  with  at 
least  a  possibility — for  one  can  scarcely  call  it  a  probability — of  its  be- 
longing to  the  end  of  the  second  or  the  beginning  of  the  third.  The 
romance  begins  where  the  others  end,  with  the  marriage  of  the  hero 
and  heroine  Habrocomes  and  Antheia,  and  then  goes  on  to  describe  a 
long  series  of  woes  that  befell  them  after  this  event.  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, any  accustomed  conjugal  infelicity  that  pursues  them,  or  any 
domestic  tragedy,  but  rather  a  hideous  nightmare  of  romantic  inci- 
dents, separation,  long  wanderings,  and  the  usual  machinery  where- 
with these  writers  were  wont  to  amuse  their  readers.  In  general  the 
reader  who  is  brought  up  on  the  maturer  novels  of  later  times  finds 
these  early  inventions  awkward  and  cumbersome,  but  in  this  story  the 
creaking  of  the  machinery  is  more  astounding  than  anywhere,  for  all 


864 


THE   GREEK  ROMANCES. 


the  misadventures  follow  upon  the  declaration  of  an  oracle  that  the 
unhappy  pair  are  fated  to  endure  many  calamities  by  land  and  sea,  but 
that  finally  they  shall  enjoy  happier  fortune.  Hence  they  are  sent 
abroad  shortly  after  their  marriage  in  order,  apparently,  to  make  the 
oracle  true,  and  they  face  with  composure  the  dangers  which  they 
know  in  advance  so  well.  Their  parents  have  enough  faith  to  send 
the  children  off,  but  not  enough  to  await  their  return,  for  they  kill 
themselves  in  despair ;  but  the  reader  does  not  share  their  doubts,  and 
when  matters  look  worst  he  is  consoled  by  the 
crudity  of  the  device,  which  has  its  only  rival  in 
literature  in  Bottom's  suggestion  for  a  prologue 
in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  More  than 
half  the  face  is  seen  through  this  lion's  neck. 
Obviously,  this  method  of  starting  the  unhappy 
pair  upon  their  adventures  has  not  found  ad- 
mirers, but,  granting  its  clumsiness,  their  misfor- 
tunes are  like  those  of  all  the  rest,  and  it  ought 
not  to  have  failed  to  please  those  who  are  only 
satisfied  when  a  work  of  fiction  ends  well.  Here 
the  pious  reader  was  insured  against  disappoint- 
ment. The  two  sufferers  are  in  perpetual  misery : 
robbers,  cannibals,  and  worse  forever  threaten 
them  ;  their  personal  beauty  is  a  continual  source 
of  peril,  but  finally  the  oracle  is  verified  and  all 
is  well.  Some  of  the  incidents  are  the  same  that 
are  mentioned  among  the  devices  of  the  other 
writers :  the  sleeping-potion,  for  instance,  while 
of  course  the  geographical  turmoil  rages  as  ever, 
although  with  more  than  the  usual  confusion. 

The  story  of  Apollonius  of  Tyre  bears  a  curi- 
ous resemblance  to  the  romance  just  described, 
and  it  is  further  interesting  from  the  fact  that 
it  reached  Europe  and  was  enormously  popular 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  We  possess  it 
only  in  this  Latin  version,  which  in  its  brevity 
bears  the  marks  of  an  abridgment  like  those  chapbooks,  published 
even  so  late  as  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  of  the  long  French 
romances  of  earlier  date.  The  Greek  original  is  lost,  and  indeed  that 
it  ever  existed  is  only  a  matter  of  inference  from  the  nature  of  the 
story,  its  list  of  adventures,  and  the  general  tone  of  the  rhetorical 
parts.  The  earliest  mention  of  this  version  is  in  a  grammatical  treatise 
that  belongs  to  the  seventh  century,  and  of  course  it  may  have  been 
in  existence  earlier.      Of  its  later  life  we  know  more ;  it  doubtless 


GODDESS    FORTUNA. 


THEIR  INFLUENCE   IN  MODERN   TIMES.  865 

reached  Europe  as  part  of  the  booty  of  the  crusades,  and  Apollonius 
soon  took  his  place  alongside  of  Alexander  the  Great,  King  Arthur, 
and  Charlemagne.  Gower  recites  many  of  the  incidents  of  his  career 
in  his  Confessio  Amantis  ;  he  is  referred  to  by  Chaucer,  and  so  became 
the  original  of  Shakspere's  Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre.  In  the  Latin 
version  that  we  have  it  is  easy  to  detect  probable  modifications  of  the 
original  at  the  hands  of  the  translator,  who  not  merely  abridged  but 
adapted  the  Greek  work.  Indeed  it  has  been  plausibly  conjectured 
that  the  work  composed  by  a  pagan  Greek  was  put  into  Latin  by  some 
early  Christian.  As  it  stands  it  offers  us  one  of  the  very  few  examples 
that  can  be  found  of  the  influence  of  Greek  work  upon  mediaeval  litera- 
ture. Investigation  will  doubtless  determine  more,  for  it  is  impossible 
to  suppose  that  the  unlimited  abundance  of  Greek  rhetoric  and  soph- 
istry that  pervaded  the  whole  Roman  empire  in  the  early  centuries  of 
our  era  should  have  vanished  without  leaving  many  traces  on  the  suc- 
ceeding developments  of  literature. 

The  longest  and  in  some  ways  the  most  important  of  all  these 
romances  is  the  Ethiopics  ;  or.  Adventures  of  Theagenes  and  Chariclea, 
of  Heliodorus.  The  usual  obscurity  hides  the  author.  We  only  know 
that  he  is  mentioned  in  a  church  history  that  belongs  to  the  first  half 
of  the  fifth  century,  and  it  is  there  said  that  the  writer  of  the  romance 
afterwards  became  a  bishop.  If  this  were  true,  he  would  have  been 
more  fortunate  than  Dean  Swift,  whose  Tale  of  a  Tub  barred  his  way 
to  such  promotion,  but  the  statement  is  now  regarded  as  merely  an 
idle  rumor,  and  the  only  fact  that  we  can  get  is  that  the  book  was 
written  before  that  date.  The  whole  story  reeks  with  paganism,  and 
if  its  author  was  a  priest,  he  was  a  priest  of  Apollo. 

An  outline  of  the  plot  shows  all  the  family  traits  of  this  species  of 
composition  :  Theagenes,  a  Thessalian  of  noble  birth,  meets  Chariclea, 
a  Delphian  priestess,  and  the  two  fall  instantly  in  love  with  each  other 
and  elope  together.  Once  started  off,  they  simply  bound  from  the 
hands  of  one  band  of  robbers  or  pirates  to  those  of  another,  and  Chari- 
clea's  beauty  never  fails  to  inspire  each  chief  in  turn  with  the  most 
desperate  love.  At  length  they  reach  Egypt,  and  there  they  are  seized 
by  a  band  of  Ethiopians  and  carried  away  into  captivity.  It  is  decided 
they  shall  be  sacrificed,  Theagenes  to  the  sun,  Chariclea  to  the  moon  ; 
but  Chariclea  explains  that  she  is  the  white  daughter  of  an  Ethiopian 
king,  exposes  the  strawberry  mark  on  her  left  arm,  and  is  at  once  recog- 
nized as  princess  of  the  country,  and  all  ends  happily  in  her  marriage 
with  Theagenes.  But  this  sketch  does  no  manner  of  justice  to  the 
ingenuity  with  which  every  simple  solution  of  the  many  complications 
that  arise  is  continually  retarded.  Perpetually  the  feelings  of  the 
readers  are  assaulted ;  no  sooner  does  he  give  a  sigh  of  relief  over  the 


866  THE   GREEK  ROMANCES. 

escape  of  the  lovers  from  one  peril  than  he  holds  his  breath  over  some 
new  impending  evil.  The  story  begins,  too,  in  the  very  middle,  and 
the  uneven  movement  is  further  complicated  by  long  descriptions  of 
one  thing  and  another,  that  give  the  author  an  excellent  opportunity 
to  show  his  skill.  Yet  these  discursions  have  with  time  become  sub- 
servient to  the  romantic  side  of  the  tale ;  they  no  longer  hold  the 
first  place. 

It  was  in  1534  that  the  first  edition  of  the  Greek  text  was  pub- 
lished ;  a  French  translation  by  Jacques  Amyot,  the  translator  of 
Plutarch,  appeared  in  1549,  and  this  was  followed  by  an  English  ver- 
sion in  1577.  Editions  rapidly  followed  one  another  in  both  France 
and  England,  and  other  translations  were  made  in  Spain,  Italy,  Hol- 
land, and  Germany.  In  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  Liberata  (xii.  21  fl.) 
we  find  one  of  the  incidents  made  use  of ;  Racine  once  thought  of 
writing  a  play  founded  on  this  romance,  and  Alexander  Hardy  wrote 
eight  out  of  its  copious  accumulation  of  incidents.  In  Spain  it  inspired 
a  good  part  of  the  Trabajos  de  Persiles  y  Sigismunda  of  Cervantes, 
and  Calderon's  Tedgenes  of  Cariclea,  as  well  as  Perez  de  Montalvan's 
Hijos  de  la  Fortuna. 

Yet  these  instances  of  manifest  indebtedness  are  less  important 
proofs  of  the  nature  of  the  influence  which  this  and  the  other  Greek 
romances  exercised,  than  are  the  countless  resemblances  appearing  in 
the  French  heroic  romances  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  fantastic 
notion  of  love  was  alike  in  both  ;  what  was  the  last  invention  of  Greek 
ingenuity,  which  grew  up  in  a  period  of  general  decay  and  was  molded 
into  shape  by  generations  of  clever  word-jugglers,  bore  a  close  resem- 
blance to  the  notion  of  that  passion  which  had  formed  itself  in  accord- 
ance with  the  ideas  of  chivalry.  As  Gervinus  has  said,  the  childishness 
of  the  old  age  of  the  Greek  mind  was  like  the  childishness  of  the  new 
modern  civilization,  and  the  discovery  of  a  similar  tendency  to  exag- 
geration and  formless  literary  work  among  the  ancients  must  have 
given  enormous  encouragement  to  those  unpractised  writers  who 
would  have  been  powerless  had  they  undertaken  to  measure  them- 
selves against  the  real  masterpieces  of  Greek  literature.  The  inherit- 
ance of  the  long-winded  unartistic  mediaeval  work  was  strong,  and  lent 
itself  to  following  these  awkward  models,  while  nothing  is  more  lifeless 
than  the  early  Italian  efforts  to  write  classic  dramas  and  epics.  The 
Renaissance  did  its  best  to  make  a  complete  rupture  with  the  Middle 
Ages,  but  the  most  successful  work  that  it  inspired  was  that  which 
accepted  them  and  let  the  two  currents,  the  mediaeval  and  the  classic, 
flow  naturally  into  one  great  stream,  as  was  done  in  the  English  drama. 
We  may  well  believe  that  the  cumbersomeness  and  crudity  of  these 
Greek  romances  were  not  perceived  by  those  admirers  as  they  are  by 


INDEBTEDNESS  OF  THE  MODERNS  TO  ROMANCE-WRITERS.      867 

US.  It  was  enough  for  them  that  the  romances  were  written  in  Greek, 
they  had  not  begun  to  trouble  themselves  about  dates,  those  awkward 
destroyers  of  idle  hypotheses,  and  with  the  friendly  aid  of  gross  exag- 
gerations and  artificial  mechanism  they  were  enabled  to  let  modern 
romance  enjoy  an  equable  development  from  its  mediaeval  origin  to 
its  present  condition,  uninterrupted,  as  were  most  forms  of  literature, 
by  nervous  reference  to  what  the  ancients  had  done.  The  result  is 
certainly  one  to  be  proud  of,  and  its  worth  is  undoubtedly  in  great 
measure  due  to  the  immunity  of  fiction  from  premature  comparison 
with  ancient  work.  It  has  grown  up  by  itself,  correcting  its  faults  by 
its  own  experience  and  not  by  continual  appeal  to  text-books,  and  is 
now,  as  every  one  knows,  the  one  branch  of  letters  in  which  society 
records  itself  most  distinctly,  and  that,  rather  than  the  observance  of 
rules,  is  the  true  aim  of  literature. 

Nothing  could  exceed  the  generous  supply  of  artificiality  which  the 
Greek  romances  supplied  to  a  sympathetic  world.  The  hero  and 
the  heroine  of  Theagenes  and  Chariclea  are  models  of  beauty,  yet  the 
heroine  is  most  distinctly  the  protagonist,  the  leading  character  of 
the  book,  which  in  this  respect  is  adapted  to  gratify  those  who  were 
brought  up  on  mediaeval  fictions.  Unending  pains  are  taken  to  keep 
the  reader  in  a  perpetual  twitter  of  excitement  over  the  countless  vicis- 
situdes of  the  young  couple  who  forever  escape,  as  it  were,  from  the 
frying-pan  to  the  more  threatening  perils  of  the  fire.  This  device  of 
retarding  the  final  solution  was  very  effective  and  became  the  common 
property  of  the  modern  writers  of  romance. 

And  just  as  the  first  sight  of  a  new  shore  after  crossing  the  ocean 
reminds  the  traveler  of  the  last  view  of  the  one  he  left,  so  the  begin- 
ning romance  of  modern  times  presents  a  notable  likeness  to  the 
expiring  fiction  of  antiquity.  In  both  we  find  the  same  artifice  and 
tumultuous  accumulation  of  incident,  a  similar  absence  of  psychological 
development — this  quality  existing  only  in  Longus's  Daphnis  and 
Chloe,  and  even  there  but  imperfectly — and  an  almost  identical  aristo- 
cratic tone  that  betokens  a  literary  creation  rather  than  a  product  of 
popular  growth.  The  resemblance  goes  further,  in  accordance  with 
this  last-named  quality,  extending  to  the  admiration  that  is  given  in 
both  ancient  and  early  modern  romance,  to  natural  beauty  only  when 
it  has  known  the  decorative  hand  of  man.  The  park  and  the  garden 
are  the  favorite  scenes ;  the  landscape  is  only  praised  after  it  has  been 
adorned  by  the  landscape  gardener.  Especially  are  these  remarks  true 
of  the  French  pastorals,  which  were  written  after  the  Greek  ones  had 
been  translated  and  received  with  the  enthusiasm  that  was  given  to 
everything  that  bore  the  stamp  of  classic  antiquity.  When  the  Greek 
left  ofT,  the  modern  man  began — in  romance  at  least ;  and  a  similar  con- 


868  THE   GREEK  ROMANCES. 

dition  of  things  may  also  be  noticed  in  some  of  the  forms  of  poetical 
composition.  The  literary  style  of  the  two  periods  presents  the  same 
interesting  likeness,  both  being  marked  by  the  same  artifices  of  com- 
position. 

There  were  yet  other  causes  of  the  noticeable  likeness  between  the 
gropings  of  an  expiring  civilization  and  those  of  the  one  beginning, 
among  which  may  be  mentioned  the  surviving  influence  of  the  Greek 
romances  through  a  good  part  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  we  find  many 
of  their  most  characteristic  qualities  appearing  in  an  easily  recognizable 
form.  The  construction  of  some  of  the  mediaeval  poems,  the  sequence 
of  incidents,  the  subjects  themselves,  bear  unmistakable  traces  of  late 
Greek  originals,  probably  reaching  the  poets  of  the  Middle  Ages 
through  Latin  translations  in  the  many  cases  when  the  Greek  itself 
was  an  absolutely  unknown  tongue.  The  proof  is  not  positive,  but  it 
forms  an  impressive  accumulation  of  possibilities  and  probabilities  that 
corroborates  the  intrinsic  difficulty  of  affirming  the  absolute  annihila- 
tion of  an  abundant  stream  of  material — a  difficulty  as  great  as  that  of 
asserting  positive  invention  at  any  period.  The  Greek  names  of  some 
mediaeval  heroes  and  heroines  ;  the  way  in  which  the  passion  of  love 
is  portrayed ;  certain  grammatical  constructions  in  the  language,  and 
the  use  of  certain  words  almost  transliterated  strengthen  the  hypo- 
thesis, which  is  especially  strengthened  by  the  resemblance  of  the  inco- 
herent incidents  of  the  poems  to  those  of  the  Greek  romances.  Yet, 
even  if  it  be  acknowledged  that  the  influence  of  the  Greek  romances 
did  not  wholly  expire  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  fact  would  not  greatly 
modify  the  interest  of  the  similar  treatment  that  marked  the  decay 
and  the  revival  of  letters,  because  this  last  period  was  full  of  new  aims 
and  courted  new  methods,  as  we  may  see  by  comparing  Boccaccio's 
"  Filocopo  "  with  the  mediaeval  form  of  "  Floire  et  Blanceflor."  Liter- 
ary art  begins  for  modern  times  with  the  great  Italian's  prose,  and  it 
is  here  that  the  strongest  analogy  with  the  late  Greek  appears  most 
vividly.  It  is  easier,  perhaps,  to  explain  the  interest  in  the  tales  of 
adventure  by  supposing  them  to  be  an  unbroken  chain,  than  it  is  to 
imagine  that  they  were  invented  over  again.  The  subsequent  deve- 
lopment  of  the  modern  novel  lies  outside  of  our  subject ;  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  new  direct  translations  only  furthered  a  taste  already 
existing. 

III. 

Another  romance  which  has  come  down  to  us  complete  is  the  Loves 
of  Clitopho  and  Leucippe,  by  Achilles  Tatius,  an  evident  imitator  of 
Heliodorus,  The  story  is  one  of  the  usual  sort.  Robbers  and  pirates ; 
battles,  murders,  and  sudden  deaths,  which  their  position  in  the  novel 


THEIR   PICTORIAL   QUALITY.  869 

prove  to  be  nothing  but  trances — the  whole  machinery  is  there,  dimly 
concealed  beneath  alleged  facts  which  are  quite  as  romantic  as  the 
harmless  blood-letting,  and  over  all  a  veil  of  sophistical  declamation. 
Of  the  author's  history  nothing  is  known  ;  there  is  an  idle  rumor  that 
he  too  was  a  Christian  bishop,  but  this  is  only  part  of  the  general  imi- 
tation of  Heliodorus.  He  lived  apparently  at  about  the  time  when 
Musaeus  and  Nonnus  uttered  the  last  notes  of  Greek  poetry,  say  in  the 
fifth  century.  If  realism  is  not  a  striking  quality  of  the  literary  work 
of  this  time,  certainly  no  book  is  less  marked  by  it  than  is  this  romance 
of  Achilles  Tatius.  The  artificial  life  of  the  puppets  about  whom  he 
writes  is  thickly  overlaid  with  all  the  devices  of  an  artificial  rhetoric. 
The  very  beginning  furnishes  an  excellent  example  of  the  method,  in 
its  description  of  a  picture  of  the  Rape  of  Europa,  at  which  the  nar- 
rator of  the  romance  was  looking  when  the  hero  met  him  and  began 
to  recount  his  adventures.  This  description  of  the  picture  was  evi- 
dently written  to  perform  what  was  a  frequent  exercise  of  the  Sophists, 
as  the  similar  descriptions  of  pictures  which  Philostratus  wrote  will 
show,  and  here  it  supplies  what  is  by  far  the  most  lifelike  part  of  the 
story.     Here  is  a  bit  of  it : 

"  The  artist  had  shown  great  skill  in  managing  the  shade  ;  for  the  sun- 
ra5's  were  seen  dispersedly  breaking  through  the  overarching  roof  of  leaves, 
and  lighting  up  the  meadow,  which,  situated  as  I  have  said,  beneath  a  leafy 
screen,  was  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  a  hedge.  Under  the  trees,  beds  of 
flowers  were  laid  out,  in  which  bloomed  the  narcissus,  the  rose,  and  the 
myrtle.  Bubbling  up  from  the  ground,  a  stream  flowed  through  the  midst 
of  this  enamelled  meadow,  watering  the  flowers  and  shrubs  ;  and  a  gardener 
was  represented  with  his  pickaxe  opening  a  channel  for  its  course.  The 
maidens  above  mentioned  were  placed  by  the  painter  in  a  part  of  the  meadow 
bordering  upon  the  sea.  Their  countenances  wore  a  mingled  expression  of 
joy  and  fear  ;  they  had  chaplets  upon  their  heads,  their  hair  fell  dishevelled 
about  their  shoulders  ;  their  legs  were  entirely  bare — for  a  cincture  raised 
their  garments  above  the  knee — and  their  feet  were  unsandalled  ;  their 
cheeks  were  pale  and  contracted  through  alarm  ;  their  eyes  were  directed 
towards  the  sea  ;  their  lips  were  slightly  opened  as  if  about  to  give  vent  to 
their  terror  in  cries ;  their  hands  were  stretched  out  towards  the  bull  ;  they 
were  represented  upon  the  verge  of  the  sea,  the  water  just  coming  over  their 
feet ;  they  appeared  eager  to  hasten  after  the  bull,  but  at  the  same  time 
fearful  of  encountering  the  waves.  The  color  of  the  sea  was  twofold  : 
towards  the  land  it  had  a  ruddy  hue ;  farther  out  it  was  dark -blue  ;  foam 
also,  and  rocks  and  waves  were  represented  ;  the  rocks  projecting  from  the 
shore,  and  whitened  with  foam,  caused  by  the  crests  of  the  waves  breaking 
upon  their  rugged  surface." 

This  description  reads  as  if  it  could  only  have  been  written  before 
the  very  picture,  and  it  is  curious  to  notice  what  a  near  likeness  it  bears 
to  some  of  the  Italian  work,  as  if  at  least  tradition  had  handed  down 


Syo  THE    GREEK  ROMANCES. 

the  artistic  methods  of  a  thousand  years  earlier,  however  unlikely, 
though  not  impossible,  such  survival  may  be. 

The  quality  of  the  romances  is  shown  most  vividly  in  this  one  with 
its  exaggerated  rhetoric.  The  power  of  love  naturally  calls  forth  all 
the  writer's  raptures.     Thus  : 

"  I  rose  from  the  table  intoxicated  with  love.  Upon  entering  my  accustomed 
chamber,  sleep  was  out  of  the  question.     It  is  the  law  of  nature  that  diseases 

and  bodily  wounds  always  become  exasperated  at  night By  the  same 

rule,  the  wounds  of  the  soul  are  much  more  painful  while  the  body  is  lying 
motionless  ;  in  the  day,  both  the  eyes  and  ears  are  occupied  by  a  multiplicity 
of  objects  ;  thus,  the  soul  has  not  leisure  to  feel  pain,  and  so  the  violence  of 
the  disease  is  for  a  time  mitigated  ;  but  let  the  body  be  fettered  by  inactivity, 
and  then  the  soul  retains  its  susceptibility,  and  becomes  tempest-tossed  by 
trouble  ;  the  feelings  which  were  asleep  then  awaken.  The  mourner  then 
feels  his  grief,  the  anxious  his  solicitude,  he  who  is  in  peril  his  terrors,  the 
lover  his  inward  flame." 

The  power  of  love  extends  to  beasts,  plants,  minerals  (witness  the 
magnet),  rivers,  and  streams. 

Eloquence  is  its  only  rival.  Whatever  happens,  the  characters 
readily  declaim.  Thus:  "  Has  Fortune  delivered  us  from  the  hands 
of  buccaneers  only  that  she  [Leucippe]  may  fall  a  prey  to  madness? 
Unhappy  that  we  are,  when  will  our  condition  change?  We  escape 
dangers  at  home  only  to  be  overtaken  by  the  shipwreck;  saved  from 
the  fury  of  the  sea  and  freed  from  pirates,  we  were  reserved  for  the 
present  visitation — madness ! "  etc.  The  style  is  familiar,  and  it 
is  not  made  more  impressive  by  the  so-called  facts  of  natural  history 
and  geography  that  are  placed  in  this  strange  setting. 

Fortune,  it  will  be  noticed,  is  referred  to  as  the  cause  of  this  strange 
conjunction  of  events;  and  the  prominence  given  to  the  power  of  this 
reckless  deity,  and  the  absence  of  even  shadowy  references  to  the  older 
pagan  gods,  make  it  possible  that  the  author  was  a  Christian  exercising 
himself  with  the  familiar  literary  machinery.  At  any  rate,  he  was  not 
an  ardent  pagan.  This  new  deity,  Tyche,  Fortune,  had  grown  powerful 
when  the  old  pantheon  was  emptied,  and  nowhere  had  it  enjoyed  more 
absolute  rule  than  in  these  stories,  and  in  this  one  it  was  less  burdened 
by  any  subordination  to  probability  than  anywhere  else.  This  god- 
dess, who  stood  for  the  blind  chance  that  seemed  to  have  so  much 
power  for  evil  when  the  old  gods  had  proved  powerless  against  the 
disasters  that  had  made  over  the  whole  condition  of  the  ancient  world, 
had  become  powerful  from  the  very  decay  of  her  rivals.  Thus  Poly- 
bius  had  called  Rome  the  noblest  and  most  beneficent  work  of  Fortune. 
Yet  he  had  a  broad  vision  and  refused  to  regard  this  Fortune  as  a  blind 
force ;  he  called  it  rather  an  honest  umpire,  an  intelligent  overruling 


THEIR  MONOTONOUS   VARIETY.  871 

deity  who  gave  power  to  a  people  that  had  earned  it.  Plutarch,  too, 
had  said  that  virtue  brought  with  it  as  reward  the  gifts  of  Fortune, 
but  in  general  the  observation  of  the  current  confusion  inclined  men 
to  ascribe  every  form  of  misery  to  the  caprice  of  this  uncertain  deity. 
In  these  romances  she  is  omnipotent,  for  just  as  the  belief  in  her  con- 
trol removes  from  men  all  responsibility  for  the  results  of  their  actions, 
so  in  literature  the  possibility  of  ascribing  any  incoherent  series  of 
incidents  to  the  well-known  variety  of  her  mandates  tended  to  make 
unnecessary  all  effort  to  attain  probability  or  orderly  sequence  of 
events. 

In  the  Adventures  of  Chaereas  and  Callirhoe,  by  Chariton  of  Aphro- 
disias,  we  have  another  instance  of  the  uniformity  that  prevailed  in 
these  romances  in  spite  of  the  most  desperate  struggles  after  new 
inventions.  All  the  old  terrors  reappear :  robbers,  maritime  perils, 
apparent  death  which  is  only  a  delusion,  enamored  villains,  all  are 
there,  but  virtue  finally  triumphs  and  all  is  well.  There  is  an  attempt 
to  make  a  historical  background  for  the  accumulated  adventures,  but 
it  is  one  that  will  not  endure  examination,  although  it  leaves  with  the 
romance  the  credit  of  being  one  of  the  first  of  the  long-lived  historical 
romances.  What  it  lacks  in  history  it  more  than  makes  up  with  geo- 
graphy :  the  scene  opens  in  Syracuse,  and  is  laid  further  in  Asia  Minor, 
Babylon,  and  of  course  in  Egypt,  for  in  this  remote  antiquity  we  find 
the  earliest  international  novels.  Fortunately,  however,  this  tale  of 
suffering  love  is  not  impeded  by  the  customary  introduction  of  super- 
fluous bits  of  information  about  natural  history ;  the  story  runs  on 
with  commendable  smoothness  and  comparative  simplicity ;  it  only 
needs  a  more  genuine  tale  of  passion  to  be  really  successful.  The 
author's  indebtedness  to  the  earlier  romancers  is  everywhere  apparent, 
although  it  is  uncertain  which  can  be  said  to  have  borrowed  from  the 
other,  Chariton  or  Achilles  Tatius. 

These  were  the  most  important  of  the  Greek  romances ;  those  that 
followed  them  during  the  later  period  were  but  feeble  copies  of  these 
admired  originals  and  scarcely  fall  within  the  scope  of  this  book.  The 
most  important,  or,  rather,  the  least  unimportant  of  these  later  pro- 
ductions is  the  story  of  Hysmine  and  Hysminias  by  the  philosopher 
Eumathius,  or  Eustathius  as  he  is  more  accurately  named.  The  book 
is  full  of  faults,  such  as  might  be  expected  in  a  feeble  copy  of  Achilles 
Tatius  ;  it  is  crammed  with  amorous  absurdities,  and  is  only  remarkable 
for  the  extravagant  somnolence  of  the  love-lorn  hero,  who  in  the  brief 
moments  of  wakefulness  recounts  his  dreams.  This  book  was  probably 
composed  in  the  twelfth  century,  as  was  the  story  of  Rodanthe  and 
Dosicles,  by  Theodorus  Prodromus,  an  imitator  of  Heliodorus. 


872  THE    GREEK  ROMANCES. 


IV. 


Along  with  these  romances  belongs  the  single  Greek  pastoral  story 
that  has  come  down  to  us,  the  Daphnis  and  Chloe  of  Longus,  which,  to 
be  sure,  takes  up  another  subject  than  the  romances,  but  is  yet  strongly 
marked  with  their  characteristics.  Naturally  this  is  a  love  story;  the 
hero  and  heroine  are  a  rustic  young  couple  who  do  not  cross  the  seas 
to  endure  fantastic  adventures.  The  setting  of  the  story  is  near 
Mitylene  in  the  island  of  Lesbos,  and  the  pastoral  background  forms 
the  most  essential  part  of  the  framework  of  this  most  artificial  tale. 
The  description  of  summer  and  winter,  the  occupations  of  shepherds, 
the  joy  in  the  harvest,  form  the  current  that  floats  the  recital  of  the 
anything  but  innocent  love  of  Daphnis  and  Chloe.  In  the  study  of 
literature  one  thing  is  to  be  noticed,  and  that  is  the  uniformity  of  tone 
that  prevails  at  any  given  period.  In  an  artificial  time,  whatever 
efforts  may  be  made  to  secure  simplicity,  the  result  will  be  an  artificial 
simplicity,  in  which  convention  rules,  just  as  truly  as  the  garden  about 
a  handsome  house  will  be  marked  with  the  current  artificiality ;  and- 
always  this  quality  will  prevail  in  exact  proportion  to  the  general  con- 
dition of  men's  tastes.  Hence  it  will  surprise  no  one  to  find  in  the 
pastoral  of  Longus  a  most  knowing  and  suggestive  representation  of 
the  youthful  ignorance  of  the  hero  and  heroine,  and  a  picture  of  nature 
that  infallibly  balances  the  general  directness  of  vision  prevailing  at 
his  time.  How  exact  an  eye  these  later  writers  had  is  easily  deter- 
minable from  a  brief  study  of  the  romances,  and  here  we  find  a  sophist 
attempting  to  be  natural,  yet  hampered — or,  as  he  doubtless  imagined, 
supported — by  all  the  tricks  of  his  trade.  The  idylls  of  Theocritus 
brought  a  breath  of  fresh  air  into  the  dying  classicism  of  Alexandria, 
but  later  the  love  of  them  had  shared  the  fate  of  the  art  and  literature, 
and  had  succumbed  to  the  common  artificiality.  Fantastic  descrip- 
tions of  rustic  scenes  had  long  been  common  ;  praise  of  the  song  of 
birds,  of  the  loveliness  of  flowers,  rural  simplicity,  the  seasons,  pastoral 
adventures,  beautiful  scenery,  had  long  inspired  men  who  were  never 
tired  of  seeking  in  contrast,  cleverness,  and  brilliancy  for  new  delight. 
Libanius,  for  example,  has  left  us  an  exercise  in  praise  of  that  vener- 
able subject,  the  beauty  of  spring,  in  which  there  is  a  description  of  a 
lovely  garden,  that  contains  these  words : 

"  All  this  was  delightful  to  look  upon,  yet  to  describe  it  to  an  audience  is 
yet  more  delightful." 

And  this  is  but  one  of  many  instances  of  the  way  in  which  this  subject 


DAPHNIS  AND    CHLOE. 


873 


was  treated.  Everywhere  in  literature  proportion  is  preserved,  and 
when  the  drawing-room  is  the  scene  of  one  form,  it  is  the  garden  that 
appears  in  the  attempted  delineations  of  nature.  To  be  sure,  the 
romances  do  not  concern 
themselves,  after  the  man- 
ner of  contemporary  English 
novels,  with  the  instances  of 
social  life  in  the  drawing- 
room,  but  their  whole  tone 
is  that  of  conventional  so- 
ciety. The  hero  and  heroine 
are  always  of  gentle  blood  ; 
the  populace  has  its  modern 
equivalent  in  the  chorus  of 
an  Italian  opera;  they  fill  the 
humble  position  of  rabble, 
citizens,  soldiers,  and  the 
like.  The  action  of  the 
stories  is  distinctly  busied 
only  with  the  aristocratic  vic- 
tims of  circumstances.  This 
pastoral  presents  rustic  life, 
devoid  of  its  griminess,  and 
only  as  it  appears  to  people 
of  position.  Yet  when  this 
is  granted  it  must  also  be 
acknowledged  that  although  the  picture  drawn  is  a  conventional 
one,  it  is  yet  well  drawn.  It  is  a  fairyland,  but  a  charming  fairy 
land  that  the  author  puts  before  us.  The  love  of  Daphnis  and  Chloe 
knows  all  the  delays  and  hindrances  that  an  ingenious  invention  can 


SHEPHERD. 


SHEPHERD. 


2 74  THE    GREEK  ROMANCES. 

devise,  but  its  setting  is  more  attractive  than  the  story  itself.  The 
pictures  are  the  work  of  a  time  which  lacked  any  real  enthusiasm, 
which,  indeed,  was  affected  by  some  of  the  most  worthless  interests, 
but  the  idyllic  touches  here  and  there  show  that  the  old  Greek  spirit 
had  not  wholly  died.  It  was,  however,  lamentably  checked  with  rhet- 
orical artifices ;  the  language  is  a  mass  of  willful  prettinesses,  enough 
to  place  the  story  among  the  sophistical  productions,  although  its 
exact  date  cannot  be  determined.  It  was  translated  by  Amyot  in 
1559  A.D.,  but  its  ground  was  already  taken,  and  although  it  enjoyed 
great  popularity,  the  pastorals  of  Italy  and  Spain  had  firm  hold  of  the 
popular  taste,  and  the  work  of  Longus  remained  a  sort  of  literary 
curiosity,  a  wonderful  example  of  grace  mingled  with  the  abundant 
literary  artifice  of  a  dying  civilization. 

Practically  the  life  of  Greek  letters  was  ended  ;  a  great  task  was  done, 
and  what  remained  was  only  the  gradual  evaporation  of  literature  that 
coincided  with  the  general  enfeeblement  of  active  interests  that  con- 
stituted the  dark  ages.  The  world  was  in  process  of  incubating  another 
social  system  when  the  authority  of  Rome  and  of  Greece  was  to  reassert 
its  power.  Here  we  may  leave  the  description  of  Greek  literature, 
after  attempting  to  trace  it  from  its  magnificent  beginning,  through 
its  greatness  and  its  combined  brilliancy  and  conventionality,  until  it 
became  a  mechanical  art  and  so  perished.  In  all  history  there  is  no 
such  subject,  nothing  that  can  compare  with  the  naturalness  and  exu- 
berant life  of  Greek  letters,  no  sadder  instance  of  complete  decay. 


THE   END. 


INDEX. 


Acharniaiis,  The,  452-460, 

Achilles  Tatius,  868-870. 

Action,  lack  of,  in  early  tragedies,  248, 
254,  261. 

Aelian,  851. 

^schylus,  239-300;  life,  239,  240;  com- 
pared with  Beethoven,  250;  praised 
by  Aristophanes,  484-492. 

Agamemtion,  The,  T.'j^-iZd. 

Ajax,  The,  336-341. 

Alcasus,  174,  175. 

Alcestis,  The,  398-402. 

Alexander  of  Etolia,  766. 

Ale.xandria,  741-748 ;  qualities  of  its 
literature,  748,  749,  751,  754,  763, 
768,  799. 

Anacreon,  182-184. 

Anaxagoras,  665. 

Anaximander,  659. 

Anaximenes,  659. 

Andocides,  609. 

Andromache,  The,  402,  403. 

Anthology,  The,  786-798. 

Antigone,  The,  322-327. 

Antimachus,  764,  765. 

Antiphon,  608,  609. 

Apollonius  of  Tyre,  864,  865. 

Apollonius  Rhodius,  770-773. 

Aratus,  773,  774. 

Archilochus,  1 58-161. 

Aristophanes,  452-499,  505  ;  his  con- 
servatism, 453,  497 ;  his  vividness, 
466, 475,  479, 497  ;  attacks  Euripides, 
457,  484,  485,  492 ;  admires  ^schy- 
lus,  484,  492  ;  compared  with  Me- 
nander,  502. 

Aristotle,  715-737;  life,  715-717;  his 
scientific  work,  718-720;  his  Meta- 
physics, 723,  724;  Physics,  725;  Efh- 
ics,  726,  729  ;  Politics,  727  ;  Poetics, 
730,731;  extracts,  732-737. 

Arrian,  852. 

Aryan  family,  the,  3-5. 

Athenaeus,  850,  851. 

BacchcE,  The,  426-433. 
Benn,  A.  W,,  on  Plato,  687. 
Birds,  The,  476-479. 


Callimachus,  767,  771. 

Callinus,  158. 

Changes  in  literary  fashions,  236-238. 

Chariton,  871. 

Chorus,  the  tragic,  231-234;  becoming 
decorative,  389;  the  comic,  451,  452. 

Clouds,  The,  466-469. 

Coluthus,  780. 

Comedians,  early,  of  Athens,  449. 

Comedy,  the,  444-507  ;  the  middle,  494, 
499-507  ;  later,  769,  770 ;  among  the 
Sicilians,  446-448  ;  of  Megara,  448. 

Conservatism  of  humorists,  299,  453. 

Crates,  449. 

Cyclic  poems,  the,  131-135. 

Cyclops,  The,  433-438. 

Cynics,  the,  683-684. 

Cyropcedia,  The,  578,  579. 

Democritus,  664,  670. 

Demosthenes,  623-655;  life,  623-636; 
his  qualities,  637-640 ;  his  succes- 
sors, 640-644. 

Deux  ex  machina,  the,  425. 

Diogenes,  684. 

Diogenes  Laertius,  851. 

Dion  Cassius,  852. 

Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  815. 

EcclesiazuscB,  The,  493, 

Electra,  The,  of  Sophocles,  307-321  ;  of 
Euripides,  414-417. 

Eloquence,  in  tragedy,  312,  313. 

Empedocles,  663,  664. 

Epics,  the  later,  131,  135;  the  Sanskrit, 
47-49.  96  ;  the  Persian,  49. 

Epictetus,  846,  847. 

Epicurus,  738-740. 

Epigram,  the  Greek  idea  of,  191,  790. 

Euclid,  of  Megara,  683  ;  the  mathema- 
tician, 802,  803. 

Eumenides,  The,  290-295. 

Euphuism,  compared  with  early  Greek 
prose,  605,  606. 

Euripides,  352-443;  life,  354-356;  intro- 
ducing novelties  into  tragedies,  403, 
405,  407,  408,  413,414,  421,  425,  426  : 
attacked  by  Aristophanes,  457,  484, 


876 


INDEX. 


Euripides — Continued. 

485,  492;  answers  the  attacl<s,  415  ; 
his  later  influence,  443  ;  as  a  student, 
443  ;  compared  with  Sophocles,  355, 
359'  368  :  his  modernness,  358  ;  his 
individuaUty,  482. 

Eustathius,  871. 

Fear  in  Greek  heroes,  46. 
Frogs,  The,  483-492. 

Galen,  804-807. 

Gods,  the  Greek,  13,    14,  125,  146,  147  ; 

in  war,  47. 
Golden  Age,  the,  262. 
Gorgias,  605,  672. 
Grammarians  of  Alexandria,  800. 
Greece,  its  geographical  conditions,  6,  7  ; 

influence  on  Greek  mind,  7,  8. 
Greek   literature,    its   originality,    i  ;    its 

influence,  2  ;  its  moderation,  3. 
Greek  love  of  beauty,  28. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  his  adrniration  of 
Homer,  118,  119. 

Hecuba,  The,  360-365,  367, 

Helen,  The,  405-407. 

Heliodorus,  865-867. 

Hellenism,  741-874 ;  its  importance  in 
the  world's  history,  741-743  ;  coinci- 
dence between  its  literature  and  the 
fine  arts,  749-751. 

Heracles,  The  Mad,  410-413. 

HeraclidcB,  The,  404,  405. 

Heraclitus,  663. 

Hero  and  Leaftder,  780,  781. 

Herodotus,  512-532;  his  predecessors, 
511;  life,  513-515;  criticisms  upon, 
515-517,  521,  522  ;  his  style,  517. 

Hesiod,  136-149;  life,  140;  unlikeness 
to  Homer,  138;  Works  and  Days, 
140-145  ;   Theogony,  146,  147. 

Hexameter,  the,  15,  16,  150,  151. 

Hippocrates,  805. 

Hippolytus,  The  Crowned,  385-397. 

Homeric  Poems.  The  Epics:  their  origin, 
16,  17  ;  discussion  of  their  author- 
ship, 18-22;  the  solar  myth  theory, 
25i  33.  96-98  ;  how  praised,  1 18,  1 19; 
difference  between  the  two  poems, 
120,  121  ;  the  Hymns,  123-131. 

Homeric  Question,  the,  17-23;  early 
questioners,  17,  19.     See  also  Iliad. 

Hyperides,  640. 

lamblichus,  862,  863. 

Ibycus,  182. 

Iliad,  The,  30-81  ;  in  the  Middle  Ages 
and  the  Renaissance,  34,  35  ;  early 
translations  of,  35  ;  extracts,  50-81. 


Individual  portraiture  lacking  in  ^schy- 

lus,  297. 
Ion,  The,  417-422. 
Iphigeneia  among  the    Taurians,  The, 

423-425. 
Iphigeneia  in  Aulis,  The,  422,  423. 
Isseos,  619. 
Isocrates,  613-619;    artificiality  of,  615, 

620;  political  views  of,  617,  618. 

Japanese    poems,   like    Greek   epigrams, 

790. 
Josephus,  Flavius,  816,  817. 

Knights,  The,  460-466. 

Libatio7i  Powers,  The,  286-290. 

Literature,  not  always  literary,  12,  502  ; 
related  to  fine  arts,  749-751,  787. 

Longinus,  853. 

Longus,  867,  872-874. 

Lucian,  life,  830,  831  ;  attacks  Greek 
mythology,  831-835,  840;  the  phil- 
osophers, 836 ;  resemblance  to  me- 
diceval  writers,  838. 

Lyric  Poetry,  the,  150-216. 

Lysias,  610-613. 

Lysistrata,  The,  479,  480. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  848,  849. 

Masks,  in  the  drama,  224,  229,  230,    503. 

Medea,  The,  370-385. 

Medicine  among  the  Greeks,  804,  806. 

Menander,  500-502,  505-507 ;  compari- 
son with  Aristophanes,  502,  505  ;  re- 
lation to  Euripides,  505,  506. 

Mimnermus,  167. 

Moral  teaching  in  literature,  121. 

Musasus,  780,  781. 

Music  among  the  Greeks,  1 56-1 58, 1 72  ;  as 
approved  by  philosophers,  707,  769. 

Nature,  how  treated  by  Euripides,  431, 
432 ;  later  feeling  of  Alexandrians 
for,  749. 

Nicander,  774. 

Nonnus,  775-780. 

Odyssey,  The,  82-117;  compared  with 
the  Iliad,  82,  119,  120;  extracts,  99- 
117. 

CEdipus  at  Colonus,  The,  331-336. 

CEdipus,  The  King,  328-331^ 

Oppianus,  775. 

Orators,  the,  598-665. 

Oratory,  ancient  and  modern  compared, 
598,  599;  the  Roman,  598,  599;  arti- 
ficial, among  the  Greeks,  616;  its 
influence  in  the  drama,  312,  313. 

Orestes,  The,  367,  369. 


INDEX. 


877 


Parmenides,  662. 

Pausanias,  853. 

Peace,  The,  473-476. 

Peripatetic  School,  the,  737. 

Persian  quatrains,  like  Greek  epigrams, 
790. 

Persians,  the,  245-252 ;  traces  of  early 
forms  of  poetry  in,  247  ;  slow  move- 
ment, 248  ;  compared  with  sculpture, 
248. 

Phanocles,  766. 

Philemon,  500. 

Philetas,  765. 

Phtloctetes,  The,  341-346. 

Philo  Judaeus,  854. 

Philosophers,  the,  656-740. 

Philosophy,  originality  of  the  Greek,  656, 
657  ;  the  beginnings,  659,  660 ;  Pyth- 
agoreans, 660-662  ;  Eleatic  School, 
662,  and  its  opponents,  663 ;  in 
Athens,  666,  667  ;  political  tenden- 
cies, 668-670 ;  its  desertion  of  sci- 
ence, 672,  673.  See  also  Plato, 
Aristotle,  etc. 

Philostratus,  849. 

Phocylides,  184. 

Phoenician  Virgins,  The,  369,  370. 

Phrynicus,  223. 

Pindar,  196-216;  life,  198;  extracts,  208- 
216. 

Plato,  686-712;  life,  688,  691  ;  dialogues, 
702,  706 ;  Republic,  706-709 ;  Laws, 
708-710;  extracts,  694-700,  713,  714. 

Plutarch,  818-829. 

Pliitus,  The,  493-495,  498. 

Poetical  form  as  expression  of  political 
condition,  150,  151,  160,  161,  498, 
499,  502,  506,  748. 

Polybius,  809,  815. 

Prometheus  Bound,  The,  262-274. 

Prose,  its  origin,  508-510. 

Pythagoras,  660-662. 

Quintus  Smyrnasus,  782-785. 

Rhesus,  The,  438,  439. 

Rhianys,  773. 

Romances,  The  Greek,  860-874. 

Sappho,  175-180. 

Savagery  of  early  Greeks,  5,  125. 

Seven   against    Thebes,    The,    252-256 ; 

slow  action  in,  254  ;  influence  of  early 

poetry  in,  254. 
Shakspere,  compared  with  Greeks ;  with 

Homer,    33 ;    with   tragedians,    242, 

243.  313.  346,  351.  354.  365.  366. 


Similes  of  Homer,  120,  121. 

Simonides  of  Ceos,  188,  192. 

Simonides  of  Samos,  161-164. 

Simplicity  of  Greek  tragedians,  418. 

Slavery  in  Greece,  219,  304. 

Socrates,  life,  675-683  ;  his  method,  677- 
680;  his  enemies,  681,682;  his  fol- 
lowers, 683 ;  his  speech  to  his  judges, 
694-698  ;  his  death,  698-700. 

Solon,  168,  170. 

Sophists,  the,  601-604,  666-669,  672, 
674. 

Sophocles,  301-351  ;  life,  301,  302;  com- 
pared with  J^schylus,  300,  305,  307, 
310,  321,  325,  326,  332,  338;  possible 
acquaintance  with  Herodotus,  514. 

Suppliattts,  The,  of  Sophocles,  256-262  ; 
of  Euripides,  403,  204. 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  on  Euripides,  352-353. 

Thales,  658,  659. 

Theatre,  its  construction,  225-227. 

Theocritus,  748-761. 

Theognis,  169,  170;  186-188. 

Theogony,  The,  146-149. 

ThesmophoriazuscE,  The,  480-482. 

Thucydides,  533-570 :  life,  633 ;  com- 
pared with  Herodotus,  534,  545  ; 
modernness  of,  536,  537  ;  his  obscu- 
rity, 538,  550  ;  speeches,  538-540, 
546,  548,  551,  557;  judicial  quality, 
542. 

Trachis,  The  Maidens  of,  347-350. 

Tragedians,  the  later,  439-442. 

Tragedy,  the  growth  of,  222,  223 ;  com- 
pared with  growth  of  modern,  224. 

Troades,  The,  409,  410. 

Truthfulness  a  Greek  quality,  48. 

Tyrtaeus,  165-167. 

Wasps,  The,  469-473. 
Wolf,  F.   A.,    His  Prolegomena  and  its 

influence,  20,  21. 
Women,  their  position  and  its  influence, 

244.  399.  762,  763. 
Works  and  Days,  The,  140-146. 

Xenophanes,  185,  186,  662. 

Xenophon,  571,  597  ;  life,  572,  576  ;  com- 
pared with  Thucydides,  572;  his 
safe  smoothness,  577,  585  ;  Cyropce- 
dia.  The,  578,  as  a  historical  novel, 
579 ;  his  love  of  Sparta,  585 ;  why 
admired,  587. 

Xenophon  of  Ephesus,  863. 


Zeno,  662. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


rt^ 


9Jur53KV 

-  —  I 
REC'D  LD 

FEB  27  1963 


LD  21-100m-7/52(A2528sl6)476 


<  » 


Ste-*'  ^ 


v,^«l' 


"^M* 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


^r-^f/ 


^;.  =«%, 


^^^^^^^Rr' 


